News from the Culture War:
Political Correctness vs. Traditional Family Values

Traditional family values, in this case, means dedication to family, hard work, thrift, cleanliness, self-reliance, self-respect (not necessarily self-esteem), neighborliness, patriotism, traditional (monogamous, heterosexual) marriage, and participation in wholesome family activities such as hunting, fishing and unrestricted prayer.  Of course, if you get all your information from television, you may have missed some of these news items, because most of these stories have been ignored or actively downplayed by the "mainstream" news media.

There are those who say, "evidence is not the plural of anecdote," but I disagree.  There is such a thing as anecdotal evidence, and there is so much evidence that no reasonable person can deny that the American culture is in a state of rapid moral decline.

Introduction:

"Winning the Culture War"
: Charlton Heston's speech at the Harvard Law School Forum, February 16, 1999.

The Culture War:  It should be noted that in spite of all the propaganda to the contrary, the Culture War is not something that has been declared by Christians.  Most Christians simply want to be left alone to spend time with their families and build their churches.  Historic Christian values were already in place in America.  Those opposed to such values had to declare the Culture War.



Recently there has been a bit of furor over the Ten Commandments, which was really a dispute over the 1st, 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.  (If you listened only to the shouting matches and emotional outbursts, you may have missed the legal point of it all.)  But why do you suppose there are so many people opposed to the public display of the Ten Commandments?  It indicates the increasing friction between popular American culture and any kind of absolute truth.  The leftist counterculture wants to remove any absolutes from our society and blur the lines between right and wrong in order to make it easier to manipulate public opinion.  That's part of the purpose of the push toward "multiculturalism" and "diversity" and "tolerance".

Let me assure you, the things that were right and wrong 100 years ago are still right and wrong (respectively) today, because truth does not change.

The push toward same-sex marriages and same-sex adoptions is not about "acceptance" and "tolerance".  Its immediate goal is legitimization (not just tolerance) of homosexuality, which was considered perversion by almost everyone until a few decades ago.  (Homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders in 1973.*)  And the ultimate goal of this movement is to do away with all marriages and eventually all traditions.  Why?  This will result in a society of disconnected individuals (people without a solid foundation of factual history and wholesome tradition) who are fully dependent upon the state, rather than a society built upon families.  It is all about manipulation of public opinion and increased government control.

Perhaps you have noticed that people who make statements like the ones in the preceding paragraph are frequently accused of "hate speech", no matter how rational their arguments may be.  Here again, beware of those who try to manipulate public discussion through the use of emotional outbursts rather than substantiated facts.

Much of the discussion on these pages centers around post-modernism, political correctness, and the upheaval of tradition.  For your convenience, this mass of material has been subdivided into several pages:

Semantics and Equivocation in the Culture War
The Collapse of the Family Unit as the Building Block of Society
   Feminism and Antimasculinism
   Feminism and Abortion
   Stem Cell Research
   Homosexuality in General
   Same-Sex Marriage
Homosexuals vs the Boy Scouts
Anti-Christian/Pro-Islam Bias in American Society
   The Anti-Christmas Section
Lowered Standards, Lowered Expectations
The Demise of Stigma and the Erosion of Self-Discipline
Animal Rights vs. Human Rights
Uprooted Traditions and Revised History
   The Public Display of the Ten Commandments
   The Origins of Thanksgiving Day
   Separation of Church and State
   Is the United States a Christian country?
Multiculturalism, "Tolerance" and Diversity
Cultural and political bias in motion pictures
Cultural and political bias on television
The National Endowment for the Arts
The NCAA's battle against politically incorrect mascot names
Recommended Reading



Discussions of political correctness, per se: 
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]




"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small.  In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.  When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.  To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself.  One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.  A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.  I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
Theodore Dalrymple              



Cover-ups, Cowardice, and Political Correctness.  [Video clip]

Orwell Rears His Head.  On Monday of last week, to use the phrase "sexual preference" was completely acceptable.  As recently as last month, multiple gay rights publications used the phrase.  Leon Panetta had used the phrase in the past couple of years.  Joe Biden has used the phrase this year.  Merriam-Webster considered "sexual preference" to be just another version of "sexual orientation."  But then Tuesday happened.  On Tuesday, the village idiot from Hawaii masquerading as a senator, Mazie Hirono, attacked Amy Coney Barrett for using "sexual preference" instead of "sexual orientation."  By Tuesday evening, the employees of Merriam-Webster had changed the phrase in their online dictionary to note it was offensive.  No, I am not making that up.  The dictionary company literally changed it after Barrett's exchange with Hirono.  Steve Krakauer, a former CNN producer who now produces Megyn Kelly's podcast, documented the change on his social media feed.  Gay rights publications such as The Advocate went on the attack as well.  In just 18 days, "sexual preference" went from acceptable to a hate crime.

John Cleese:  Society Is Now Controlled By The Most Touchy, Emotionally Unstable, & Fragile People.  Former Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star John Cleese has had enough of political correctness and the cancel culture, and as for the state of the "dysfunctional world we live in," warning that "it's completely hopeless..."  As for the sense of hopelessness he feels, Cleese blames the "power seekers."  [Video clip]  The 80 year old comedian is as politically savvy as he is humorous as he brings his one-man-show "Why There Is No Hope" to live-stream after blasting the BBC last month as "cowardly and gutless" for temporarily taking down an episode of Fawlty Towers that made fun of Germans and World War II and also featured a character using a racial slur.

[It is] No Longer Possible to Be a Democrat and Support Free Speech.  For freedom's sake, be offensive.  Not rude.  Not malicious.  But free enough with your thoughts that they are still your thoughts and not the programmed left-speak that is constantly in flux but thoroughly enforced.  A generation ago, Americans would preface a potentially offensive statement with a quick declaration — "this isn't politically correct, but" — before charging forth with what was on their minds.  It was a brilliant idiom that contrasted the communist control of language with an American's freedom of speech but still demonstrated the speaker's awareness that what was being said might not appeal to every listener.  Today, when a boss or college admissions board or social media enforcer says something is politically incorrect, it means you've been fired or rejected for having thoughts that do not conform.  What not long ago was spot-on American irony is now reality.  "This isn't politically correct, but..." is now firmly answered, "Then you probably shouldn't say it."  Say it anyway.

Tucker Carlson slams Seattle employee training on 'undoing whiteness'.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson urged people to stand up to racial hatred, which he views in the Seattle's new training session held for white employees to "undo" their whiteness as it relates to certain privileges.  The training session, dubbed "Interrupting Internalized Racial Superiority and Whiteness," encourages white employees to let go of comforts such as "guaranteed physical safety," "control over the land," "social status," and "relationships with some other white people."  The training also goes through a flow chart on how white people "cause harm to POC" and how they're unable to see opportunities to be allies to minorities.  "Prepare to be unemployed, pale employees of Seattle, your color disgusts us," Carlson said Thursday of what he believes the agenda entails.  "All that actually happened in Seattle."  Carlson accused people who support this type of program of being hypocritical in their views, comparing it to a type of conversion therapy that's been done on gay and transgender people.

Michigan to require all medical professionals to undergo implicit bias training.  Michigan medical professionals will need to undergo implicit bias training in order to be licensed by the state, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state leaders announced Thursday [7/9/2020].  The state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs is in charge of licensing medical professionals.  Under a new executive directive from Whitmer department will create new rules that make implicit bias training mandatory for people to qualify for licensure, renewal or registration.  The new requirement is based on a recommendation from the Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, led by Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II.

Welcome To Your New World Order:  A long list of people, places, and things that are now politically incorrect.  For as long as the nation continues to go mad, purging books, movies, statues and history in its own cultural revolution launched by woke elites, The Federalist will be chronicling its destruction, updating this list with each new event in its collapse.  The Federalist will also be keeping tally of those fired from lack of allegiance to the new woke overlords found here.

Time to Pillage Pelosi's Village.  One of the enduring themes of the last decade has been when liberals pretend not to understand things in the hope that we will get so frustrated catering to their feigned incomprehension that we will drop it and go away.  "Political correctness?  What does that even mean?" Instead of confronting what PC is, they pretend that rejecting the idea of our having every thought and utterance policed by bitter, pierced sophomore scolds is a secret code for liking racism, sexism, Islamophobia, fatism, and all of the other myriad -isms and -phobias written in the pages of the Big Book of Bad Things.

Eight out of 10 people working in arts or culture say they stay silent about supporting conservative ideologies.  Eight out of 10 employees working in the arts or culture fields said that sharing controversial opinions could mean 'being professionally ostracized' or bullied, according to a new survey.  These revelations reportedly stem from an increasing culture of self-censorship and a fear of backlash from colleagues over views that may politically incorrect.  The Freedom of Expression survey conducted by ArtsProfessionals, a UK arts publication, received responses from more than 500 individuals in the field, many of which pointed out the risks that can come with speaking freely.  Some of these topics include expressing support for right-wing ideologies and conservative political parties.

HUD Secretary:  PC culture will destroy America.  The secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says political correctness will destroy the country.  Ben Carson made those remarks during a congressional hearing Tuesday [10/22/2019] when he was asked about comments he reportedly made during a meeting last month.  According to reports, he made comments about transgender people entering women's bathrooms.  When asked to apologize for his remarks, however, he explained it was a misunderstanding and then went on to blast the idea of political correctness.

The Culture War That Threatens To Upend America.  Some have begun to debate the question of whether or not we are in a "cold civil war" in this country.  In either case, we are already in a hot culture war.  A primary aspect of that war is to manipulate a cultural shift to push behaviors that used to be private into the public sphere, while driving other behaviors that were always public into the private sphere.  It's not just the sex lives of the famous that are of public interest, but everyone's sex life seems to be discussed, debated and displayed.  In keeping with growing expectations of faux tolerance, one is almost expected to announce one's sexual preference and practices to strangers.  In doing so, people exhibit fewer personal boundaries in other aspects of life.

Manholes in Berkeley will now be called 'maintenance holes'.  At a Tuesday night [7/16/2019] city council meeting, Berkeley became the first city in America to ban the use of natural gas piping in new construction.  But that was not the only utility-related issue they saw fit to attend to.  No, there was another matter on deck:  Eliminating the gendered connotations of words like "manhole" in the city municipal code.

Political Correctness Is a Tool for Socialist Censorship and Thought Control.  In the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," part of the dystopian government that George Orwell imagined was its use of the language of "Newspeak," a simplification of the English language to serve the needs of the state.  Newspeak altered thoughts, so that people were rendered incapable of thinking outside Party lines.  We now see this same principle at play in political correctness, in which concepts behind words are being altered to fit political narratives, and people are censoring their thoughts to not violate the artificial morals of the state.

Microsoft uses artificial intelligence to push what liberals think you should write.  Microsoft has decided that you need help in understanding what words to use when you write.  After all, what you write and how you want to write it should take a backseat to what liberals think you should write.  Fox News reported, "Microsoft is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to boost the use of 'inclusive language' in Word.  The feature is part of Ideas in Word, a forthcoming AI-powered online tool designed to improve users' writing ... In addition to 'familiar fixes for spelling and grammatical errors,' Ideas in Word will also offer 'advice on more concise and inclusive language,' according to Microsoft.  In the blog post, [John] Roach used the example of 'police officer,' instead of 'policeman.'"

