From: wilfy@dsrsfsfgsfdsbsfsbsgsb.com   
      
   The Redistribution of Power   
      
      
      
   'But what is the point of political correctness? Why are   
   some things politically correct, and others not?   
   At its most fundamental, political correctness seeks to   
   redistribute power from the powerful to the powerless. At   
   its most crude, it opposes power for the sake of opposing   
   power, making no moral distinction between whether the   
   power is malign or benign, or whether the powerful   
   exercise their power in a way that can be rationally and   
   reasonably justified.   
   The only reason that it is more politically correct for   
   religious fundamentalists to deliberately kill as many   
   innocent civilians as possible (Hamas suicide bombers)   
   than for a liberal democracy (Israel) to selectively kill the   
   terrorist leader responsible for the wave of suicide   
   bombers (Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin) while trying to   
   avoid the loss of innocent life, is because the Israeli   
   government is strong, and the Palestinians weak.   
   America, as the world's most powerful country, can   
   never do any good, even though it is the world's most   
   powerful liberal democracy, the largest donor of overseas   
   aid, and it defeated both Nazism and Communism.   
   The West, as the world's most powerful cultural and   
   economic group, can safely be blamed for all the world's   
   ills, even though it is largely responsible for the worldwide   
   spread of prosperity, democracy and scientific advance.   
   Multinational corporations are condemned as the   
   oppressors of the world's poor, rather than seen as engines   
   of global economic growth with vast job-creating invest-ments   
   in the world's poorest countries, pushing up wages   
   and transferring knowledge.   
   Conversely, political correctness automatically supports   
   the weak and vulnerable, classifying them as nearly   
   untouchable victims, irrespective of whether they merit   
   such support or not. When the successful, affluent,   
   powerful Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was ritually   
   murdered in the streets of Amsterdam for insulting Islam,   
   the politically correct, including the Guardian and Index   
   on Censorship, automatically sided with the comparatively   
   powerless Islamic Dutch-Moroccan killer.   
   The way that PC distorts news values was shown in the   
   comparative coverage of the murder of 52 innocent people   
   by Islamic extremists in Britain's worst ever terrorist   
   attack, and the killing of an innocent Brazilian immigrant   
   by British police a fortnight later. After a few days, the   
   coverage of the terrorist attack was obliterated by satur-ation   
   coverage of the accidental police killing, much to the   
   anger of relatives of the London bombings. The reason   
   was simply that the terrorist attacks, although a far more   
   important story, didn't fit the politically correct agenda,   
   whereas the killing of a vulnerable immigrant by a power-ful   
   police force did.   
   The extent to which PC subordinates moral consid-erations   
   to considerations of power is shown by the PC   
   response to the extraordinary spectacle of Iraqis   
   celebrating the first free democratic elections in their lives   
   under the auspices of the US, and being threatened with   
   being blown to bits for the simple act of voting by a   
   coalition of Islamic fundamentalists and fascist Baath   
   party supporters. Even the most cursory ethical consid-eration   
   would show it is right to support ordinary Iraqis   
   trying to choose their own government, over those who   
   want to kill them for practicing that democracy. But the   
   fact that the elections are supported by the powerful US   
   and opposed by the comparatively powerless funda-mentalists   
   causes problems for the PC. Opposing power   
   for the sake of opposing power, many of the politically   
   correct left-including the Guardian, the Independent,   
   most of the BBC and the former Labour MP George   
   Galloway-have chosen to champion those who are   
   deliberately trying to murder innocent civilians.   
   Automatically opposing the powerful and supporting   
   the powerless means that, when presented with a new   
   issue, the politically correct must decide not what is right   
   or wrong, malign or benign, true or untrue, but who is the   
   more powerful and who the less powerful. The PC   
   analytical process enjoys the beauty of simplicity:   
      
   1. identify the victim.   
      
   2. support them and their interests, irrespective of any   
   other factors.   
      
   Thus in a dispute between China and the US, the   
   politically correct will tend to support China; but in a   
   dispute between China, and, say, Tibet, they will   
   automatically (and rightly in this case) support Tibet.'   
      
      
   --   
   From: 'The Retreat From Reason:   
   Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain'   
   by Anthony Browne   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)