0 comment Saturday, June 21, 2014 | admin
I read this piece by Henryk M. Broder the other day, It's a very lengthy piece on Europe's apparent surrender or capitulation to Islam, and I've been pondering on it. Meanwhile, I came across a post at this blog, on the subject of the word 'muzzies', and the fact that the word was forbidden at a certain anti-Jihad blog.
Capitulation is not a sudden, one-time event, usually. We get there by degrees, and the first step in capitulation by the West is our willing submission, starting some decades ago, to the first incursions of Political Correctness. Fjordman, in a recent essay (one of his sterling efforts, by the way), traces PC speech codes back to feminism, and their attempts to neuter language. Maybe in Fjordman's part of the world, this was the origin of PC speech codes; his childhood, I infer, was during the time that Norway was homogeneous, inhabited by mostly Norwegians. The joys of mass Third World immigration and 'diversity' had probably not been conferred on Scandinavia as yet. But we, here in the United States, have been dealing with PC speech codes, in their incipient form, at least, since before I was born.
Discussing racial matters is always tantamount to walking across a minefield. The fact that the subject can lead to very emotionally-charged exchanges is very telling. We cannot speak freely about any racial matter.The fact that most of us feel the need to walk gingerly, as on eggshells, when we discuss racial matters. Words are highly dangerous; say the wrong word, and lose your job, your career, your reputation, and in some cases, your freedom. People have been jailed for words. Lawsuits have been brought. People are compelled to enter 'sensitivity training' and to grovel in public, as in the Communist regimes of old, when they had to confess publicly.
When I was a young child, (remember, this was in the Jim Crow era) I was taught by my parents that the word now known as 'the N-word' was a rude word, and that we should not use it. We were taught that the word 'colored' was the polite word. Some years later, the word 'colored' was declared demeaning, although to my knowledge, it was not called a 'racist' word because the word 'racist' was not in the lexicon then. So we adapted to the word 'Negro.' That lasted a decade or so, until the days of black militancy in the late 1960s and we were told we must say 'black' or 'Afro-American.' The latter term faded away, only to re-emerge as the more complicated 'African-American' in the 80s. But from the late 60s onward, black was the most common term.
My point is: we became accustomed to being told that we must watch our terminology, and that we must change our vocabulary in order to accommodate or placate a group of people. The reason? Because they had been victims, and in fact, our ancestors were the victimizers. So we were now obligated to make amends, to right the wrongs which had supposedly been done by our forebears. Submitting to being told what words we may use was the first step. I learned, from a young white woman I knew, that it was 'offensive' to call a black person 'sunshine.' She had addressed a young black man, saying 'good morning, sunshine', and he had responded with great indignation, and told her never, ever to call a black person 'sunshine.'
Why? I don't know. I didn't ask why; I just knew that I had better watch my p's and q's around black people. Around that same time, a furor arose over the word 'boy.' It was declared a 'fighting word' for black people. To address a black boy as 'boy' was demeaning, degrading. It was an affront to his manhood, his personhood. Only a bigot would think of calling a black young man a 'boy.'
The only explanation I have heard is that it has associations with slavery. Supposedly slave-owners addressed their slaves as 'boy'.
Then, several years later, the 'women's liberation movement' arose, and they, too, began to issue ultimatums and demands to society at large. Echoing the black objection to the word 'boy', the women's libbers (as they were called back then) took great offense at the term 'girl' or 'gal.' To call a young woman a girl or gal was demeaning, disrespectful. Woe to any man who called a young woman a 'girl' or a 'gal', or, worst of all, a 'chick.' Those were all 'male chauvinist' words. Notice how the PC language had not yet been refined to its present state: women's liberationists began to object loudly to the name 'women's libber', saying it insulted them, so they began to insist on 'feminist'. That term stuck. And they dropped terms like 'male chauvinist pig' or 'MCP' for short, in favor of the term 'sexist', modeled (of course!) on the word 'racist', which began to be bandied about in those days.