Soon, Microsoft Word Will Edit Your Document for Political Correctness.  Is Microsoft trying to rehabilitate the image of Clippy? [...] I'm not sure anything can replace that stupid paperclip, but according to the business magazine Fast Company, Microsoft is rolling out a series of features called "Ideas in Word" to help users with their writing — and one of those features will have to do with whether your writing is sufficiently woke.  "Microsoft will soon preview a version of Word that will use artificial intelligence to make your writing not just grammatically but politically correct," Fast Company reported Wednesday [5/8/2019].

Weary of culture wars: 81% of Americans say people are too easily offended these days.  Culture may seem to be dominated by trigger warning and hypersensitivity.  A sizable new poll, however, finds that 81% of Americans agree that "people are too easily offended these days," an opinion that also spans political beliefs.  The poll found that 94% of Republicans, 82% of independents and 70% of Democrats agree with this idea.  The finding comes from a Morning Consult poll of more than 13,000 U.S. adults.  The public also reveals a certain weariness with both the culture wars and the social dynamics at work these days.  Only about a third of Americans would describe themselves as "politically correct."  Though half of the nation says there's prejudice in the country, about half also say there is too much political correctness as well.  And three-fourths of the nation say they have censored or changed their words or actions when around people who were "different" than themselves.

Radio station drops "Baby It's Cold Outside" over #MeToo concerns.  A Cleveland radio station has stopped playing a popular Christmas song that's been around since the 1940s, CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO reports.  Star 102 Cleveland listeners raised concerns about the lyrics of the song "Baby It's Cold Outside," with some saying the words send the wrong message in the era of the #MeToo movement.

The Darkest Hour:  Government by the Head of HR.  A worker who has less time to empty his office than a family has enough warning to flee their home and leave their country; a worker who must box his belongings — who no longer belongs in a building — while armed guards prepare to exit him from the premises; a worker who says or does nothing wrong at work, but posts the wrong thing when he is home from work — I fear that that man is Everyman.  I fear that his gray flannel suit is, in fact, a prison jumpsuit.  I fear for him as much as I fear for all of us.

What Happens to the Future When It's Severed From the Past.  [Scroll down]  We are told that our culture and the way we live is now post-Christian and that the need for redemption by God has been replaced by the imperatives of a secular redemption defined by political correctness.  That new framework is largely based on the one-two approach of promoting guilt among largely successful white males for their alleged biases and misdeeds, past and present, and then providing them a solution in the form of relief and good feelings through making amends and accommodation to new groups and minorities.  In short the path of the new P.C. redemption has nothing to do with character improvement and everything to do with identity politics — races, classes, gender and sexual identity — and also the relationship that man has with the environment.  And there is simply no end to atonement, role reversals, and reparations to fix things.  As a result, we have come to a point where seemingly endless manufactured injustices are crowding out the joy of everyday life, stripping people of their spontaneity and their humor.  The tenets and framework of political correctness have largely negated the relevance of age-old moral truths, common sense, and the scientific method — all of which contribute to protecting relationships, solving problems, and facilitating progress.  As a result, we are experiencing increasing regressive forces that are effecting economics, law, politics, and basic civility.

7 Reasons Why the Transgender Revolution Will Fail.  [#1] The transgender revolution is oppressive.  As reported on July 16 on Lifesite News, "Failing to refer to a gender-confused student, professor, or staffer by his or her 'preferred' pronouns could become a fireable or expulsion-worthy offense at the University of Minnesota, according to proposed guidelines currently under consideration."  It is not enough to allow a biological male to identify as a female.  Hardly.  Society must conform, or else.  If "he" now identifies as "she" (or "xe" or "ze") and you fail to use the right pronoun, you will be punished.  This is already the law in New York City.  And Canada has taken steps to make this kind of enforced speech the law across the country.  This cannot succeed in the long-term.  Society will push back.

Liberals and the Death of Comedy.  Everyone understands that the left is against comedy, because humor punctures their precious earnestness.  It is widely understood that Mel Brooks couldn't make Blazing Saddles today, even if Richard Pryor wrote most of the script again.  But there's another movie what can't be made today:  Monty Python's Life of Brian.  Although the film is mostly a satire of political extremism, at the time of the film's release a lot of Christians criticized it for anti-Christian bias.

It's Dangerous to Disagree in America.  Private citizens are a soft target.  Papa John's Pizza founder and CEO John Schnatter was forced out of his own company for making an innocuous statement during a call with analysts about the NFL kneelers hurting their sales.  Exemplary Google employee James Damore made one politically incorrect statement and was thrown out on his ear.  Apple's diversity chief, a black woman, thought she could praise the importance of diverse viewpoints instead of diversity based on race — and found herself the target of outrage and controversy that led to her termination. [...] The threat of losing your job extends beyond your behavior at work.  If you express right of center opinions outside of work, progressive activists can get you fired, as happened to Dr. Frank Turek.  He lost jobs with Cisco and Bank of America for writing a book in defense of traditional marriage.  A homosexual manager didn't like Turek's beliefs, and that was that.

The Rise of Political Correctness.  Beginning in the 1960s, from Boston to Berkeley, the teachers of America's teachers absorbed and taught a new, CliffsNotes-style sacred history:  America was born tainted by Western Civilization's original sins — racism, sexism, greed, genocide against natives and the environment, all wrapped in religious obscurantism, and on the basis of hypocritical promises of freedom and equality.  Secular saints from Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama have been redeeming those promises, placing America on the path of greater justice in the face of resistance from the mass of Americans who are racist, sexist, but above all stupid.  To consider such persons on the same basis as their betters would be, as President Obama has called it, "false equivalence."  Thus credentialed, molded, and opinionated, a uniform class now presides over nearly all federal, and state, government bureaucracies, over the media, the educational establishment, and major corporations.

The Biggest Threat to America's Future Is the Media.  The pervasively destructive demand for politically correct language extinguishes the essential means of communication.  It is a fundamental part of liberty that Americans need to speak freely and openly without concern regarding hurting the feelings of others.  Political correctness is a weapon in the arsenal of the left, and free-thinking Americans should resist legitimizing such a tactic and refrain from using that weapon against themselves.

The Freud Fraud Underlies Political Correctness.  The whole intellectual apparatus behind political correctness, micro-aggression theory, totalitarian campus speech codes, the #metoo obsession with sexual mistreatment — all of it begins with Freud. [...] You can't understand liberalism unless you know Freud, and you can't appreciate what a tissue of lies and half-truths liberalism is without knowing what a charlatan Freud was.

The Rise Of Political Correctness.  The notion of political correctness came into use among Communists in the 1930s as a semi-humorous reminder that the Party's interest is to be treated as a reality that ranks above reality itself.  Because all progressives, Communists included, claim to be about creating new human realities, they are perpetually at war against nature's laws and limits.  But since reality does not yield, progressives end up pretending that they themselves embody those new realities.  Hence, any progressive movement's nominal goal eventually ends up being subordinated to the urgent, all-important question of the movement's own power.

Revisiting Orwell to Understand Our Times.  The concepts of "newspeak" and "doublethink" in Orwell's 1984 are manifest in what we know now as political correctness.  Newspeak is the distorted reality accomplished by manipulating the meaning of language and words, while doublethink is the conditioned mental attitude to ignore reality and common sense and substitute and embrace a distorted or false narrative.  As Orwell notes, "the whole aim of Newspeak and Doublethink is to narrow the range of thought."  Political correctness has the same goal and that's why its adherents are so intolerant — seeking to shut down and silence people with whom they disagree on college campuses across the country, clamoring for removal of historic statues and monuments, and demanding that people with opposing views on such subjects as climate change and gay marriage be silenced, fined or arrested.

Two New Totalitarian Movements:  Radical Islam and Political Correctness.  The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media — to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood — is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell's diseased society.  The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil — of victim and victimizer.  In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around.  This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.  Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes.  That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals.

Firing Roseanne and not Kimmel.  Disney's decision to cancel the "Roseanne" show over a tweet shows that free speech is dead in Corporate America.  Her real crime is supporting the duly elected president of the United States. [...] The only mistake Roseanne made was apologizing to the fascists.

Gonzaga warned 'non-Mexican individuals' against 'cultural appropriation' on Cinco de Mayo.  If you had fun on Cinco de Mayo, Gonzaga University wants a word with you.  The Jesuit school in Spokane, Washington, issued several warnings to "non-Mexican individuals" against "cultural appropriation" ahead of last weekend's festivities.  In an email Wednesday to the student body, Judi Biggs Garbuio, vice president for student development, lamented that Cinco de Mayo, as celebrated in the United States, "has become more about drinking and partying especially by non-Mexican individuals."

The Editor says...
Is a Tex-Mex restaurant, by reason of its very existence, guilty of "cultural appropriation?"  What about a Chinese or Italian or Greek or French restaurant?

At an All-Women's College, You Can't Call Them 'Women' Anymore.  Since its inception in 1837, Mt. Holyoke College, set in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has been graduating luminaries — such as poet Emily Dickinson, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and a myriad of other individuals.  As the first of the Seven Sisters — a consortium of prestigious East Coast liberal arts colleges for women and the female equivalent to the once all-male Ivy League — Mount Holyoke is now urging its professors to drop the word "women" from their vernacular when referring to their students, according to the school's website.  In other words:  At an all-women's college, you should no longer call a woman a woman.

British School For Girls Won't Let Teachers Call Students 'Girls.'  Mockery Ensues.  Last week, the Daily Mail took a moment to check out the logically indefensible, glaringly inconsistent "gender identity" policymaking going on at one of England's oldest, top-rated all-girls grammar schools, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls in Manchester.  Though the school is by definition exclusive and its name clearly describes itself as only a "school for girls," in the name of "inclusion," school officials have imposed a new rule on their faculty:  they can no longer refer to the school's 1,350 girl students using the "g-word."  The school has imposed the new PC speech code on faculty as part of its embrace of "gender-neutral language" when talking about or directly to children.

Orwell Is Alive at HHS.  A political tempest arose last week when the Washington Post reported that the Department of Health and Human Services had banned the use of certain words or phrases — "vulnerable," "science-based," and "entitlements," among others — in official budget documents.  National Affairs editor Yuval Levin debunked the story, though, finding instead that bureaucrats concerned about offending Republican budget overseers had, in fact, decided to censor themselves.  If so, that suggests that the bureaucrats have been reading their George Orwell, who observed in his classic essay Politics and the English Language that language is "an instrument which we shape for our own purposes"; they are sharp enough to realize that even neutral terms can constitute mini-arguments.  Each of the terms in question — and a great many more — have been weaponized for use in political conflict.

The Origins of Political Correctness.  For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think.  They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.  We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been the case.  And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they would be afraid of what words they used.  But we now have this situation in this country.  We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is spreading throughout the whole society.  Were does it come from?

The rot of political correctness.  In today's academy, truth is an invention.  Expecting people to show up on time is racist.  Censorship is good.  Silencing opposing viewpoints imperative.  Violence to enforce safety is natural.  For the last 25 years, under the guise of "political correctness," we've been watching the inexplicable flow into our culture.  The idiotic demands of political correctness in the 1980s, ironically relying on the decency of the American people for their acquiescence, was just the prep course, an amuse bouche before the main course of creating social chaos and destruction.  It sounds dramatic, and it is, and it's also the only way the left maintains power — brainwashing people into believing that social norms must be destroyed in order to create a more perfect society.

Publishers now hiring 'sensitivity readers' to ensure political correctness.  If you ever worried about what the student snowflakes at American universities would be qualified to do after graduation, this is the perfect job for them.  Publishers are hiring "sensitivity readers" to check book manuscripts to make sure they adhere to politically correct standards.

