Political Correctness Must tend towards Tyranny.
A Politically Correct Regime has an inbuilt tendency seen in our own country, to creep towards full-on dictatorship. That is because the equality of outcomes for which it searches is unattainable, except by dint of reducing populations to the status of slaves or dehumanised, empty shells.
PC is founded on Nothingness
What is being addressed here are the moral foundations of Political Correctness which lead to this oppression. Because Political Correctness is fundamentally a moral system. When it speaks of the need for ‘equality,’ of ‘social justice,’ of ‘fairness,’ of the ‘wrongness’ of ‘oppression,’ etc, it is articulating moral positions.
The question immediately arises: On what is this morality based? Where do the politically correct concepts of ‘justice’ or ‘fairness’ etc come from? Why is it necessary to be ‘equal’ at all costs’? Why shouldn’t one group, however its members define themselves, ‘oppress’ another in the terms as used by PC, if it has the inclination and ability to do so? In other words, what is the origin of the ‘ought’ in ‘we ought to be Politically Correct’ ?
Political Correctness is Self-Refuting
The devastating answer seems to be that, if one takes Political Correctness at its own valuation when it says that there is no reality other than the reality we construct for ourselves – the idea which is the root of multiculturalism and all the other manifestations of ‘Equality’ as defined by Political Correctness – then there is no ‘ought ‘ about Political Correctness. The ethics of Political Correctness also come from nowhere. They too are merely a human construct with no foundation in anything. P.C. concepts of ‘Equality,’ Social ‘Fairness,’ ‘Justice’ etc. have no more value than any other ethical system. They are merely a set of preferences of a particular group which it imposes because it has the power to do so. By its own logic Political Correctness has no right to set itself up as having any intrinsic moral force or of being superior to anything.
Political Correctness can be based on Human Worth and Reason ?
Immanuel Kant
A supporter of Political Correctness might then take another tack. ‘It is not necessary to show that it has any foundation other than the Reason, which exists in the Human Mind. Political Correctness approaches Immanuel Kant’s ideal of ethics based on Reason which in turn is founded on an appreciation of intrinsic Human Worth, more closely than any other system.’
Immanuel Kant and Human Worth
But here is what Kant had to say about Human Worth:-
‘These, therefore, are not merely subjective ends whose existence has a worth for us as an effect of our action, but objective ends, that is, things whose existence is an end in itself; an end moreover for which no other can be substituted, which they should subserve merely as means, for otherwise nothing whatever would possess absolute worth; but if all worth were conditioned and therefore contingent, then there would be no supreme practical principle of reason whatever. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals,)
This appears to be Kant’s argument:
Something must have absolute worth
1.If man does not have absolute worth, then nothing has absolute worth.
2.Therefore, man has absolute worth.
3.But why must something have absolute worth?
Kant’s reliance on Reason fails because Reason cannot answer this question. So the Politically Correct cannot rely on Kant and Reason / Human Worth to get themselves out of the bind that their ideology is self-refuting.
(Incidentally, the fact that there is nothing intrinsic about the worth of Human Beings means that that ‘Human Rights,’ so –called, are based on nothing whatsoever).
It Taps into Human Nature?
Ah!’ Our by now somewhat desperate supporter of Political Correctness might say, ‘but even if Political Correctness is a free –floating system like the others, it should nevertheless be supported over the others because it taps into the intuitive human need for fairness and justice more satisfactorily than they do. And since it is intuitive, we need not rely on Reason, or anything else.’‘
Morality is not Necessarily merely the Imposition of Power Elites
But hang on, putting aside the easily refuted assertion that Political Correctness is ‘fairer’ than other systems, doesn’t the assumption that normal human beings ‘intuit’ such things as fairness and justice simply imply that ethical systems are not necessarily constructed out of nothing by power elites for self-serving purposes, which is pretty much the neo-Marxist, Politically Correct position ?
‘Well yes, I suppose it does….’
Universally Occurring Wells of Morality Point to an Objective Standard
And again, if normal human beings have these universally occurring ethical wells, does this not deny the Politically Correct position that there is no objective standard by which one set of ethics may be judged against another? Doesn’t this then mean that one culture or one set of actions on the part of an individual can be morally superior to another and so the basis of unfettered individualism and multiculturalism is false?
‘Yeeeesss. If you put it like that it certainly seems to……’
The Knowledge of Good and Evil
But consider this. A man (or woman) may have conflicting natural feelings, the products of our evolution as social animals. For example, the need to save a drowning person on the one hand and the need to get himself or herself out of danger on the other. Where does the knowledge come from (which the individual may choose to ignore) that tells that individual that there is an overriding imperative, a sense of ‘ought,’ to try to save the drowning person regardless of increased danger to himself and his genes?
In other words, what is the origin of our knowledge of what is right and what is wrong? It was this knowledge which quite recently condemned two Community Officers who failed to attempt to rescue a child drowning in a Pond because (they claimed) they hadn’t received the necessary training.
‘Umm…Well, if there is such a knowledge, it’s probably just our Christian culture kicking in…..?’
But where did Christianity get it from and why is there widespread recognition that Christianity brings truth in this regard much more clearly than any other religion or philosophy? A recognition which helps to explain the historic growth of this religion and its world-historical influence?
Baffling, but it Works?
‘But,’ our Politically Correct interlocutor, by now almost at his wits’ end, might go on, desperate to avoid the apparently inevitable conclusion of the origin of our moral knowledge since this would completely obliterate the PC idea that ethics are the invention of power elites, ‘even if Political Correctness as an ethical system has by its own logic no more intrinsic worth than the ethical systems which it claims are inventions and ‘oppressive’ etc; even if it cannot rely on Reason and intrinsic Human Worth to justify itself; even if it denies itself again and again when it claims validation by intuition, shouldn’t it still be supported? Because by getting rid of ‘privileges’ of family, race, sexuality, religion and culture it produces a society which simply works better than those which are constructed on those lines in that it is more conducive to human flourishing?’
No it Doesn’t
If we accept that human flourishing is a valid criterion by which to judge whether or not one course of action is to be preferred over another, the truth as we are seeing all around us is that it is exactly that which Political Correctness doesn’t encourage. By a host of measurable indicators, it is a disaster to the well-working of our society and the flourishing of its people, as visitors to this site ( Green Arrow) are well aware.
‘What Works’ as a policy is mere practicality with no sense of ultimate, inescapable obligation about it. That is why more and more in our morally relativistic society, people feel no need to conduct themselves in what once would have been considered a moral fashion, if they can get away with it. This attitude is tending to corrupt our society at every level and in every respect. It is bringing about the end of what was most civilised about Britain. In 1940 the leftist writer George Orwell wrote that, ‘The gentleness of English Civilisation is its most marked characteristic.’ Thanks in large measure to the malign effects of what we now call Political Correctness, no such claim could possibly be made about the amoral, atomised, violent, selfish and racially, religiously and culturally divided place that is Britain today.
Political Correctness: A Fraud and a Disaster which does not work
Political Correctness is responsible for much of the moral decline and social disintegration of this country. It is the underpinning of the multiculturalism and multiracialism which has so much heightened these trends.
It has brought these things about because it is a lie. It falsely claims a moral standing and impartiality to which it is not entitled. And because it is a lie it does not work.
