Language and Thought
There's a term 'homophobic' used by political correct people to criticise those who are unsympathetic to homosexuals. This is an example of how politically correct people manufacture words as a way of attempting to control thought. This idea was envisaged by George Orwell in his book '1984', where the ruling dictator 'Big Brother' changes language in order to control the thoughts of the population. If an idea can't be expressed then it can't be thought about. Nowadays, words have a life of their own and sometimes if you try to get underneath the words you often found that there's nothing there. In fact simply attempting to question the meaning of such words can be sufficient to label you. For example, if you ask what is meant by 'racist' then you are a racist. If you ask what 'homophobia' means then you are homophobic.
I discussed in a previous article ('Martin Luther King had a dream') how the term racism has no meaning in many contexts. The object of these words is not to supply meaning, it's to label people or ideas as 'good' or 'bad', and it enables people to avoid thinking about the ideas themselves.
I remember some years ago a UK Conservative MP making a very eloquent speech about education. The National Union of Students dismissed his remarks, not by arguing against what he said but because he had previously made a remark in parliament that flogging was probably not a bad idea. In other words, if you can dismiss the person making the remarks then you don't need to actually take the effort to look at the arguments presented. At the time the NUS comments struck me as absurd. Nowadays, unfortunately such poor reasoning is endemic and has, to a large extent, replaced real thought. Words have taken on a life of their own.
Some time ago George Bush Senior's Vice President was Dan Quail, not one of
the brightest intellects in US government. He made a speech criticising unmarried
mothers that, among other things, made some points about welfare payments and
that Murphy Brown, a sit-com character at the time, was setting poor example
by having an unmarried pregnancy on her show. Now, whether you agree or not
with what he had to say there were some valid points - somewhat surprisingly
for someone so gaff prone.
This is from the report "Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee Inquiry Into Poverty in Australia",
Bill Muehlenberg, National Vice President, Australian Family Association, 582 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne 3051 Pub: February 2003.When US Vice-President Dan Quayle criticised television character Murphy Brown in 1992 for viewing out-of wedlock births as just another lifestyle choice, journalists should have read the speech in which these remarks were made. In addition to quoting the above kinds of statistics, he noted the tragic situation in the black community. For example, in 1967, 68 per cent of black families were headed by married couples. In 1991 this figure dropped to only 48 per cent. In 1965, the illegitimacy rate among black families was 28 per cent. In 1989 the figure was 65 per cent.
Quayle cited other figures about poverty in broken families and then made this comment: "For those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all". The evidence certainly seems to bear this out.
However the 'rebuttal' on the Murphy Brown show at the time consisted of something like (so far as I can recall this is fairly accurate):
Murphy Brown (while watching the speech on TV): "This guy is out of touch… listen to him…. He is so out of date…
There were no arguments against any of the points Dan Quayle raised. What was amazing is that Murphy Brown's 'rebuttal' got a lot of positive media coverage, despite the fact that it was devoid of intelligence. That was in 1993. The situation has got worse since.
In the UK there are organisations that adopt a policy of 'no platform for racists'. The reasoning is that people who support racism should not be allowed access to media. In other words, certain individuals, who aren't even democratically elected, can label an organisation as racist and then prevent them having media access, even to deny that they are racist. The irony is that these were the same types of methods used by Hitler to take control as Chancellor in 1930's Germany. There is a strong parallel between the political correct movement and Nazi methods, which is not really surprising when you consider that the roots of political correctness lie in the far left Socialist parties where the policy is that the end justifies the means. In other words, if you have decided that what you are doing is right then there is nothing wrong with treading on a few toes to achieve it.
People are unable to use reason to see what is going on in the world. We are approaching a depressing time in human experience.