"Manpower" Doesn't Mean Man Power.  Free speech is no longer free at our universities.  If you say the wrong thing, your words will cost you.  Even if you say the right thing it'll cost you plenty.  At Princeton University, you pay tuition of $41,820 per year (well, this being academia, make that per two-thirds of a year) for the language police to ban you from words they deem sexist.  The ban applies to so-called hateful words and phrases like "layman," "mankind" (which the censors deem not just politically incorrect but also oxymoronic), "man hours," "workmanlike" and of course that most-hated word, "manpower."

Political Correctness as a Tool of the Liberal Inquisition.  Political correctness is a deliberate tool used by the Left to intimidate conservatives and people of faith into silence, with the goal of making our classic and time-tested opinions illegitimate.  Political Correctness is a strategy, a weapon of social warfare, a bullying against those unwilling to reshape and renounce their traditional belief system and bow to the dictates of the leftocracy dead-set on total domination of our lives and culture.  It enforces censorship and activates demonization, threatening those unwilling to submit and apologize with loss of job, livelihood, social acceptability, company sales, friends, reputation, and status.

University Advises Against Using the Words 'Holiday Party' — to be Inclusive.  Political Correctness has gone CRAZY. A Texas University has issued a guide on how to have an 'inclusive' Christmas party without saying 'Christmas' or 'Holiday'.  And it just gets weird from there.  Texas Women's University in their handy-dandy little guide called, 'A 'Festivus for the Rest of Us':  Tips to plan an all-inclusive, multicultural holiday party at the office', advises against using the word 'Holiday' because it implies religious tradition and could be offensive to those who are not religious.  Instead, 'End of Semester Party' or if it's a work party, an 'End of Fiscal Year Party' would be much better choices.

Censoring Language as Offensive Violates the Constitution.  The 14th Amendment says that no state can pass a law that denies anyone equal protection.  This means that a tiny group of people cannot have a right to censor language as offensive, and no one else.  So far no one has explained, in constitutional terms; why one person, who claims to be offended, has the right to shut down the speech, clothing, or legal actions of everyone else.  At first glance this looks ridiculous, and it is.  But like many other liberal power-enabling concepts, those perpetrating it intend to repeat it so often that it becomes accepted by a majority of Americans.

Hillary's trying to make the election a referendum on political correctness.  To see what President Hillary's America would be like, look at most college campuses today.  Few on campus dare to question Black Lives Matter, militant multiculturalism and "safe spaces" to spare students from challenging ideas.  Hillary's dictating how Americans talk about race, sex, even body shapes.  Trump calls it like he sees it.  He doesn't stick to the well-rehearsed rhetoric of a career politician.  But his supporters are sick and tired of political correctness.  He's not running for saint.  He's running to get the job done, something Hillary Clinton has already proven she can't do.

Political Correctness Doesn't Only Threaten Speech.  White privilege is the notion that whites have an advantage in getting societal benefits in Western countries, to the disadvantage of nonwhite people under the same social, political or economic circumstances.  Trigger warnings are communications warning that the content of a text, video, etc., might upset or offend some people, especially those who have previously experienced a related trauma.  Microaggressions are subtle but offensive comments or actions directed at a minority or other non-dominant group, often unintentionally or unconsciously reinforcing a stereotype.  The original idea of safe spaces was that educational institutions should not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech.  Therefore, certain places were designated as safe for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.  The term has been expanded to protect all minorities.

Gender Chaos in an XX-XY World.  We live in a country where people think it's okay for has-been rock stars to cancel concerts because of their beliefs but it's not okay for bakers, florists and photographers to do the same.  We also live in a nation controlled by very confused people who believe it's good to reinforce the abnormal behavior of a few by altering the normal behavior of the majority.  If you ever needed a definition of insanity, well, there you go.  So how did we get here?  It's pretty simple.  We no longer live in a society that filters the world through the Biblical prism of "right and wrong" or "good and evil."  In the absence of moral absolutes, people tend to make issues over non-issues and create wars defending non-victims.

Limbaugh: 'Obliterating Morality Has Been What the Culture War is All About'.  [Rush] Limbaugh said liberalism is determined to wipe out the concept of morality, believing that no one has the right to define it.  "Nobody can write laws that are based on morality and have them apply to everybody, because your morality may differ from mine, and there isn't any universal morality; there isn't any universal right and wrong...  "So something as simple as morality and right and wrong has now become politicized, and therefore illegitimate, 'cause you don't have the right to tell somebody what's right and wrong.  You don't have the right to define morality — and if you do, then you're a problem.  You're the problem.  You're the oppressive, old fogey, fuddy-duddy problem.  Meanwhile, you think you're just standing up for what's right and justice and wholesome and good, and their whole objective has been just to erase all of that.  Limbaugh said the cultural and political battles we face are no longer rational.

PC Culture Effectively Using Words as Weapons.  Apparently, having a different opinion from anyone is now being translated as 'hate speech.' If you think the idea of having a man with his private parts still attached being allowed to use the women's facilities is outrageous, then you hate all gays and the government needs to enact laws to protect the LGBT community.  If however a state tries to protect the right for women's privacy in the facilities, then liberal celebrities must boycott those states.  All criticism of Hillary Clinton is sexism; all criticism of President Obama's policies is proof that racism is back in America.  The tea party and all Republicans are racists, anti-gay, Islamaphobic and whatever negative the mainstream media can dream up and since the nation has forgotten how to reason, those lies are accepted as truths.

When Obama speaks about ethics and morality here's what I would ask.  Dictionary.com defines morality:  "Conformity to the rules of right conduct."  Ah, but here's the rub.  That definition fits a different era.  Morality today is personal.  It is not a standard to which one is encouraged to conform for one's own, or society's benefit.  Rather, it is about what makes one feel good. [...] Moral relativism has contributed to a host of societal and relational problems few wish to acknowledge.  To do so would force people to admit their "standard," which in reality is no standard at all, isn't working.

A Trump-Lover's Manifesto.  Once upon a time, political correctness was an inside joke on elite campuses.  Twenty-five years ago, it referred to outlandish arguments at Cornell and Oberlin about whether to celebrate "Womyn's Herstory Month" or ban the word "Oriental."  Now it's become something far more serious.  It grew and grew, breaking out of the college elite to universities everywhere, and then eventually to the government and all of civil society.  It now stands as a system to silence people who oppose the power brokers' cultural agendas; it punishes dissenters through defamation, intimidation, a new McCarthyism, and even threats of outright violence.  Nothing we debate matters if Americans can't have a real debate.  And we can't have a debate on anything as long as political correctness blockades us.

P.C. — R.I.P..  With provocative and occasional unrestrained rhetoric, Trump can be polarizing — sometimes inviting a raucous response.  But the real problem that gave rise to Trump is intolerance and the soft tyranny of humorless political correctness that envelopes communication and culture in America.  No one wants to admit it, but the seeds of ideological control characteristic of totalitarian political regimes reside predominantly in the Democrat Party and in its liberal constituencies that dominate the knowledge, information and entertainment industries — the media, the universities, and Hollywood.  And because of their leverage, these institutions have a disproportionately large effect on the population at large.  Slowly, over the last few decades, but with accelerating pace in the Obama years, the soul of America has been silenced by political correctness.  And the nation is weaker and more divided than ever.

Satisfying smackdown of a politically correct university president.  When The Bell Curve, a dispassionate and rigorously scholarly study of intelligence and class structure, written by the late Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, was published in 1994, outrage from the politically correct was immediate. [...] This book was, in other words, forbidden knowledge and the taboo was being enforced by random affluent progressives, because among other topics, it discussed the indisputable fact that IQ varies in statistically significant degree by race, and it examined the various explanations for why that might be the case.  The position of [...] almost the entire left-leaning segment of the public and the chattering class was that such questions must not even be asked.

The 13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments On College Campuses In 2015.  It seems like 2015 has just been so full of examples of extreme political correctness on college campuses that it might be easy to forget just how full of them it's been.

The Most Rapidly Declining Culture in Modern History.  In a reversal of the early America that set the world ablaze with her record-breaking growth of freedom and prosperity, today our nation is experiencing the most rapid decline of any culture in modern history.  Political correctness now silences conversations that were commonplace just 10 years ago.  Law enforcement can arrest and even imprison people for so-called "hate speech" in the very country that prides itself on a foundational first amendment.  Christianity, the genesis of our societal, legal and educational structures, today is restricted in its application and confined to designated public rooms and private homes.

Political Correctness: Do We Have What It Takes To Reverse Course?  Every day, statements that people make are being grossly exaggerated, taken out of context, misinterpreted, and/or deemed offensive or otherwise unacceptable.  More and more words and phrases are being declared off-limits by "leaders" we don't trust and certainly don't agree with.  PC in its many forms has become a preferred tool with which the powerful elite manipulate and control public perception.  Mass media, political sycophants, and gullible ideologues have enthusiastically joined in the game.  Specific examples are unnecessary here.  If we're honest and paying attention, each of us can easily observe dozens of examples each week.

Army Officer Delivers Deliciously Scathing Rant On Liberals, Political Correctness.  Like many Americans, Jordan Thompson is fed up with the ever-extending shadow of political correctness that's currently smothering the nation.  The U.S. Army officer and University of Alabama graduate posted a long rant to Facebook Tuesday evening — blasting the Confederate Flag debate, food stamps and everything in-between — and while Thompson undoubtedly posted the message in an emotional state, I think he's really on to something: [...]

Political correctness Shreds the Constitution.  To borrow a catchphrase from a famous American leader who claims Orwellian transparency but practices its opposite, "Let me [actually] be clear":  modern-day "political correctness" is word-burning censorship, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Placed number one for good reason, the First Amendment specifically "prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech[.]"  Known colloquially as "PC," this pervasive cancer forms the basis of the assault on the expression of religious freedom, which specifically targets Christian businesses, first in Arizona and now in Indiana.

Academic Fascism.  Faculty leaders of the University of California consider certain statements racism and feel they should not be used in class.  They call it micro-aggression.  To them, micro-aggressive racist statements are:  "America is the land of opportunity."  That is seen as perpetuating the myth of meritocracy.  "There is only one race, the human race."  Such a statement is seen as denying the individual as a racial/cultural being.  "I believe the most qualified person should get the job."  That's "racist" because it gives the impression that "people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race."  These expressions don't exhaust the list of micro-aggressions.

Feds to Stop Calling Midget Raisins 'Midget'.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a regulation on Thursday [8/20/2015] to stop referring to midget raisins as "midget" after an activist group called the term offensive.  The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) issued the proposed rule, announcing the U.S. "Standards for Grades of Processed Raisins" would eliminate all five times the word midget is used.  Midget has long been used to describe the differences in sizes of California raisins.

The War on the Culture War.  The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision mandating same-sex "marriage" nationwide is being heralded as the decisive blow in the nation's Culture War.  It is proof, pundits say, that Christianity is in decline and the massive reaction to the sexual revolution of the sixties has failed. [...] But is the Culture War over?  Every war must have a winner and a loser.  It is usually the loser that declares the war is over by surrendering.  This is a very strange situation where the supposed victor is declaring the war over without the consent of the vanquished.  In fact, most social conservatives are responding undaunted by noting that they have weathered many storms and are prepared to continue the fight after the devastating decision.  Thus, the court's decision does not mark the end of the war, but rather serves as an occasion to declare a war on the Culture War.