So every victim group followed in the steps of the black militants, using the same tactics, similar speech codes, and the same rhetoric. Next were the homosexuals, who banned words like 'queer' and 'fag' and other such slang terms, and insisted on the term 'gay.'
I maintain that all this offense-taking is feigned; no one is really 'offended' or humiliated or hurt; it's calculated to show who has the power. It must go to one's head, to be able to make someone apologize and grovel and plead for forgiveness, especially if the one brought to heel is supposedly the powerful one. It must satisfy a need for revenge or payback. It's a show of strength. It's making the accused say 'uncle'. It's a flexing of muscles. It's a contest of wills, and the majority always loses, because we are quick to back down and give in.
By degrees, the majority became accustomed to having the victim group du jour telling us what words we may and may not use. And the stakes were raised; transgressing the speech codes, using a forbidden word, gradually became viewed as a sign of true bigotry, and harsher penalties both via laws and social sanctions were instituted. In a very real sense, all of us became less free, and more inhibited in our language. We all learned to self-censor, and some people became self-designated censors of others' speech; these are the PC scolds I referred to in earlier posts, those prigs and prudes who inform on others, or scold others for failing to tailor their speech to Politically Correct dictates. The PC scolds are all the more reprehensible to me because they side against their own; there's something repugnant about self-hatred.
Now as all Western societies are essentially under leftist domination, and as we are all being subjected to a vast social engineering experiment, with the whole world thrown together in our countries. we are obliged to cater to innumerable groups with grievances. The other day I posted a link to a story about Hmongs from Southeast Asia, who are demanding respect and credit in American History books. Now we have a massive Latino population, growing as I write this, and of course the aforementioned Moslems, who are now making loud demands of their own in every Western country. They've coined a new term of abuse: 'Islamophobic', meaning anyone who criticizes them or their religion, or who rightfully suspects them of hostile intent.
Now, on the very web forums and blogs which are thought to be at the forefront of defending the West, PC sensibilities are present just as they are everywhere else. For example, the term 'wetback' is verboten on the supposedly hard-line forums where illegal immigration is denounced. Even the most 'tough' right-wing forums PC-foot around, banning individuals who transgress the speech codes. Why? Why do these people spontaneously and preemptively censor people, when we have plenty of leftists waiting to do the same thing? Why are voluntarily they doing the dirty work of those scolding, moralistic leftists?
The official explanation is usually along these lines: 'We don't want to give the other side any ammunition. Our enemies can use it against us if we use slurs; they will call us racists, and it will discredit us with the average people, the ones we want to win over.''
So the groups we are counting on to lead the opposition to the takeover of our countries are fearful of being called a name, or of driving away the 'middle-of-the-road' people who are supposedly the answer to everything.
If we are as PC-whipped as that, then we are easy prey for the Moslems or the Latino invaders and their Reconquista, or anybody else who wants to waltz into our country and intimidate us.
I continue to say that no matter what, all who oppose illegal immigration, and who want to resist Islamization, will be called names like 'xenophobes', 'bigots', Islamophobes, and yes, the big 'r-word', racist. Do we really delude ourselves that if we just follow Miss Manners etiquette and never use any of those bad non-PC words that our adversaries will suddenly respect us, or stop calling us names? Do we really think that we can perhaps win the enemy over if we just talk nice to them?
In no previous war has our country ever been hamstrung by these crippling notions of 'niceness.' If our parents and grandparents had been obsessed with not offending our enemies during WWII, they would have been defeated from the git-go. We are paralyzed by PC. If we are so afraid of words and names, we haven't got a prayer.
