The American Declaration
Commentary at jeromehuyler.com
"Hands Up" 4 the March 2 Madness:
Understanding the Peril Political Correctness Poses
"The ruling ideas of any epoch are merely the ideas of the ruling class"
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Taking to the streets, angry activists dressed in the garb of "community organizers" - throw their hands in the air and loudly chant: "Hands Up, Don't Shoot." Why? Because, for those activists, Michael Brown's death on that hot summer night in Ferguson Missouri perfectly symbolizes the bigotry and brutality inner-city minorities in this country suffer daily. Except, as a preponderance of eye-witness, courtroom testimony and forensic evidence compiled in four separate autopsies conclusively proved, Michael Brown did and said no such thing. Officer Wilson acted in self-defense. The "Black Rights Matter" movement performs in a "Theater of the "Absurd."
The truth about political correctness is that those who embrace it are certain of one thing: there is no such thing as "truth." For them, "truth" is merely a trick promoters of capitalism play on people in order to justify injustice and pacify a gullible populace.
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Under capitalism, says the Left, every cultural institution serves a single purpose: to exploit the many for the benefit of the few (under the guise of promoting the "general welfare"). America's leaders prattle on about the nation's patriotic past and promote a "wholesome" pride in flag and country - not to spread knowledge, but to keep those trapped in capitalism's iron grip of greed ignorant and in tow.
So, any half-baked lie, far-fetched exaggeration, historical distortion, convenient omission of pertinent "fact," or character smear, that can promote the radical's agenda may "reasonably" be pressed into service. By all ways and means, American Capitalism, Conservatism and the Republican Party must be debunked and junked. Remember, there is no truth.
A Catalogue of Lies Our Leaders Have Told
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Looking straight into the TV camera, President Obama solemnly assures his countrymen: "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. If you like your insurance policy, you can keep your insurance policy." Yet, owing to the many mandated health services The Affordable Care Act was about to force every American to purchase, he knew full well those were promises ObamaCare would not and could not keep. .
Days after a U. S. Ambassador and three brave members of his security detail are slaughtered in Benghazi, Libya, this same president promises to bring to justice the amateur California film maker responsible for the overseas slaughter.
After conceding over twenty times that a president cannot alter our immigration policies because "we're a nation of laws" and the president's "job is to execute the laws that are passed," not "bypass congress and change the law [himself] . . . that's not how democracy works," Mr. Obama went ahead and fundamentally altered the nation's immigration laws with not much more than a pen and a phone. How can the president lack Constitutional authority one day and suddenly acquire it the next?
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After mercilessly impugning Donald Trump's character and fitness for high office at every campaign event and in a succession of nationally televised presidential debates, Hillary invokes the sage counsel of her "good friend," Michelle Obama, to wit: "When they go LOW, we go HIGH. Apparently, the former First Lady doesn't know up from down.
Having spent her adult life getting rich by using her positions of public office to help the very wealthy get even wealthier, Mrs. Clinton wags her morally wrinkled finger and accuses Donald Trump of just being out for the rich.
Campaigning for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts on October 24, 2014, Hillary Clinton stormed:
"And don't let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you, that, you know, it's corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know, that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly."
The remark either betrayed a gross inattention to the entire record of human experience or was a flat-out lie. With Hillary, you never know which. "Trickle-Down" economics works every time it is tried. It allowed such industrious men as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, more recently, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos create not just new jobs, but brand new industries. That's what "Trickle Down" achieves, when it is not burdened down with ever-rising taxes and sky-high regulatory compliance costs. Of course, the capitalist culprits have no grounds for complaint. After all, Pres. Obama insisted: "You didn't build that,"
What are the absurdities today's Progressives are busy peddling? What are the ideological weapons protruding from the tyrants' toolkit?
Capitalist greed, rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and police brutality, white privilege, income inequality, hate speech, rape culture, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, man-made global climate change, and the many "micro-aggressions" that plague so many college-aged daffodils.
Only, there is nothing in reality that bares even a slight resemblance to these absurd accusations, not these days. Social conditions will never be perfect; but the historic civil rights battles that needed to be fought are thankfully behind us.