Political correctness can easily put you out of a job.
Man fired over anti-gay posting sues Ford, job firm.  A contract engineer is suing his employer, as well as Ford, for discrimination after losing an automotive design job because he posted comments criticizing the automaker's support of the gay community.  Thomas Banks of Ypsilanti filed a federal lawsuit against Rapid Global Business Solutions, an engineering and employment service in Troy, and Ford, where he had been on assignment at a Dearborn plant for more than three years.

The Left Realizes Too Late that Political Correctness Is a Virus.  It is enormous fun for conservatives to write long essays that rail against and mock the scourge of "political correctness," and yet, as I am coming to learn, it is also a monumental waste of our time.  As a genuine "liberal" in the classical sense of the word, I have no particular objections if people wish to descend into surrealism and intolerance.  But I am under no obligation to indulge them either.

The Seven Sacraments of Liberalism.  [#4] Political Correctness:  A new way of life requires not only a pure diet but also a purity of language.  Nothing that is spoken should offend anyone.  It is best to be silent because silence cannot be offensive.

A Terrorist's Best Friend: Political Correctness.  Here in America and across the landscape of Europe, political correctness has become the greatest obstacle to free speech, forcing a civilized public to acquiesce to evil.  It simply rebuffs open debate. [...] Created and used like a sledgehammer by political forces and the courts, this high-caliber weapon weakens and debilitates free societies.  Political correctness is not designed to protect the everyday people plowing the fields of normal and law-abiding lives; it is used to stifle speech and through intimidation, silence it.

Reality vs. Political Correctness: Amnesty and the Fight for America's Soul.  Dr. Ben Carson once made the observation that "political correctness" acts as a "muzzle" to quell legitimate dissent against the status quo.  That is undoubtedly a true statement.  But to drive in the stakes and build our intellectual ramparts on this point is little more than ceding coveted ground in an argument against a completely unfounded doctrine that presents falsehoods as facts.  There is a more fundamental observation upon which we can mount our legitimate defense against the doctrine of "political correctness," and it lies in the simplest inspection of the phrase "politically correct."  Inherent in those two words' juxtaposition is a certain insidiousness and intellectual dishonesty.

Political Correctness Is Cultural Marxism.  PC is, in concept, similar to Marxism, but its focus is upon culture, rather than economics, as the class struggle environment.  PC, just like Marxism, forces people to live a lie by denying reality.  PC takes a political philosophy and says that on the basis of the chosen philosophy, certain things must be true, and reality that contradicts its "truth" must be forbidden — eradicated since it disputes PC, exposes as untrue what PC says is true.

Caltrans policy stymies a proposed veterans monument.  Since losing a lawsuit in 2003, Caltrans doesn't allow flags or 'messages' on land it owns — not even American flags.  That's a problem for Santa Barbara County residents trying to put up a monument.

The Endgame for the Destruction of the United States.  Today we live in a world where people are afraid to discuss issues of importance due to a concern that they might say something wrong.  We have a society where people can be condemned for being on the wrong side of an issue, especially if you're in a position where you could be labeled as a racist or an individual who has no sensitivity towards those who are in some way in need.

The Left's militant, proactive intolerance.  I must admit I've never watched "Duck Dynasty," but this brouhaha over A&E's suspension of the show's star, Phil Robertson, for his remarks on homosexual behavior in an interview with GQ has little to do with "gay" issues and everything to do with thought and speech control — and the left's intolerance.

The PC Lynching of Phil Robertson.  The A&E Network's suspension of Phil Robertson, star of the most popular reality show in the history of television, for espousing views on homosexuality identical to those found in the New Testament may not be the first PC lynching in the history of our country, but it is certainly now the most prominent.  It is also a singular example of how political correctness, via cultural relativism, is used to undermine democracy and freedom of speech and is, at its core, fascistic.

The New Blacklist.  I'm sorry to arrive late to this controversy — explanation forthcoming in a later posting — but my impression is that the word "blacklist" has not been mentioned much in the debate over the Robertson family, GLAAD, and the A&E channel.  Or if it has been mentioned, it certainly hasn't had the central role that it should have had in this row.  For what GLAAD has been operating is a classic blacklist operation.

Political Correctness Run Amok.  The Office for Civil Rights in Seattle, a Fox News report informed us last week, instructed city workers about no longer using terms that some people in Seattle might deem offensive.  I wondered when first reading this if they were talking about scores of white employees using the N word.  No, that's not it.  The words they are complaining about include the following:  "citizens" and "brown-bag lunch."  Not to be outdone, New York City's Department of Education warned about such dangerous words as "dinosaurs," "birthdays," and, last but not least, "Halloween."

"Brown bag" controversy reveals chink in the armor of language police.  I tend to make light of the language police when it comes to the Saturday Night Card Game, but it's actually a very serious subject.  The incessant attempt to turn race-neutral phrases into racial testing grounds is part of a larger political war in which race agitators seek to turn everything into a discussion of race all the time in every sphere of life.

Seattle bans words 'citizen' and 'brown bag'.  A memo which was circulated within local government in Washington state, before being leaked to local TV station KOMO News, advised state workers that they should refrain from using such phrases in official business.  According to the memo, the word 'citizen' is offensive to those Seattlelites who are residents in the city, but not US citizens.

Seattle officials call for ban on 'potentially offensive' language.  Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions.  KOMO-TV reports that the city's Office of Civil Rights instructed city workers in a recent internal memo to avoid using the words because some may find them offensive.

Which political party is notorious for offensive language?

The Politically Incorrect History of Rodeo Clowns.  As Charlie Spiering points out over at the Washington Examiner, this is hardly the first time rodeo clowns have parodied a president — he quotes a 1994 Philadelphia Inquirer article that tells of the destruction of a George H. W. Bush dummy at a rodeo in Woodstown, N.J.  The Missouri State Fair isn't the first time that President Obama has been parodied in a rodeo, either.

Homosexuals Get Duck Dy-Nasty.  "Tolerance," as it has been marketed, was always a con. [...] For one thing, tolerance always implies a negative, real or perceived; you wouldn't have to tolerate a beautiful car or a delectable meal — you relish those things.  But you might have to tolerate a cold or bad weather.  Thus, tolerance is only noble in two situations:  One is when dealing with something objectively negative that cannot be eliminated, such as irremediable pain.  The other is when confronted with something you don't happen to like and could avoid, but that is objectively good or neutral; an example would be tolerating a food you detest in order to avoid offending your hosts.

Encouraging Lessons from the "Duck Dynasty" Imbroglio.  The politically correct left has built a culture and network of intimidation against all who refuse to accept their views and especially those who are vocal in standing their ground.  Among the encouraging lessons from this brouhaha are that people are waking up to the tyranny of uncompromising leftist groups and realizing that they don't have to cower before them and cave to their bullying demands.  We're seeing that courageous individuals, secure in their beliefs, can make a difference and by speaking out motivate like-minded people to stand up and fight back.

The Namby-Pamby State.  Much has been written about the hypertrophic growth of the nanny state and its unremitting assault on the dignity and independence of the responsible individual citizen.  Its ill effects are seen everywhere in the devitalized West as an increasing number of people, approaching critical mass, have come to rely on government welfare and special entitlements while progressively abiding by the dictates of political correctness. [...] Everyone is empowered.  Indolence is a right.  No one must be offended (except capitalists, Christians, and white males).

It's Come to This: Hugs Banned at Maryland Schools.  Some people say California is the most liberal, progressive state in the country but I beg to differ.  Maryland is far worse and its newly implemented ban on hugging and passing out birthday invitations at schools (so people don't get their feelings hurt) has just proved my point.

USDA staff taught that the pilgrims were 'illegal aliens' in compulsory 'Cultural Sensitivity Training' video.  The USDA is under fire for spending $200,000 of taxpayers money on a mandatory 'Cultural Sensitivity Training' program in which employees were told to refer to the Pilgrims as 'illegal aliens' and minorities as 'emerging majorities'.

Builders forced to stop construction until 'sexist' Men Working signs removed.  A construction crew was forced to remove their 'Men Working' sign at a community college in Ohio after it was described as 'sexist and non-inclusive.'  The builders were also made to stop working until the sign was removed.  A college administrator complained about the wording at Sinclair Community College in downtown Dayton.

The Editor says...
Were there any women working at the site, or do the administrators feel it is necessary to be "inclusive" on those signs no matter who's doing the work?

Pickle company agrees to drop 'midget'.  A U.S. pickle maker says it has agreed to stop calling a variety of small pickles "midgets" following a complaint by a Rhode Island woman.

U.S. Pays $1.5 Mil to Preserve Politically Correct Graffiti.  Because it's considered defacement and vandalism, graffiti is a crime yet the U.S. government has spent $1.5 million to actually preserve some left during the hostile Indian occupation of California's Alcatraz Island more than four decades go.  Why is Indian graffiti worth preserving when local governments across the nation spend tens of millions of dollars to remove it annually?  Because, evidently, this is politically correct graffiti that has a "social significance," according to a National Park Service official quoted in a San Francisco newspaper.

Too Many Fish And Not Enough Fishers.  While unlimited t-ball strikes and curving grades so everybody can pass may seem like a kind and humane thing to do, it does absolutely nothing to prepare children for the competition of the real world where the fittest go the farthest and the also-rans head into a one way street of mediocrity where they'll spend their lives never understanding why the other guy got the promotion.

Obama Has Earned Next To Nothing In Life.  In many ways, Mr. Obama is the poster child for the young unchallenged and unproven wimps being created by the liberal nanny-state.  Political correctness now orders that there are unlimited strikes in T-ball.  No one can keep score.  That everyone gets a trophy.  That no one can be disciplined, called any names, or be held accountable for errors.  Ever.  In this totally untethered from reality politically correct world, one never has to earn anything and experience does not matter.

Threats of PC excesses.  It may be political but it is certainly not correct.  It doesn't hit suddenly but spreads like a malignant tumor.  Once metastasized in society's body and soul, the results can be devastating.  Among the various ingredients of PC are herd-instinct, mindlessness, hypocrisy, sanctimony and willingness to embrace group thinking.  It is impossible to determine what or who sets the PC agenda, but it keeps changing.  These days it includes glorifying illegal immigration, promoting radical gay-rights issues and targeting various "phobias" that pop up in the PC dictionary. [...] The PC phenomenon deserves attention.  While currently not imposed by decree or enforced by government, it spreads through acceptance and compliance.  It is the kind of voluntary participation that led people to some of the worst crimes of the 20th century.

Bad news for Barack Obama — the culture war is back.  On August 17, 1992, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan gave a speech to the Republican National Convention in which he declared, "There is a religious war going on in this country.  It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself.  For this war is for the soul of America."

Political correctness is perpetuating America's demise.  There is an all-pervading problem going unnoticed by many in the United States.  Although wasteful spending, big government policies, and corruption have exhausted and equally crippled our economy, this problem poses a greater threat to our livelihood.  That problem is political correctness.  A recent Rasmussen Report poll revealed that 79 percent of Americans think political correctness is problematic in America.

TSA Circus Reveals Dangers of Marxist PC Security Rules.  This article shall briefly examine the history of Marxist Political Correctness as well as to the larger problem of liberal ideology and its pernicious affects upon America.  More specifically the issue is leftist refusal to accept the Tragic Vision of life as presented by the classical and biblical world view which the founders of our culture originally envisioned.

Thank you for not warning me about smoking.  Occupying a middle ground between Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty is what we libertarians call the Nanny State.  The Nanny State is the national bossypants, always telling us what not to do.  Don't smoke.  Don't eat so much.  Don't drink.  Where are you going on that bicycle?  Put on your helmet — now!  A few decades ago, Nanny, not content with merely snatching the Marlboros and Twinkies and soda pops from our little hands, decided that she should also be in charge of the national sense of humor, a phenomenon that became known as Political Correctness.