Has it ever occurred to all the nervous Nellies and the obsessively 'nice' people that maybe it's necessary to psych ourselves up for self-defense by blunt, tough talk? Remember all those wartime cartoons many of us saw on TV as kids, where the enemy was stereotyped? Those cartoons are now being pulled from circulation lest they 'offend' some sensitive soul. But those cartoons served a purpose. We needed to psych ourselves up, steel ourselves against an enemy that would have killed or conquerered us. Our dads and granddads knew that; they were realists in a way that most people today aren't. If they had wrung their hands and fretted over offending some enemy, or worried that the 'moderates' in enemy countries might be on our side, if we just reached out to them...the Axis powers would have obliterated us as we dithered and hesitated. There is a time and place to be 'sensitive' and conciliatory, but that time is NOT while our survival is threatened, or our freedom is on the line.
If we are so delicate and so timid and so careful that we not 'offend' how on earth can we stand against an enemy, any enemy? We are making it known to the whole world that we have lost our nerve, lost our will to resist, lost our survival instinct. We appear to the whole world as a race of wavering, dithering, weaklings, with our fussing over words and our desire to please, to avoid angering anyone.
The majority of people at any given time, in any given place, are easily swayed, or apathetic. The truth is that it is generally a minority of highly motivated people who bring about change. The Moslems are highly motivated. Are we? The Latinos who are invading are highly motivated and determined. Are we?
We may never, despite our politeness and niceness, win over the majority to our cause of defending our country and our way of life. The majority are content to sit things out, and let others do the hard work. So being nice and non-offensive in hopes of winning over the apathetic or feckless masses is foolish. Hoping that we can win over those 'moderate Moslems' or 'conservative Latinos' or anybody else by being Politically Correct is also a misguided and vain hope. If there are moderate Moslems, or conservative Latinos, they will automatically be drawn to our side; if not then they can never be wooed and won over. The old saying 'flattery will get you nowhere' is apt here. What is Political Correctness if not a kind of flattery? So Political Correctness will get us nowhere. It won't buy the friendship of enemies; it won't shield us from those dreaded names that our adversaries call us. It won't win over the wishy-washy people who are too lazy to pick a side. PC will get us nowhere. We've got to toughen up and stop fearing words and names. There are more important things to deal with. We can't be sidetracked with all this fussing over words.
Shame on those who, claiming to be 'conservatives', are part of this PC legalism. There's no excuse for it.
And as we all know by now, PC kills. PC is the first step to capitulation.
Capitulation is not a sudden, one-time event, usually. We get there by degrees, and the first step in capitulation by the West is our willing submission, starting some decades ago, to the first incursions of Political Correctness. Fjordman, in a recent essay (one of his sterling efforts, by the way), traces PC speech codes back to feminism, and their attempts to neuter language. Maybe in Fjordman's part of the world, this was the origin of PC speech codes; his childhood, I infer, was during the time that Norway was homogeneous, inhabited by mostly Norwegians. The joys of mass Third World immigration and 'diversity' had probably not been conferred on Scandinavia as yet. But we, here in the United States, have been dealing with PC speech codes, in their incipient form, at least, since before I was born.
Discussing racial matters is always tantamount to walking across a minefield. The fact that the subject can lead to very emotionally-charged exchanges is very telling. We cannot speak freely about any racial matter.The fact that most of us feel the need to walk gingerly, as on eggshells, when we discuss racial matters. Words are highly dangerous; say the wrong word, and lose your job, your career, your reputation, and in some cases, your freedom. People have been jailed for words. Lawsuits have been brought. People are compelled to enter 'sensitivity training' and to grovel in public, as in the Communist regimes of old, when they had to confess publicly.
When I was a young child, (remember, this was in the Jim Crow era) I was taught by my parents that the word now known as 'the N-word' was a rude word, and that we should not use it. We were taught that the word 'colored' was the polite word. Some years later, the word 'colored' was declared demeaning, although to my knowledge, it was not called a 'racist' word because the word 'racist' was not in the lexicon then. So we adapted to the word 'Negro.' That lasted a decade or so, until the days of black militancy in the late 1960s and we were told we must say 'black' or 'Afro-American.' The latter term faded away, only to re-emerge as the more complicated 'African-American' in the 80s. But from the late 60s onward, black was the most common term.