Since there is no final truth or objective reality, just a matter of who wins and gets to write the "history" of the times, these progressives are free at any moment to affirm whatever narrative spin suits their immediate purposes. The aim of the exercise: to enable government to reach ever deeper into our pockets and place an ever-heavier burden on our backs. Though there is no absolute truth, these sly crusaders are somehow certain that social justice and the advanced welfare state it supports trumps mere "old-fashioned" justice (where people are allowed to gain, KEEP, use, trade, or otherwise dispose of the fruits of their honest industry.
Meanwhile, they ferociously insist that man-made climate change is "settled science" and that the global warming "deniers" need to be silenced and shut out of their professions. They laud the blessings of "diversity," yet demand strict conformity of belief from their adherents (and, come to think of it, the rest of us, too).
Now, since many of the folks the Left wants to reach - on and off campus - might have enough residual common sense to see through their loony narratives, Americans must be MADE TO BELIEVE. Peer pressure, social ostracism, ridiculing, guilting, all potent weapons available for molding popular opinion.
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To the radicals of the Left, it isn't the truth that needs to be spread, but authoritative orthodoxy , every bit as fixed and dogmatic as the sacred tenets of any fundamentalist faith. Why else would anyone who dares to challenge their hardened positions need to be silenced, shunned or prevented from speaking on our college campuses. Conservative speakers are constantly smeared as agents of "hate" and, it is said, there's no room for "hate" in our institutions of higher learning. Yet, it is nothing but pure, naked hate that greets any Conservative voice that dares walk across a campus quadrangle.
Political correctness amounts to nothing less than a campaign to suppress free thought and expression. The dire significance of this should not be missed.
The mind is man's indispensable tool of understanding. We process the experience of reality our five senses provide in order to discover what it is we need to sustain our lives and cope with the many obstacles that cross our paths daily.
Reason, the tool of understanding doubles as man's means of survival. To deal effectively with all the problems life poses, men must see things as they actually are. That's what makes honesty so vital a virtue. How can we expect to deal effectively with the world if we pretend that what is, ISN'T and/or that what isn't IS. What's the use of tilting at windmills that exist only in our minds? And how are we to discover what is and what isn't if we are not permitted to think, but are made to believe what others tell us to? How can losing (really, surrendering) one's mind benefit anyone?
A rational person may have deeply-held beliefs and want to spread them far and wide. He shows respect for others when he shares what he knows, explains exactly why his ideas reflect the truth of things and why others should seriously weigh the solutions he proposes. Political correctness short-circuits the whole rational enterprise .
Why must some decide to force their ideas and opinions on others, stripping them of the plain freedom to think for themselves? What don't the PC Police want the captured minds to discover? Why discount the experience of reality that comes from simply opening one's eyes? Why discourage thought, yet demand compliance of belief? If the PC police aren't focused on a clear and visible reality, then on what are they focused?
An old Hollywood movie, offers a troubling clue. The story is set in a quaint Austrian village nestled in the high Alps not far from the Swiss border. As the curtain rises village life is idyllic. Viewers are introduced to a wise and warm-hearted professor. Professing liberal tolerance toward all, it is his great fortune to be surrounded by a loving family and admiring students and colleagues.
Then comes the Nazi occupation and the world is turned upside down. As students report to class in Nazi uniforms, spouting the party line, intolerance toward dissent and everything Jewish reaches into every corner of the popular psyche. Bearing a smidgen of Jewish blood, himself, the mild-mannered professor is stripped of his academic post, shunned by his students, taken from his family and sent to prison where he falls ill and dies. For James Stewart and Maureen O'Sullivan, trapped in a world gone stark raving mad with intolerance and a full-throttled suppression of thought and expression, there was only escape - across an inhospitable Alpine pass to neutral Switzerland. The trek does not end happily
One who personally lived through the Nazi's rise to power explained what the early days were like. "Very few people were true Nazis, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come" ([Dennis Zellaha posted this biographical account on his Facebook timeline some time ago).
We study the past to avoid the historically recurring pitfalls that, otherwise, will surely confront us in the future. The lessons of history tell us that political correctness is just the start of a seriously degenerative process. And everything we have and hope to hold onto hangs in the balance. Thomas Jefferson said all that needs to be said about the damnable development more than two centuries ago::
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