News items yet to be categorized:

100 Facts About The Moral Collapse Of America That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe.  Most people tend to believe that we can "fix this country" by getting the right politicians into power or by implementing certain economic or social reforms.  But the reality of the matter is that our problems go far deeper than that.  A moral collapse is eating away at the foundations of our society like cancer.  If it continues to go unchecked, it will inevitably destroy America.  Unfortunately, fixing moral decay is far more difficult than switching out political parties, because it is in the hearts of hundreds of millions of individual Americans.  And most people don't want to hear anything about a "moral collapse", because most people like to think that the United States is setting a "good example" for the rest of the planet.  But as you will see below, that is not the case at all.  And if we are honest with ourselves, we see the evidence of this moral collapse all around us every day.

State Department Will Issue 'Female' Passports to Anatomical Males.  The U.S. State Department's policy on dealing with transgendered people will allow Americans who are anatomically male but identify themselves as female to secure U.S. passports that match their gender "identity" rather than their anatomy.  The policy also allows records for births abroad to be changed to reflect the "new" gender of an individual.

'Jesus Christ' Banned from Council Prayers.  The mayor of a Washington town has directed pastors to stop invoking the name "Jesus Christ" in city council invocations.  Don Jensen, the mayor of Longview, Wash., told the Kelso-Longview Ministerial Association that prayers mentioning Christ were not acceptable because they could expose the city to a lawsuit.  The decision has sparked controversy in the city — located about 50 miles north of Portland, Oregon.

Forget Transgender, Get Ready for Transpecies.  Species dysphoria is the equivalent of Gender dysphoria.  Mentally ill persons with gender dysphoria are fashionably diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder.  There is as of yet no Species Identity Disorder, but that is no doubt coming.  Like Trannies, Transpecies Americans create special pronouns for themselves and insist that refusing to pretend that they're cats or wolves is a hate crime.

British Court Convicts Woman of Racism for Calling Woman from New Zealand "Australian".  Australian is now a racial slur in the UK.  This bout of politically correct insanity has been brought to you by the left.

British: Don't Say 'Obese'.  The British government wants health care workers to stop using the word 'obese' because it might offend fat people, according to new recommendations sent to local communities.

5 Reasons America Is In Decline.  [#1]  A Moral Slide:  We have fetishized diversity, tolerance, compassion, and niceness so much that those traits practically make up the core of a left-wing pseudo-religion because they're among the very few areas where we've morally surpassed previous generations of Americans.  However, it's worth asking how you think modern Americans compare to previous generations on traits like charity, chastity, duty, Godliness, honesty, honor, industriousness, respect for authority, work ethic, and self-reliance.

Disgraced pol embodies values Democrats have embedded in American culture.  Democrats are willing to sacrifice ruthlessly one of their rising stars to serve a larger objective — retaining their grip on power.  Yet, for decades, it has been liberals who have pushed for condoms to be distributed to high school kids, homosexuality and bisexuality to be taught in schools, the murder of unborn infants to be tolerated, and pornography and permissiveness to be accepted as part of the mainstream.  The result has been a coarsening of our culture, the breakdown of the family and the disintegration of a moral consensus.  Mr. Weiner is simply a product of modern liberalism — self-absorbed narcissism combined with an obsession for sexual gratification.

The Tyranny of the Minority.  We have lost nativity scenes in cities across America because one citizen of one city doesn't like Christmas.  We have lost freedom of religious expression in our public school system because a student here or there is bothered when people pray.  We have lost crosses on many of our war memorials because atheists want to shield their children from religious exposure.  And we are poised to lose even more freedoms if we don't stop this scourge before it sweeps across our land and our intellectual landscape completely.

Political Correctness and the Thought Police.  My earliest memories of this social cancer in its earliest stages was when I was admonished by one of my law school professors that airline stewardesses and stewards were properly called "flight attendants."  Shortly thereafter, I recall being admonished for referring to African-Americans as "blacks."  Indians became Native Americans.  The crippled became disabled, midgets became little people, and the retarded became mentally ill. ... The year 2010 A.D. has become 2010 C.E. and "bias guidelines" now govern what will be in our children's textbooks.

Political Correctness:  The 21st Century Bully.  You may recall the early Charles Atlas advertisements.  The typical scenario presented a skinny young man (usually accompanied by a female companion) being threatened by a bully.  The bully pushes down the "97-pound weakling" and the girlfriend joins in the derision. ... Political correctness has now become that bully, except no one is fighting back!  PC is everywhere:  on tv, in magazines, in movies, and in just about every aspect of our lives.  I've no respect whatsoever for the wimps that cringe in fear because of it.

The new barbarians:  The central principle of multiculturalism is that all cultures are equal and should be equally celebrated.  To say that all cultures are equal is also to necessarily say that all cultural practices are equal, thereby revealing the moral relativism at the heart of the multicultural project.  That has, of course, always been the problem with such thinking.  It leads to a moral dead end in which it is impossible to say that anything is actually bad because nothing can be worse than anything else (except for Western culture, which is inherently oppressive).

5 Reasons Why Moral Relativism Makes No Sense.  I myself have never met a real, down to the bone and all the way into the marrow moral relativist, and their very rarity is our first sure sign of why moral relativism makes no sense.

The Tyranny of Political Correctness:  Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s.  It was a spontaneous declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behavior, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished.  It started with a few voices but grew in popularity until it became unwritten and written law within the community.  With those who were publicly declared as being not politically correct becoming the object of persecution by the mob.

Politically Correct Terrorism, and the Invincible Ignorance of the Left.  Political Correctness (PC) seeks to impose a uniformity of thought, word, and behavior on all Americans.  It is Marxist in its roots, stifling in its influence, and destructive in its effects.  It is diametrically opposed to the traditional American values of free speech, free thought, and freedom itself.  As G.K. Chesterton noted years ago, "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."

Publishing Company Under Fire for Putting Warning Label on Constitution.  A small publishing company is under fire after putting warning labels on copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other historical documents.  Wilder Publications warns readers of its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, among others, that "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today."

Publisher's Warning Label on the Constitution.  A Virginia-based publisher has decided that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other founding books are likely offensive and they want their readers to understand that these old documents are no longer valid ways of thinking.  And so the publisher, Wilder Publications, has put a warning label on its reprints of America's founding documents and books to shield American's delicate sensibilities.

The Editor says...
The same is true of the Bible.  Wilder Publications would probably put a warning label on that, too.

Ft. Hood Killer at Work in Annapolis.  Political correctness was responsible for the death of thirteen people at Ft. Hood.  Of this I am certain.  I have watched political correctness at work in the military for more than three decades while serving in two different military branches.  I may not have seen it all but, I have seen quite a bit of it.  Aside from academia and the civilian government workforce, there is no place else in America where political correctness is as rampant as military.  The rules of political correctness are not listed in military regulations.  It is like knowing where to find the chow hall.  Everyone just knows.

Law vs. Moral Values.  Behavior accepted as the norm today would have been seen as despicable yesteryear.  There are television debt relief advertisements that promise to help debtors to pay back only half of what they owe.  Foul language is spoken by children in front of and sometimes to teachers and other adults. ... Baby showers are held for unwed mothers.  Yesteryear, such an acceptance of illegitimacy would have been unthinkable. ... Years ago, a young lady who allowed a guy to have his hand in her rear pocket as they strolled down the street would have been seen as a slut.  Children addressing adults by first names was unacceptable.

PC sickness claims another victim.  Until last week, [Allen] Zaruba was an adjunct professor of art at Towson University in Baltimore County.  Officials at the state university fired Zaruba for making what some news stories called a "racial remark" in class.  So successful have the PC hellhounds been at keeping rational discourse at bay that some of those news stories couldn't even tell readers or viewers what the "racial remark" was.  That's how intimidated television news directors and newspaper editors are.

How the Academic Left Elected Obama:  [Today's] youth live and learn on college campuses where "diversity" and "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" — bogus buzzwords that apply only to ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity, not genuine diversity of ideas — reign supreme.  Racial diversity is at the crux of this academic trinity, the source and summit of the faith.  It is the molten, golden calf, where much of the intelligentsia and their disciples gather to worship.  Political correctness has supplanted traditional religion.  Thus, when the university community was presented with Barack Obama, a charismatic, impressive, seemingly excellent Democratic presidential candidate — who happened to be African-American — the reaction was nearly reverential, bordering on idolatry.

The Price of Political Correctness.  "Silence is the virtue of fools," Sir Francis Bacon once said.  Instead of silence, today Bacon would be referring to a mindless politeness on what can and cannot be spoken in the public arena.  We call it political correctness.  Yet silence and political correctness may be luxuries we cannot afford if we wish to maintain the way of life this country has known since the founding.

Opposing the Fairness Doctrine with a Real Fairness Doctrine:  When outlets like talk radio are successfully attacked, the tools to end the encroaching tyranny upon free dialogue, independent thought and the right to be contrarian will be distracted and weakened.  That is the goal. … When the scattered voices of dissent are cowed or crushed, then minds which do not know they live in prisons will find escape and freedom harder and harder, until it is impossible.  That is the grim lesson of George Orwell, whose dystopian fantasy, 1984, seems less fanciful each year.

Making fun of faith.  Even though they may remind you immediately of the worst racists you have known, bigoted bashers of religion often get away with it no matter how shallow, uncomprehending, unfair, overly generalizing, nasty-minded or obviously hostile their attitudes are.

Black-Hole Speech:  There's something to be said for ignoring the childish grievance-peddling that motivates so much of this nonsense.  But the simple fact is that ignoring political correctness has done remarkably little to combat it.  Meanwhile, people who make a big deal about it are often cast as the disgruntled obsessive ones.

We live in the land of the easily offended.
Now they're editors!  The PC police have flash-banged through another door.  The linguistically delicate have swooned and pert-near fainted over a congresswoman's use of the term — close your ears — Tar Baby.  They are shocked — shocked!  Because none other than a U.S. representative from North Carolina, Virginia Foxx, actually used the now forbidden phrase on the floor of the House last Wednesday.  Oh, the horror of it!

The sham of sex harassment training:  I am a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at UC Irvine, and I have consistently refused, on principle, to participate in the sexual harassment training that the state and my employers seem to think is so important. ... Why not simply take the training and be done with it?  There are several reasons.  First of all, I believe the training is a disgraceful sham.  As far as I can tell from my colleagues, it is worthless, a childish piece of theater, an insult to anyone with a respectable IQ, primarily designed to relieve the university of liability in the case of lawsuits.  I have not been shown any evidence that this training will discourage a harasser or aid in alerting the faculty to the presence of harassment.

Culture War:  We are no longer one nation under God.  We are two separate nations with two distinct and incompatible moral visions.  As societal values have eroded over the past four decades, not only were the valid concerns of Christians ignored but their growing political involvement was viciously attacked.  It was as if only other groups, such as Jews, union members or racial minorities were allowed to organize themselves to further their own group interest by democratic process.

Excellent:
The Centrality of Culture.  Today, what was called the "counter-culture" in the 1960s now controls almost every cultural venue:  the entertainment industry (which is now the most powerful force in our culture), the government schools, the media, even many churches.  The ideology usually know as "Political Correctness," which is really the cultural Marxism of the infamous Frankfurt School, is using every type of cultural institution in our country to achieve its purpose, which is the destruction of traditional Western culture and the Christian religion.