My point is: we became accustomed to being told that we must watch our terminology, and that we must change our vocabulary in order to accommodate or placate a group of people. The reason? Because they had been victims, and in fact, our ancestors were the victimizers. So we were now obligated to make amends, to right the wrongs which had supposedly been done by our forebears. Submitting to being told what words we may use was the first step. I learned, from a young white woman I knew, that it was 'offensive' to call a black person 'sunshine.' She had addressed a young black man, saying 'good morning, sunshine', and he had responded with great indignation, and told her never, ever to call a black person 'sunshine.'
Why? I don't know. I didn't ask why; I just knew that I had better watch my p's and q's around black people. Around that same time, a furor arose over the word 'boy.' It was declared a 'fighting word' for black people. To address a black boy as 'boy' was demeaning, degrading. It was an affront to his manhood, his personhood. Only a bigot would think of calling a black young man a 'boy.'
The only explanation I have heard is that it has associations with slavery. Supposedly slave-owners addressed their slaves as 'boy'.
Then, several years later, the 'women's liberation movement' arose, and they, too, began to issue ultimatums and demands to society at large. Echoing the black objection to the word 'boy', the women's libbers (as they were called back then) took great offense at the term 'girl' or 'gal.' To call a young woman a girl or gal was demeaning, disrespectful. Woe to any man who called a young woman a 'girl' or a 'gal', or, worst of all, a 'chick.' Those were all 'male chauvinist' words. Notice how the PC language had not yet been refined to its present state: women's liberationists began to object loudly to the name 'women's libber', saying it insulted them, so they began to insist on 'feminist'. That term stuck. And they dropped terms like 'male chauvinist pig' or 'MCP' for short, in favor of the term 'sexist', modeled (of course!) on the word 'racist', which began to be bandied about in those days.
So every victim group followed in the steps of the black militants, using the same tactics, similar speech codes, and the same rhetoric. Next were the homosexuals, who banned words like 'queer' and 'fag' and other such slang terms, and insisted on the term 'gay.'
I maintain that all this offense-taking is feigned; no one is really 'offended' or humiliated or hurt; it's calculated to show who has the power. It must go to one's head, to be able to make someone apologize and grovel and plead for forgiveness, especially if the one brought to heel is supposedly the powerful one. It must satisfy a need for revenge or payback. It's a show of strength. It's making the accused say 'uncle'. It's a flexing of muscles. It's a contest of wills, and the majority always loses, because we are quick to back down and give in.
By degrees, the majority became accustomed to having the victim group du jour telling us what words we may and may not use. And the stakes were raised; transgressing the speech codes, using a forbidden word, gradually became viewed as a sign of true bigotry, and harsher penalties both via laws and social sanctions were instituted. In a very real sense, all of us became less free, and more inhibited in our language. We all learned to self-censor, and some people became self-designated censors of others' speech; these are the PC scolds I referred to in earlier posts, those prigs and prudes who inform on others, or scold others for failing to tailor their speech to Politically Correct dictates. The PC scolds are all the more reprehensible to me because they side against their own; there's something repugnant about self-hatred.
Now as all Western societies are essentially under leftist domination, and as we are all being subjected to a vast social engineering experiment, with the whole world thrown together in our countries. we are obliged to cater to innumerable groups with grievances. The other day I posted a link to a story about Hmongs from Southeast Asia, who are demanding respect and credit in American History books. Now we have a massive Latino population, growing as I write this, and of course the aforementioned Moslems, who are now making loud demands of their own in every Western country. They've coined a new term of abuse: 'Islamophobic', meaning anyone who criticizes them or their religion, or who rightfully suspects them of hostile intent.
Now, on the very web forums and blogs which are thought to be at the forefront of defending the West, PC sensibilities are present just as they are everywhere else. For example, the term 'wetback' is verboten on the supposedly hard-line forums where illegal immigration is denounced. Even the most 'tough' right-wing forums PC-foot around, banning individuals who transgress the speech codes. Why? Why do these people spontaneously and preemptively censor people, when we have plenty of leftists waiting to do the same thing? Why are voluntarily they doing the dirty work of those scolding, moralistic leftists?
