Politically speaking, I am an "old school" conservative - ( the kind of traditional conservative who admires the thought of Edmund Burke :nerd: !) - and my personal view of political correctness is that it is essentially a weapon of cultural Marxism and its growing prevalence in the West ( the US, in particular) represents a clear and dangerous threat freedom of speech/expression, the principle of ( liberal democratic) political freedom and indeed reason itself (!) in modern Western societies.

I was absolutely delighted, therefore, to hear the famed, and highly respected Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, recently ( just last month) argue ,during a televised interview at Harvard, that the rise of political correctness on American university campuses and in the reputable mainstream media ( CNN, the "New YorK Times", "The Washington Post", etc;) had back-fired on the left and seen it do its own cause an "enormous disservice" by inadvertently stoking the fires of angry dissent among the members (and potential members) of so-called "Alt-Right" political groups in the United States. (Many of whom were, Pinker stressed, "highly literate, highly intelligent, media and internet savvy individuals".)

By suppressing basic truths, placing taboos upon the discussion of certain important topics and refusing to allow people to speak objective facts, the culture of politically correctness in modern schools, universities and the mass media had, Pinker said, rendered people vulnerable to become angry and radicalised into adopting extreme explanations and conclusions to account the facts they had been hitherto denied when they did, inevitably, come to learn what the truth actually was regarding certain important, basic social and political realities.

Here is what Pinker had to say with respect to four incontrovertible facts that the politically correct left have rendered more or less taboo and unmentionable: (I have quoted Pinker verbatim in the italicized paragraphs below).

(1) The Superiority of Capitalism over Communism/Socialism.

"Here's a fact that gonna sound ragingly controversial but is not, and that is that capitalist societies are better than communist ones. If you doubt it, then just ask yourself the question, would I rather live in South Korea or North Korea ? Would I rather live in West Germany in the 1970s or East Germany in the 1960s ? I submit that this is actually not a controversial statement, but in university campuses, it would be considered flamingly radical".

(2) The Myth of Gender Equality

"Here's another one. Men and women are not identical in their life priorities, in their sexuality, in their tastes and interests. This is not controversial to anyone who has even glanced at the data. The kind of vocational interest tests of the kind your high school guidance counsellor gave you were given to millions of people, and men and women give different answers to what they wanna do for a living, and how much time they wanna allocate to family versus career and so on. But you can't say it. A very famous person on this campus (Harvard) did say it, and we all know what happened to him. He's no longer, well he's on this campus, but he's not in the same office".

(3) Race and Violent Crime

"Here's a third fact that is just not controversial, but it sounds controversial, and that is that different ethnic groups commit crimes at different rates. You can go to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Look it up on their website. The homicide rate among African-American is about seven or eight times higher than it is among European Americans".

(4) Islamic Terrorism

"And terrorism, go to the Global Terrorist data base, and you find that worldwide the overwhelming majority of suicide terrorist attacks are committed by Islamic extremist groups".

The fact that Pinker had the guts to say these things immediately led the left to attack him wholesale, thus proving his point ! P. Meyers a well-known leftist intellectual wrote, " I am shocked that a Harvard Professor would promote such ignorance and falsehoods". But, of course, none of the facts Pinker states are rebuttable and Myers make no attempt to do so, he's just schoolmarming Pinker for having the balls to speak the truth in public.

Steve Pinker is well known for his liberal/ progressive political views, but on the issue of political correctness he is repeating Trump's strident exhortation of 2017 almost verbatim, namely:"We have to stop being so politically correct in this country !"

I agree and I am thankful to academics like Steve Pinker and Jordan Peterson for having the courage to literally put everything on the line ( their reputations, their livelihoods, their careers) and speak out against the wicked tyranny of political correctness and the other intellectual descendents of Cultural Marxism in the postmodern era that are blighting American schools and universities and being broadcast by the mainstream mass media in: deconstructivism, multiculturalism, gender feminism, egalitarian social engineering and so on.

Regards

Dachshund