0 comment Thursday, November 13, 2014 | admin
In our current liberal society, telling unflattering truths is strongly discouraged; instead, we are pressured to speak only praise and compliments about people based on their status in the 'victimizer/victim' hierarchy. In other words, if a group is a designated 'victim' group based on race, sexual proclivities, or religion, that group must not be criticized. Flattery is not only expected, but required when mentioning protected groups. Special labels are devised to condemn those who criticize, even in a polite way, a member of a protected group or the group as a whole. Labels such as 'homophobic', 'Islamophobic' and 'racist' are deployed to attack and discredit anyone who does not show appropriate deference and an exaggerated respect toward designated victims.
We see this every day; sometimes careless comments are met with a firestorm of indignation when the speaker or writer steps outside the narrow bounds of political correctness. Not only is it taboo to say anything critical or unflattering, it seems now to be de rigueur to create positive myths about protected groups. Lawrence Auster, journalist and blogger, cites what he calls 'Auster's First Law of Majority-Minority Relations' : "The more alien, unassimilable, and dangerous a designated minority or non-Western group actually is, the greater the politically correct lies that must be told about it, and the more wicked it becomes to speak the truth about it."
Auster's Law seems to hold true. In the recent discussions about the illegal invasion of America, those Americans who oppose the invasion are accused of unfairly generalizing, and of 'demonizing' the poor 'undocumented workers'.
The word 'demonize' is a favorite of the liberals; the idea is that any criticism of a protected group is 'demonizing' them, making them out to be less than human, or preternaturally evil. In fact, the critics are doing nothing more than pointing out that the illegals are only human, subject to human faults, while their defenders are putting them on a pedestal, canonizing them as saints. The illegals are praised excessively as 'hardworking' (as if no one else is), pious Christians, paragons of 'family values' . There is some serious generalizing going on here; the liberals constantly decry 'generalizations' and 'stereotypes' but they themselves are guilty of those very things. They are simply stereotyping in an adulatory way. I have actually heard the illegals' defenders claim that we Americans can 'learn' from the illegals; that they are better examples of American values than we Americans are. If there is such a thing as 'demonizing' illegals, then their defenders are 'angelizing' them, if I may coin a silly-sounding word of my own.
The illegals who are entering our country don't have horns and pitchforks but neither do they have haloes and wings, notwithstanding all the smarmy, sugary myths being propagated about their virtues.
We as a society, all of us in the Western world in fact, have gone too far away from the truth in an effort to appear non-racist and inclusive. We are telling pious, hypocritical lies in order to appear fair and 'nice'. Too many among us are willing to tell flattering falsehoods as a way of demonstrating our openness and altruism.
The price we pay for this is that as a society, we are bound to act as though all our flattery is true; those who are invading our country and challenging our very right to be here cannot be recognized as the threat that they are as long as we are committed to living in this politically-correct dreamworld, this fictitious 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe'. In this PC fairyland, there are no enemies or threats, only neighbors we haven't acknowledged yet. In this dream-world, there are no 'reconquistas', just humble, hard-working, pious, saintly immigrants.
We see this every day; sometimes careless comments are met with a firestorm of indignation when the speaker or writer steps outside the narrow bounds of political correctness. Not only is it taboo to say anything critical or unflattering, it seems now to be de rigueur to create positive myths about protected groups. Lawrence Auster, journalist and blogger, cites what he calls 'Auster's First Law of Majority-Minority Relations' : "The more alien, unassimilable, and dangerous a designated minority or non-Western group actually is, the greater the politically correct lies that must be told about it, and the more wicked it becomes to speak the truth about it."
Auster's Law seems to hold true. In the recent discussions about the illegal invasion of America, those Americans who oppose the invasion are accused of unfairly generalizing, and of 'demonizing' the poor 'undocumented workers'.
The word 'demonize' is a favorite of the liberals; the idea is that any criticism of a protected group is 'demonizing' them, making them out to be less than human, or preternaturally evil. In fact, the critics are doing nothing more than pointing out that the illegals are only human, subject to human faults, while their defenders are putting them on a pedestal, canonizing them as saints. The illegals are praised excessively as 'hardworking' (as if no one else is), pious Christians, paragons of 'family values' . There is some serious generalizing going on here; the liberals constantly decry 'generalizations' and 'stereotypes' but they themselves are guilty of those very things. They are simply stereotyping in an adulatory way. I have actually heard the illegals' defenders claim that we Americans can 'learn' from the illegals; that they are better examples of American values than we Americans are. If there is such a thing as 'demonizing' illegals, then their defenders are 'angelizing' them, if I may coin a silly-sounding word of my own.
The illegals who are entering our country don't have horns and pitchforks but neither do they have haloes and wings, notwithstanding all the smarmy, sugary myths being propagated about their virtues.
We as a society, all of us in the Western world in fact, have gone too far away from the truth in an effort to appear non-racist and inclusive. We are telling pious, hypocritical lies in order to appear fair and 'nice'. Too many among us are willing to tell flattering falsehoods as a way of demonstrating our openness and altruism.
The price we pay for this is that as a society, we are bound to act as though all our flattery is true; those who are invading our country and challenging our very right to be here cannot be recognized as the threat that they are as long as we are committed to living in this politically-correct dreamworld, this fictitious 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe'. In this PC fairyland, there are no enemies or threats, only neighbors we haven't acknowledged yet. In this dream-world, there are no 'reconquistas', just humble, hard-working, pious, saintly immigrants.
Labels: Mythologizing, Politically