The official explanation is usually along these lines: 'We don't want to give the other side any ammunition. Our enemies can use it against us if we use slurs; they will call us racists, and it will discredit us with the average people, the ones we want to win over.''
So the groups we are counting on to lead the opposition to the takeover of our countries are fearful of being called a name, or of driving away the 'middle-of-the-road' people who are supposedly the answer to everything.
If we are as PC-whipped as that, then we are easy prey for the Moslems or the Latino invaders and their Reconquista, or anybody else who wants to waltz into our country and intimidate us.
I continue to say that no matter what, all who oppose illegal immigration, and who want to resist Islamization, will be called names like 'xenophobes', 'bigots', Islamophobes, and yes, the big 'r-word', racist. Do we really delude ourselves that if we just follow Miss Manners etiquette and never use any of those bad non-PC words that our adversaries will suddenly respect us, or stop calling us names? Do we really think that we can perhaps win the enemy over if we just talk nice to them?
In no previous war has our country ever been hamstrung by these crippling notions of 'niceness.' If our parents and grandparents had been obsessed with not offending our enemies during WWII, they would have been defeated from the git-go. We are paralyzed by PC. If we are so afraid of words and names, we haven't got a prayer.
Has it ever occurred to all the nervous Nellies and the obsessively 'nice' people that maybe it's necessary to psych ourselves up for self-defense by blunt, tough talk? Remember all those wartime cartoons many of us saw on TV as kids, where the enemy was stereotyped? Those cartoons are now being pulled from circulation lest they 'offend' some sensitive soul. But those cartoons served a purpose. We needed to psych ourselves up, steel ourselves against an enemy that would have killed or conquerered us. Our dads and granddads knew that; they were realists in a way that most people today aren't. If they had wrung their hands and fretted over offending some enemy, or worried that the 'moderates' in enemy countries might be on our side, if we just reached out to them...the Axis powers would have obliterated us as we dithered and hesitated. There is a time and place to be 'sensitive' and conciliatory, but that time is NOT while our survival is threatened, or our freedom is on the line.
If we are so delicate and so timid and so careful that we not 'offend' how on earth can we stand against an enemy, any enemy? We are making it known to the whole world that we have lost our nerve, lost our will to resist, lost our survival instinct. We appear to the whole world as a race of wavering, dithering, weaklings, with our fussing over words and our desire to please, to avoid angering anyone.
The majority of people at any given time, in any given place, are easily swayed, or apathetic. The truth is that it is generally a minority of highly motivated people who bring about change. The Moslems are highly motivated. Are we? The Latinos who are invading are highly motivated and determined. Are we?
We may never, despite our politeness and niceness, win over the majority to our cause of defending our country and our way of life. The majority are content to sit things out, and let others do the hard work. So being nice and non-offensive in hopes of winning over the apathetic or feckless masses is foolish. Hoping that we can win over those 'moderate Moslems' or 'conservative Latinos' or anybody else by being Politically Correct is also a misguided and vain hope. If there are moderate Moslems, or conservative Latinos, they will automatically be drawn to our side; if not then they can never be wooed and won over. The old saying 'flattery will get you nowhere' is apt here. What is Political Correctness if not a kind of flattery? So Political Correctness will get us nowhere. It won't buy the friendship of enemies; it won't shield us from those dreaded names that our adversaries call us. It won't win over the wishy-washy people who are too lazy to pick a side. PC will get us nowhere. We've got to toughen up and stop fearing words and names. There are more important things to deal with. We can't be sidetracked with all this fussing over words.
Shame on those who, claiming to be 'conservatives', are part of this PC legalism. There's no excuse for it.
And as we all know by now, PC kills. PC is the first step to capitulation.
Labels: Islam, Liberalism, Political Correctness