The Origins of Political Correctness:  For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think.  They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.  We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been the case.  And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they would be afraid of what words they used.  But we now have this situation in this country.

What Is Political Correctness?  Political Correctness (PC) is the communal tyranny that erupted in the 1980s.  It was a spontaneous declaration that particular ideas, expressions and behaviour, which were then legal, should be forbidden by law, and people who transgressed should be punished.  It started with a few voices but grew in popularity until it became unwritten and written law within the community.  With those who were publicly declared as being not politically correct becoming the object of persecution by the mob, if not prosecution by the state.

The Myth of Moral Equivalency.  There was a time not all that long ago when most of us agreed about what constituted good and evil.  But that time, I'm afraid, has come and gone and is now as passé as five cent cigars and 45 cents-a-gallon gasoline.  Our former sense of morality hasn't been replaced by immorality, at least not entirely, but by something that's probably more dangerous because it comes cleverly disguised as broad-mindedness.

The right not to be offended?  It's a discredit to our national confidence that each time some impolite thought — perceived or otherwise — is uttered, sketched or typed, a faction of professionally offended Americans engage in a collective hyper-sensitivity meltdown.  It has been a long-standing custom for opponents to shut down debate by tagging an adversary with some dreadful label.  No one wants to be called a racist, a commie or a neocon.

The Real Threat of Censorship:  [Scroll down]  More frighteningly, speech codes and the very term "politically incorrect" have been formally adopted by college administrations as the proper way to speak, to write, and to think.  Coercion, not persuasion, has become the preferred means of advancing Leftism.  Why then should we be so surprised that partisans in political campaigns now find the Left menacing them for politically incorrect versions of truth?

Spare The Rod, Destroy America.  The total lack of respect among some of the young punks roaming the streets of America is absolutely appalling.  They have no respect for their teachers, parents, law enforcement, neighbors, America, the rule of law, any authority or themselves.  Some punks have no respect for your life or their own pathetic lives, and that makes them extremely dangerous.  Rarely does a week go by that I don't read an article or hear of a teacher being attacked by one of these vicious punks in our schools.

The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost.  Perhaps you think the problems causing the market meltdown are economic and financial in nature.  If so, think again.  Such problems are mere symptoms of the malady.  The root causes are moral and ethical in nature.  For decades, secularists in America scoffed at religion and her offspring, morality and ethics.  They removed religion from the realm of "truth" and reduced it to mere "opinion."  Truth was limited to that which could be objectified, quantified, and verified.  Since that could not be accomplished with religion (at least on this side of eternity), "religious truth" was deemed an oxymoron.  Absolutes were out, relativism was in.  Morals became "relative" and ethics became "situational."  Virtue was rejected as an antiquated notion.  Results were all that mattered.  These ideas began to permeate society, including Wall Street.  And since ideas have consequences, they began to influence the way business was conducted on the Street.

Our Culture, What's Left Of It.  Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small.  In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.  When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.  To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself.  One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.  A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.  I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Dismantling America: Part IV.  How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?  Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington.  What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.

When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place.  Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far less free to speak naturally.  Every word, gesture and look, even one's illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation.

When America was God's Country.  If only we had the values of the 1960s when Mothers, Fathers, Grandmas and Grandpas shared stories and words of wisdom with their children.  The young folks were encouraged to live more constructive and fruitful lives by avoiding cigarettes, alcohol and drugs and obeying the laws of God — that are the Ten Commandments and the laws of man. ... When I was growing up, no one quoted former Communist or Socialist leaders.  Americans quoted from great men like:  George Washington, Sir Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee.

Pirates and the Politically Correct.  When a crude replica of a pirate ship was erected in memory of the late Princess Diana at a children's playground in Kensington Gardens, commemorating Peter Pan's duels with the wicked Captain Hook, officialdom decreed that it should be purged of violent imagery such as cannon, walking the plank, and skull-and-crossbones flag. ... Recently the skull-and-crossbones flag has also been banned from being flown in the gardens of suburban houses hosting pirate parties on the grounds that it is unneighborly.

Christians haven't got a prayer in 'diversity' Britain.  Nurse Caroline Petrie has been suspended and could even be struck off.  What was her offence?  Did she turn up drunk?  Did she dispense the wrong medicine or forget to empty a bedpan?  Was she knocking out prescription drugs to the local pusher?  Perhaps she was guilty of neglect, of deliberate cruelty, or of practising a bit of freelance euthanasia.  No.  Her 'crime' was to offer to say a prayer for one old lady on the ward.  It's what we used to call an act of Christian charity.

The Toxic Tube Made Them Do It.  Kids today spend more time with media than they do anything else except sleep, according to a 2005 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.  Consider this snapshot:  83 percent of children under 6 years old use some form of screen media, spending 2 hours a day with a television and DVD player, 1 hour with video games, and 50 minutes with a computer.  They watch 4,000 hours of TV before they enter kindergarten.  They are exposed to 20 to 25 acts of violence per hour on Saturday morning TV programs intended for children.

Did someone mention television?

Now You Tell Us.  The advocates of contraception have finally admitted in public what some of us have known for a while:  The Pill doesn't work very well. … The experts don't seem to consider a major alternative:  we could encourage teenagers to take sex and child-bearing seriously.  Our culture actively promotes sex as a recreational activity.  We come up with more aggressive and intrusive forms of contraception, because we can't bring ourselves to tell teenagers that they should take sex seriously.

The Slippery Slope is Real (and Real Slippery).  Most conservatives I hear from are upset about the inch-by-inch ground we give up on traditional values.  The end result isn't a ball of fire; instead we wake up in a foggy, swampy mess of concessions that really does impact society. … Frankly, we don't need to prove a downward slope.  The left has done it for us.

America's Culture War:  Believe it not, America is in the midst of its most dangerous Culture War.  This Culture War could virtually destroy America as a nation without any military action from a foreign nation or a terrorist group.  However, the actual cost in lives and money could very well surpass all the wars that America has fought.  In fact, based on the outcome of this war, America could possibly lose its recognition as the most powerful nation in the world.

Speak up now, or lose your voice forever.  There's no doubt that people who think marriage is something that takes place between a man and a woman, people who trust and admire the U.S. military, people who believe the Bible — all these people are considered by today's mainstream media and the left wing which it serves to be freakish Neanderthals.  They may not be locked up — yet — but they are ostracized and minimized, pointed at and laughed at like animals in a zoo.

The War on Common Sense:  College students are not the only persons whom the Left is affecting with its war on common sense.  Our society as a whole seems to have accepted the mental framework which holds as a maxim the idea that we are not allowed to know what we know; rather, we are only allowed to know what we are told.  As a result of this, although common, decent, everyday people see their beloved culture eroding and intuitively sense that something is not right, they dare not declare that this downward cultural slide is wrong.

Minorities Should Express Shame, Not Only Pride.  Gay Pride.  Jewish Pride.  Black pride.  Hispanic Pride.  Multiculturalism.  Ethnic pride.  Minority rights vs. tyranny of the majority.  For a generation, America has been awash in the celebration of minorities and minorities celebration of themselves.  Just recall Black is Beautiful or I am a woman, I am invincible.  At the same time, the majority group in America — white Christians — has been allowed to celebrate very little.  Rather, they have constantly been reminded of what they should be ashamed of — their racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, and xenophobia — real and alleged.  But what about minority shame?

Government bans the word 'obese' to describe overweight children.  Parents of primary school children will start getting letters in September telling them how fat their children are.  But however much they weigh, no child will ever be described as obese.  The Department of Health has found in surveys that the term obese is a turn-off, so instead will use the term "very overweight" for those children whose body mass index exceeds 30, in an attempt to enlist parents' support.

This might be where we are headed.
Japan's 'monster' parents take centre stage.  The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White.  For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch was a triumph:  a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of "Monster Parents".  For they had taken on the system and won.  After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one girl to play the title role.

No More Jihadists.  The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. government is moving to kill off jihadists, Islamo-fascists, and mujahedeen.  Not the people:  the words.  Reports from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center recommend discontinuing the use of such terms, because, as the AP report says, "Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates." … If we eschew these words, what how are we supposed to refer to our enemies?

Flying Blind in the War on Terror:  Imagine that following the bombing of Peal Harbor in December 1941, that FDR had prohibiting the use of the terms "Nazi" or "Japanese Imperialism" due to pressure brought to bear by German and Japanese-American lobbying groups.  Or at the height of the Cold War that the US government had determined to ban the use of "Soviet" or "communism" for fear of offending the sensibilities of Russian-Americans or European socialists.  Yet that is precisely what has happened following the revelation last week by the Associated Press that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security has issued guidelines banning the use of "jihad", "mujahedeen" and other Islamic terminology with reference to Islamic terrorism.  This move lays bare the ideological prison house of political correctness in which our top policymaker's reside.

The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism:  Having rejected God and the religious heritage of our civilization, [liberals] embrace instead a new order of beliefs of which Communism and Socialism are logical expressions.  A new world order is what they seek, but in order that it can emerge, the existing culture must be completely destroyed.

Perils of global warnings:  They've finally gotten what they've asked for and it isn't pretty.  The activist groups, plaintiff's bar, and complicit legislators have created an environment where "Sesame Street" is deemed inappropriate for children … Yes, you read that right.  With Oscar the Grouch's untreated depression and Cookie Monster gorging toward diabetes, it was feared children might get the wrong message.  The warning label must have been brought to you by the letter "A" — as in "absurd."

Americans see media aiding moral decline.  Most Americans think culture is becoming more immoral, and they view the media — both entertainment and news — as prime culprits, according to a new survey.

Tolerance as a tool for transformation:  Throughout history, "tolerance" has meant different things to different people.  A century ago, most Americans would have defined it as civility toward disagreeable persons, not as acceptance of contrary views.  In contrast, today's "tolerance" demands acceptance of politically correct views but intolerance toward those who prefer "traditional" values.  While media leaders feel free to mock Christians, believers are losing their freedom to state their convictions.  After all, they might hurt someone's feelings.

Why the Right Has Been Losing for 40 Years.  A war began 40 years ago, but the Right chose to ignore it.  They refused to fight in the streets of America, which had become the frontlines of this war.  They believed that they were on the side of right, and that right would always win.  They forgot the most crucial thing of all:  truth and right need vigilant and never ceasing defense, lest they be overthrown by lies and wrong.  That pretty much sums up the past 40 years.

Dallas judge rules silence is secular.  A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law.

Robbing Peter to pay for the appalling.  [In 2005] the 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that members of a Christian employees group for the city of Oakland could not use words like "marriage," "natural family" or "family values" in e-mail correspondence or on posters in city offices where a wide variety of groups are allowed to post.  The panel decided that such words were hate speech because they made homosexual city employees uncomfortable.

Sense in a Senseless Media World.  As usual, the magazine racks in the salon I frequent are filled with rot — just like those at the doctor's office, the dentist, and the grocery store check-out display.  Publishers obviously think that millions of American women will automatically reach for and read garbage when we're bored — which would be insulting if it weren't true.

Breathing while white:  The story branded as having all the elements of a great tale — sex, race, class, privilege, as well as town-gown issues at an elite university in the South — has everything but the truth, which also includes this:  White males — descendant as they are of the imperialistic, colonizing, native-raping patriarchy — are the new culturally approved targets of the lynch mob.

Keep 'America' in Michigan schools.  Censoring the word "America" from our own schools is something Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would never have thought possible.  Michigan has done it without a whimper.  In perhaps a well-intentioned, but pernicious example of political correctness, the Michigan Department of Education is attempting to ban the "America" and "American" from our public schools.

