Fourteen Commandments

In my morning reading, I stumbled on these handy-dandy “Fourteen Commandments of Political Correctness", which originated at neo-neocon and Gates of Vienna (two most worth blogs that should be on your regular reading list).

The Gates of Vienna comments:

Political correctness is a corrosive ideology that has eaten its way through most of the major institutions of Western culture, leaving them hollowed out and weakened in the face of the Great Islamic Jihad. Our enemy is filled with righteous zeal, ready to die for his beliefs, and has no doubt in the superiority of his religion. We Westerners, with our self-deprecatory posturing and theology of self-loathing, have inadequate spiritual defenses against this onslaught.

Let’s take them one at a time:

1. America is uniquely evil.

Well, this certainly seems to fit the reflexive America-bashing (blame America first!) of the American left. Witness the left’s opposition to taking down Sadaam Hussein on moral grounds, or their support of the despicable and disgusting Hugo Chavez, or even the New York Times rising to the defense of poor Zarqawi in his video outtakes. Yup, by their lights America is uniquely evil. We can’t possibly have a noble purpose for deposing Sadaam Hussein — it had to be Halliburton and the oil!

2. America is never justified in defending itself.

This follows from (1) quite naturally — if America is evil, then of course any defense of America is aiding and abetting evil. And, again, the American left’s reflexive opposition to any defense — especially a preemptive defense — is easy to observe.

3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.

I’ve noted myself that the left’s definition of multi-culturalism is really that all cultures are equally worthy — not the simple tolerance the term might lead you to expect. This is related, I suspect, to the left’s apparent extreme discomfort with judging behavior — and the consequent tolerance and acceptance of even the most perverted behavior (such as NAMBLA, run-of-the-mill sexual predators, and the general idea of rehabilitation). Translated into the behavior of nations and civilizations, this discomfort with judgment leads to declaring the moral equivalence of any culture — and it’s only a small step, and a very politically correct small step at that, to declare that your own culture is inferior to all those others.

How does anyone persuade themselves of such nonsense?

4. The Earth would be better off without human beings.

I’ve seen this in several rants from the left, I believe always in the context of what Rush calls “environmentalist wackos” — what I’ll call the blame-humans-first crowd. In their perfect world, Mother Nature would be allowed to do her thing without any “interference” by humans. Never mind that humans are themselves a product of evolution, and that their actions are just as much part of the fabric of evolution as the actions of any other species. Never mind the indisputable facts that the vast majority of all species that have ever existed are now extinct, and that only the tiniest percentage (thousandths of a percent of them) were “caused” by humans even under the most biased interpretation of the record.

5. Making a profit is always immoral.

From this week’s news, the flap over Exxon’s profits provides an immediate example. But this commandment seems not to be absolute. Hilary’s remarkable profits on futures seems to be ok. Teresa Heinz-Kerry is forgiven her company’s profits. It’s only certain kinds of profit that are immoral, apparently — and I’ve never figured out how the decision is made, or (more interestingly) who makes it.

This commandment needs tweaking.

6. Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.

Oh, absolutely — this is clearly a central tenet of political correctness. The very opposite of Ayn Rand-ism, and the very essence of extreme socialism. Every time I go for a drive, the consequences of this commandment are displayed before me — with every parent’s car wearing a bumper sticker that says “My child was citizen of the year at XXX school!”. It would be unfair to single out one child per year to recognize some extraordinary achievement — it might hurt the self-esteem of all those other kids. No individual excellence, no competition, no individual recognition; all this is replaced by transparently, laughingly false universal recognition.

7. For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.

Many widely-publicized cases amply illustrate this one. A recent example is the jurors in the Moussaoui case who found that his upbringing, wherein he was subjected to racial slurs, was a mitigating factor. Very politically correct, that point was. Rejecting the notion of personal accountability could be another politically correct commandment: “People misbehave because of their background, not because of a choice they made."

8. Policies informed by Judæo-Christian principles are inherently suspect.

Hmmm. This does seem to jibe with leftish behavior, but…I’m not sure its really any different than (1).

9. Conservatives are hypocrites; liberals are sincere.

Well, of course! Isn’t it perfectly obvious that any conservative viewpoint (or libertarian, for that matter) is nothing more than a well-spun selfish and personal perspective? Whereas liberal viewpoints are all selflessly motivated.

What crap! And how accurately it skewers the pretensions of the left…

10. There are no acts of God; there are only acts of Government.

Oh, my. From last year, Hurricane Katrina wasn’t a natural disaster, but rather just the introduction to a government failure. President Bush’s tax cuts aren’t responsible for jobs growth; the successful Clinton government programs produced all those. Such are the leftish beliefs, and they fit very nicely with this politically correct commandment.

11. We defend the right to free speech for ourselves, but anyone else whose speech hurts our feelings must be censored.

Neo-neocon added this (and the rest) to the original 10 politically correct commandments from Gates of Vienna. This is closely related to (9) above, but it certainly rings profoundly true. It’s ok for the left to scream accusations that Bush is dumber than a stump, and that Karl Rove is involved in a bazillion fantastical conspiracies, but Viet Nam veterans voicing skepticism of Kerry’s service details — that’s a no-no. And by the way, Kerry still hasn’t release his service record!

12 In any conflict between a third-world nation and a first-world nation, the third-world nation is always right.

Oh, absolutely! There are a couple of corollaries to this one: America is the only first-world nation, and the United Nations is always right (despite the vast oil-for-food corruption scandal, the unpunished rapes by U.N. employees, the disastrous Palestian “camps", and…well, make your own list).

13. Tyranny in third-world countries is not our concern unless the US (or Israel) can be blamed in some way.

Hah! Methinks neo-neocon was slightly tongue-in-cheek on this one, and yet…there are enough examples that jibe with this one to cast some doubt on that.

14. All criticism or disagreement with any policy of a third-world nation, culture, or person is, by definition, racism.

Oh, yes. Any time I’ve criticized Islam, however gently, I can routinely expect to be accused of racism — along with the rest of the leftish cant. This seems closely related to (1) and (3).

I can recall a few conversations I’ve had with left-leaning folks, unarmed with this handy-dandy set of commandments but nonetheless stumbling on a few of them myself. The most interesting parts of these converstations came when I proposed what I called a “liberal guiding principle", which was quickly denied, and then I challenged the liberal to come up with a counter-example.

For instance, I recall a conversation with a former colleague — a rabid Democrat of the rancid New York variety — wherein I proposed that the liberals had a guiding principle of the moral equivalency of America’s culture and any other culture in the world. He quickly denied it, I suspect because said like that it sounded unpatriotic, or even ludicrous. But when I challenged him to name a culture that he believed was inferior to ours, he could not do so! We went several rounds on this one, as I proposed candidate cultures of my own (radical Islam, Mexico’s Aztlan movement, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc.). Each and every time, he proclaimed my candidate inferior cultures as at least equal, and sometimes superior to our own. And yet he still rejected my hypothetical guiding principle. Interesting, though a little sad and scary in the end…

What do you think about these commandments of political correctness? Do they ring true for you?