Cultural House of Cards:  From an historical perspective we are living in a house of cards. … Once a country's culture goes, everything else goes too, sooner or later.

Take off the muzzle.  These days, there's very little you can't do on television.  However, there are plenty of things that you can't say, on television or in print.  Not because these things aren't true, but because they're considered politically incorrect.

A turning point in the culture war:  Terri Schiavo's medical condition is in dispute, she left no living will, we don't know her present wishes, and yet the courts are ordering that her husband has the right to kill her?  This outrage simply couldn't happen in a culture that considered human life sacred.

Liberal Neutrality:  Anyone who believes what the average American believed half a century ago — about the role of the courts, abortion, sexual morality, and of course Jesus Christ — is now damned as a "bigot" or "extremist" by liberal opinion.

From a Slippery Slope to an Avalanche.  For all the horror stories we've heard about euthanasia in recent years, there are still many people who think of it as "mercy killing."  Those people need to take a long, hard look at what's happening in the Netherlands right now.  It's very difficult to find anything merciful about what Dutch doctors are doing to children and infants.

Heaven for the Godless?  In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life. ... In August, Pew asked the question again.  Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life.  But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions.  The respondents essentially said all of them.

Woman minister re-appointed — as a man.  A woman who has served as minister at St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore for five years has been re-appointed to the position — as a man, according to church officials.

Choosing Your Gender and a Bathroom Based on Feelings.  When man is made the measure of all things, differences are magnified and community is dissipated — objective order is replaced by sentimentality.  The courts, under the rubric of "rights," have removed us from a world where rights arise out of what we hold in common and placed us in a world where rights are determined by how we feel.

Courting trouble.  The current battle over the future of the Supreme Court reminds us of another foe in the culture war — judges who prefer legislating from the bench to interpreting the law.  Don't think this is just a matter for legal experts, the talking heads on cable-TV news shows and our politicians in Washington.  The Supreme Court has a more profound effect on the culture war than you may realize.

Sounds like Peggy Noonan visits akdart.com frequently!
A Separate Peace:  I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. … I mean … the whole ball of wax.  Everything.  Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay.  A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall … The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. … Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority.  Do you have confidence in the CIA?  The FBI?  I didn't think so.

New book:
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.  This is serious stuff for sure.  But [Bernard] Goldberg will also make you laugh as he harpoons scoundrels like the congresswoman who thinks there aren't enough hurricanes named after black people, and the environmentalist to the stars who yells at total strangers driving SUVs — even though she tools around the country in a gas-guzzling private jet.

Katie Couric's Curious 'Patriotism'.  I've come around to the view that the culture war can best be understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism.  On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from "progress."  But, while America is certainly an idea, it's not merely an idea.  It is also a nation with a culture as real as France's or Mexico's.  That's where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness.

Lessons on How to Be Constructive, Civil and Serious.  In the early nineties Dinesh D'Souza and "political correctness" were making one another famous.  D'Souza wrote then that the most damaging thing you could say about political correctness was that it was impossible to parody:  satiric versions by people who hated it were indistinguishable from sincere renditions by people who practiced it.

Political Correctness:  The New Marxism.  Although the term "political correctness" has only been in common use since the late 1980s, it has existed in concept and practice for many decades.  Political correctness (P.C.) is a term originated by leftists describing the totality of the concepts comprising their radical ideology.  P.C. incorporates Marxism, feminism, and an occasional dash of anti-heterosexism.  It strives toward an atmosphere of sensitive oppression and instills its beliefs in the "collective mind" which it aims to help shape by punishing those who would deviate from the accepted path toward individualism.

Children's books 'are purged of risks'.  Politically-correct publishers are censoring children's books because of fears over health and safety, according to a leading author.  Lindsey Gardiner, who has written and illustrated 15 children's books, claims publishers banned youngsters from walking alone in one novel and removed sharp objects from another.

The Editor says...
What about the witchcraft in the Harry Potter books?  Does she consider that risky?

The Death of Multiculturalism?  The recent thwarted terrorist plot in England that aimed to blow up commercial airlines between Britain and the United States serves as another chilling reminder of the horror that multiculturalism has wreaked in Western Europe.

Multicultural madness:  How Western Civilization has been turned upside down in one generation.  Multiculturalism, which started on college campuses during the "cultural revolution" of the '60s, has succeeded in making America so confused, "politically correct" and "minority-sensitive" that it has all but forgotten its original, core, Judeo-Christian values.

Teaching the Constitution:  Recent generations know less about the Constitution than they do about sex or the latest cultural trend.  They know little that is immutable or infallible in this postmodern age in which everything is about feelings and promises seem to be written in disappearing ink.

Medical Pot-heads.  Those who have had an addict living with them or near them — perhaps a loved one — know exactly what I am saying here.  While 9 out of 10 drug users can smoke pot or snort cocaine and return to their normal life, one cannot.  That one becomes addicted and unlike alcohol, drugs can quickly damage brain cells and cause the addict a lifetime of mental and physical health problems that never go away.

The obscene "reality" at MTV.  It's daytime in the summer, and what are your children watching?  The odds are that it's MTV, cable's raunchiest magnet for the out-of-school crowd.

Planned Parenthood Gives Porn to Kids.  In Waco, Texas, Planned Parenthood hosted the "Nobody's Fool" conference for roughly 350 children, ranging from 5th through 9th grades.  As can be expected from the nation's leading provider of abortions, Planned Parenthood distributed copies of a sexually explicit book titled, "It's Perfectly Normal."

Ever wonder why?  There is a culture war going on within the United States — and in fact, within Western civilization as a whole — which may ultimately have as much to do with our survival, or failure to survive, as the war on terrorism.  There are all sorts of financial, ideological, and psychic rewards for undermining American society and its values.  Unless some of us realize the existence of this culture war, and the high stakes in it, we can lose what cost those Americans before us so much to win and preserve.

Media on Reagan.  The liberal-left, as represented by Rall, Hitchens, Palast and Kunst, represent the worst in America.  They are filled with hate.  They were the ones who said Reagan would lead us to nuclear war.  They are filled with artificially incited and politically motivated anger.  They are unwilling to employ even the least amount of common decency, even when death is involved.  They represent the faction in this country that not only want to blame America first but who expect us to comply with their agenda of political correctness while they reserve for themselves the right to assault whomever they believe opposes them.  They are not only misguided and incredibly wrong; they are mean.

Supreme Court sides with pornographers, again.  Do you ever wonder why the Internet is so polluted with pornography?  The Supreme Court just reminded us why:  It blocks every attempt by Congress to regulate the pornographers.  From its ivory tower, the Court props open the floodgates for smut and graphic sex.  Over the past five years, it has repeatedly found new constitutional rights for vulgarity, most recently invalidating the Child Online Protection Act.

Polygamists take their cases to the courts.  The drive for homosexual "rights" is evolving into a larger effort to "expand" marriage to include polygamy in the civil law.

Being a celebrity is the 'best thing in the world' say children.  Children under 10 think being a celebrity is the "very best thing in the world" but do not think quite as much of God, a survey has revealed. ... Here is a sample of some of the survey's results:  What do you think is the very best thing in the world?
    1. Being a Celebrity
    2. Good Looks
    3. Being Rich
    4. Being Healthy
    5. Pop Music
    6. Families
    7. Friends
    8. Nice Food
    9. Watching Films
   10. Heaven / God

A Little Too Much Reality TV.  In a documentary titled "My Foetus," England's Channel 4 showed a London doctor using the "vacuum pump" method on a woman who was four weeks pregnant — then placing the aborted fetus on a Petri dish.

Depressing "reality" show sleaze:  Who would have imagined five years ago that the fad, the rage, the phenomenon of network television would be the "reality" show?  Now that it's the 21st century, network executives are putting expensive actors and their scripts aside for average Americans trying to claw their way into their 15 minutes of fame.

TV or Not TV?  Not!  Television emerged as a mass medium in the 1950s and quickly came to occupy a key role in an orchestrated campaign to eradicate conventional middle-class morals and culture.

See this page for further criticism of television.

Turn Them Off — Turn Them All Off.  Mitch Altman's invention is called TV–B–Gone.  It fits snugly in the palm, a near-weightless lump of black plastic.  Its shape vaguely suggests the Batman logo.  A tiny diode rests on the very tip of Batman's head, between his pointy bat ears.  Press a button and from this diode a beam of invisible light escapes that can turn off any television — any television — within a radius of 45 feet.

Hacking Away at America's Heritage:  No matter what your Marxist, lesbian, long-toothed, community college history teacher sporting a bad haircut, stretch pants and stale coffee breath says, the vast majority of the founding fathers of our great nation were deeply committed Christians.

Antiheroes:  What does it say about our society that hero status now is bestowed on an 18-year-old for nothing more than having sex with a 15-year-old?  It tells us, perhaps, the same thing as when an admitted liar and plagiarist, Jayson Blair, recently received a "high six-figure" advance for writing a book detailing his deception while working as a writer for the once-highly esteemed New York Times.  It tells us that we as a society no longer have bedrock values.

Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity.  Author Allan Carlson argues that the United States has been — and remains — the most family-centered of modern nations.  Since 1900, the American identity has been shaped by carefully constructed images of the American family and the American home.

Thirty Years of Marriage on Trial:  There is a Latin phrase Ius dicere non Ius dare, which loosely translated means "interpret laws not make laws."  Just as the Hippocratic Oath is taken by doctors to remind them of their duty perhaps judges need a similar vow.

Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  The fact that our current cruddy culture is doing things that make demons blush takes no great insight for the honest person to perceive.

Morality Meltdown:  The tattered shreds of what remains of Christian civilization are under assault as never before, yet who is willing to stand in the breach against the attacking barbarian hordes?  Certainly not those who now pose as our political, moral, and spiritual leaders.

The one-sided culture war:  Undeniably, a culture war is still raging in this country, but it's not much of a war because the good guys are barely fighting back.  Is there anything that can shock the so-called majority out of its complacency?

P.C. and the Crisis of Liberalism:  Political correctness spreads, and once it arrives it stays; few like it, but no one can do anything about it.

The Perverted State Of America:  How long ago would you have scoffed at the idea of two men getting married?  Or the Supreme Court endorsing sodomy?  Or "domestic partners" enjoying the same rights and benefits as married couples?  Or network television featuring shows with gays and lesbians?

Prisoner abuse and the rot of American culture:  Should we be shocked that some Americans are capable of such barbaric behavior as depicted in the infamous photos?

If the Foundations Be Destroyed:  We find ourselves, as a nation, clashing over social issues that were once non-issues when the Bible was revered as ultimate truth by our churches, by our schools and even by our government.

Taking aim at the arms suppliers in the culture war:  Most of us value family, faith, liberty, financial opportunity, fairness and responsibility.  We take seriously the common core of ideas, the "self-evident truths" articulated by the founding fathers.  But some of us don't.

Pro-Family Leaders Predict New Year Will Be Crucial In the Culture War.  As skirmishes are fought in America's courtrooms and on the political scene, the culture war over homosexuality is moving on to a new front — the workplace.  Christianity Today reports an increasing trend among companies to force their workers not only to tolerate homosexual behavior, but also to respect and even promote it.

Corporate Thought Police:  The Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, is representing 47-year-old Albert A. Buonanno of Denver, and a handful of others.  They all lost their jobs for refusing to condone employment policies they found biblically immoral.

PC Marxist Roots Unearthed:  Political Correctness is intellectual AIDS.  Everything it touches it sickens and eventually kills.  On America's college campuses it has diminished freedom of speech, warped curricula, politicized grading and replaced intellectual integrity with vapid sloganeering.

The Dumbing Of America:  Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. … The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963 … If Hofstadter had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Rule No. 1 - Don't Complain, Criticize or Condemn.  Marshal Spaceflight Center, the home of the late Dr. Wernher von Braun, was once a marvelous place where the dreams of a moon landing were brought to fruition.  Jim Jackson, a former NASA manager, explains how it has become jaded with political correctness.

Uprooting our Biblical foundation:  The oft-repeated lie that "we can't legislate morality" has finally born its poisonous fruit.  Of course we can legislate morality.  We always have.  We must.  Try looking at the criminal code of any state or the federal system and tell me it isn't based on morality.

The Biblical Roots of American Liberty:  It is a fact of history that our forebears whose religious convictions brought them to these shores in the 17th and 18th centuries sought to create in this new world a biblically based Christian commonwealth.  But it was not to be a theocracy — of which the world had seen too many.  It was to be a religious society, but one which incorporated a secular political order.

Tune in, turn around, drop out:  If you are for constitutionally limited government, freedom, individual rights, self government, personal responsibility and accountability to God, you are a rebel in today's America.  The political-cultural status quo opposes all of that.

P.C. Nuttiness Invades Medical Schools:  Would you rather your doctor know which side your liver is on or be sensitive to your concepts of "social justice"?  If "reformers" of Western medical education have their way, the latter skill might be given equal weight with the former.

Lawmaker wants to put feng shui in building code.  A Democratic California legislator has introduced a resolution that would urge state officials to include the principles of feng shui in the California Building Standards Code, which is used in the design of public buildings.

Politically Correct Butchers of the 20th Century.

A Monument to the 20th Century's Greatest Mass Murderer in Seattle:  Matt Rosenberg, a free-lance writer, wrote in the Seattle Times that he was ashamed of the statue because it was like having a monument to Adolf Hitler.  "It's finally time for Seattle's limousine liberals and bicycle-riding bohemian bourgeoisie to face Lenin's real meaning," Rosenberg wrote.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2018 by Andrew K. Dart



Other items yet to be categorized:

Reason to rejoice:  You have often heard people say you can't "legislate morality."  And there are those who say the culture is so bad that we can't change it.  Well, they are wrong.

Cultures aren't equal.  Anyone who has been keeping up with British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that "multiculturalism" is under sharp attack.  Multiculturalism preaches that we should allow and encourage immigrants and their children to maintain and celebrate their own culture apart from the national culture.  Society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, "a gorgeous mosaic."  That mosaic, of course, looks less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers.

What this cultural debate needs is more dirt, less pure stupidity.  Multiculturalism has always been an embattled idea but the battle has grown fiercer of late.  In this, it is terrorism that is setting the agenda, goading us to respond:  terrorism, whose goal it is to turn the differences between us into divisions and then to use those divisions as justifications.

Parents take another hit in the culture wars.  In a recent ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that be the Left Coast) determined that parents do not have a fundamental right to control when, where and how their children are taught about sex.  Rather the state — in its far greater wisdom about what's right and wrong — has ultimate power over your kids.

Sexy, sassy, still in primary school.  Tweenage — somewhere between six and 12 — did not exist 15 years ago.  It is a market thriving on padded bras for flat chests, dolls that look like prostitutes, electronic makeover games your six-year-old daughter can plug into the TV set and magazines that tell her how to look hotter, and older, faster — just like the tweenage heroines, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie.

Pure Sex.  Clearly, what isn't being talked about at all is the biblical perspective of sex.  The Bible teaches us that sex between a man and a woman within the confines of marriage is the only way to have a fulfilling sex life.

The liberal church in meltdown.  The rift within the Episcopal Church is a sign of the failure of liberal Christianity. … It is a church in demographic free-fall, its numbers now standing at 2.2 million (by Jefferts Schori's own estimate), down from 3.4 million at its heyday in 1965.  At the 2,700 Episcopalian parishes nationwide, the median Sunday worship attendance is 80 people, and the churches they attend would be crumbling ruins were it not for their substantial endowments left over from the 19th century, when most of them were founded.

The return of Watergate:  I've watched some of the classroom discussions on TV, and, almost to a person, students say he [Mark Felt] did the right thing because his end was good.  This is terribly wrong.  I know we live in an era of moral relativism — everybody chooses what is "right" for them.  But this is a path to chaos and a lawless, ungovernable nation.

Connecting the dots.  A September 2004 report in the medical journal Pediatrics reveals that teens that watch a lot of sexualized programming on television are twice as likely to engage in intercourse than their peers who don't watch much TV. … The combination of a culture gone mad and parents gone AWOL has turned out to be lethal for America's children.  The good news is that American parents are becoming increasingly disturbed by a pop culture that glorifies gratuitous sex, senseless violence, incivility, broken families and narcissism.

Mary Kay's crime pays.  Webster's Dictionary defines famous as "widely known," but also "honored for achievement," while infamous is defined as "having a reputation of the worst kind," a synonym for "disgraceful."  In the big business of celebrity journalism today, there is no discernible difference between fame and infamy.

How TV can "rewire" the brains of tiny tots:  In a study of 2,600 children ages 1 to 3, researchers found that the more television the little people watch, the more likely they are to suffer from attention-span deficit by the age of 7.  They have trouble concentrating or paying attention to a toy or a doll for very long.

Judging Michael Jackson and ourselves:  Do you think we have gone too far?  Not far enough, some say.  Yesterday's unacceptable (divorce, premarital sex, abortion, homosexuality, group sex, domestic partnerships and, soon, same-sex marriage) are today's acceptable.  It's just a matter of conditioning.

Brainwashing in America:  Why Few Dare Call it Conspiracy.  The word "brainwashing" refers to a planned, step-by-step attempt to "wash" family-taught beliefs from the minds of those who oppose government ideology.  In America, it would mean replacing the old Biblical values and world view with a new way of thinking that would support a totalitarian agenda.

Is discrimination necessarily bad?  Modern Liberals know that theirs is a position arrived at through the moral imperative of indiscriminateness; therefore, any position other than their own must have been arrived at through the employment of discrimination.  Indiscriminateness of thought invariably leads the Modern Liberal to side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.  If no behavior is to be deemed better or worse than any other, your expectation is that all behavior should lead to equally good outcomes, when in the real world different behaviors lead to different outcomes.

To Discriminate Used to a be a Good Thing:  "Discriminating gentlemen don't associate with women," my great Aunt Emma used to say.  "They only associate with ladies."  I was a teenager at the time, and she was an old lady, but I knew exactly what she meant.  Well, gone are the days when discriminating gentlemen (or ladies) are even tolerated.  Today, when we are told to be tolerant of every deviant "lifestyle" – regardless of how repugnant or disgusting – it seems that discriminating attitudes are the only ones not tolerated.

Traditional Values Defined:  We believe in "discrimination" in the good sense:  choosing between good and evil, right and wrong, the better and the best.  We believe in discrimination in the sense of being discerning between good and bad choices.  Popular culture maintains that all forms of discrimination are wrong.  This is incorrect.  A person with "discriminating taste" is one who uses wisdom in making choices.  In short, we believe in intolerance to those things that are evil; and we believe that we should discriminate against those behaviors which are dangerous to individuals and to society.

Is Harry Potter A Harmless Fantasy Or Wicca Training Program?  Christians are rightly concerned about the spiritual messages being conveyed through the Harry Potter books.  Wicca or witchcraft is clearly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an abomination to God.  Practitioners of Wicca worship mythical goddesses, including the goddess "Gaia" (the earth), and incorporate radical feminism and homosexuality into their practices.

Does Welfare Cause Terrorism?  Many terrorists take advantage of Western welfare states, the same way they take advantage of Western freedoms and Western technology.  Extreme anti-social terrorist ideologies (radical Islam, in particular) seem to breed in "oppositional" cultures supported by various government welfare benefits.

The 'Liberal' Mind: Deceiver Or Deceived?  In the United States the past thirty years, we have witnessed the gradual dissolution of the one society on earth where freedom, opportunity and prosperity have been made possible for everyone.  That decline into neo-socialism has come because of the power acquired by well-intentioned "liberals," who are merely socialists in disguise.

Knowledge can be Lost in Just a few Generations:  It seems we have lost our knowledge of what it means to be moral.  This loss of moral knowledge was abundantly apparent during the eight years of the Clinton presidency.  After years of lying to the American public, when Bill Clinton finally admitted that he had a relationship with a girl almost half his age and, more importantly, with someone other than his wife, it didn't matter to the majority of Americans.  And after it was so abundantly clear that he had committed perjury, it still didn't matter.

When the Chips Are Off:  If Americans overwhelmingly favor the V-chip, why don't they use it?  In his 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton urged Congress "to pass the requirement for a 'V' chip in TV sets, so that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for their children."  He said the technology would enable parents "to assume more personal responsibility for their children's upbringing."  This was an odd way to characterize the V-chip, which actually represented an abdication of parental responsibility.  Instead of monitoring what their kids watch and deciding for themselves what was appropriate, parents would rely on ratings assigned by the networks.  There would be no need for active supervision or discussion:  Once the V-chip was programmed, everything would be automatic.

Bread and Circuses:  In his book Bread and Circuses, Patrick Brantlinger analyzes the idea of "bread and circuses" as a narcotic for the masses throughout history.  Brantlinger defines as "negative classicism" the idea that Rome was decadent and that our society is sliding downhill to a Roman-style decadence.  "The shade of Rome," says Brantlinger, "looms up to suggest the fate of societies that fail to elevate their masses to something better than welfare checks and mass entertainments."

Express Line Rage:  The Latest Mental Malady?

Retailer Disses Mormon School for Its High Moral Standards:  A Michigan-based, pro-family advocate says a clothing retailer that uses pornography to sell its merchandise is opposed to anyone who believes in morality.  Bill Johnson heads the American Decency Association, which has led a national boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch because of that company's use of nudity and sexuality in its quarterly catalog.  Johnson says Abercrombie & Fitch views anyone with morals as the enemy.

The Biggest Bullies:  In Fidel Castro's Cuba, little Elián Gonzalez and his classmates are required to play with guns, some toy and some real, and to play at using these weapons to kill "Yankee imperialists."  In the United States something just as authoritarian is underway.  Leftist educators are bringing political correctness to the playground in an effort to mold society.

When blue states attack:  ACLU busybodies sued Johnson County, Iowa, demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments monument that had been in a public courtyard a since 1964.  Within a year, the 2,500-pound granite monument was gone.

The Battle For America — Country Mouse Versus City Mouse.  It is a conflict of philosophy between urban and rural, a simmering antagonism between those who wish to care for themselves and those who seek cradle to grave oversight.  It is a war between reality and fantasy.

Click to enlarge The last two articles above make reference to the famous County by county map of the 2000 presidential election.  This is where the notion of the "red states" and the "blue states" came from.  It doesn't look like it was a close race at all.

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"It is no coincidence that a society which undermines parental authority, which marginalizes religion, and which steeps its children in a violent and sexually obsessed popular culture produces children who are unruly, undisciplined, nihilistic, and in some cases infatuated with murder and quite prepared to act on these infatuations."

J. C. Watts 



Document location http://akdart.com/culture.html
Updated October 24, 2020.

©2020 by Andrew K. Dart