Below is a link to a video my daughter took this morning. Her husband had just driven the two younger girls to the bus-stop when . . .
Bear on the Porch
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| This week's bit of color - my son-in-law shared this post from Mandatory |
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Below is a quote from Facebook that "ties" in well
with a blog on Political Correctness:
(To my foreign readers - please note the punch line is a sound-alike for "tie.")
Grace Note: I re-typed this entire blog to get rid of the gremlin who turned my words into "fine print." Half worked, half did not. So please forgive, get out your magnifying glasses and read the words of two very well-spoken gentlemen. They're well worth squinting a bit.
Political Correctness Gone Amuck
Over the last few weeks I've been accumulating other people's thoughts on the possibility that being "politically correct" has become a bête noir which, while not as threatening as the fascism of the far right, should still be of concern to all of us. Below are comments from people who, like me, are questioning something we've long advocated: "Political Correctness." Please read these comments with an open mind.
From an editorial in The Orlando Sentinel (11/28/15) by Victor Davis Hanson, who styles his remarks as "On the right." Headline: Campus administrators reaping what they sow
Among Mr. Hanson's points:
Student protests grow more extreme the more they are appeased. "Radical students bully liberal deans, crowd into the offices of college presidents, disrupt students in libraries and shout down public speakers. Mr. Hanson notes that most often the self-appointed activist leaders are among the most wealthy, pointing out that furious protesters who recently rallied against "oppression" at Yale's Silliman College, live in a building with two grand pianos, pool tables, gym, movie theater, indoor basketball court, computer lab, dance studio, four music rooms, a film-editing lab, and an art gallery! Also mentioned is a group at UCLA demanding black-only student housing. Those of us who recall the Civil Rights movement can only boggle at that one. Shades of the Old South! Mr. Hanson's final paragraphs go on to say: "Calls to stop 'cultural appropriation' by prohibiting some groups from enjoying the dress, fashion, music and art of a different ethnicity are nihilistic. Would minority students wish to be denied from appreciating opera, symphony, impressionist art, Platonic dialectic, Shakespearean drama, physics or constitutional government just because these genres were originally created by Europeans?
"The final irony?
"For a half-century, professors have privileged diversity over unity. Faculties focused more on American sins than American virtues. They fixated on the color of our skins rather than the content of our characters. Administrators watered down the curriculum, lowered standards and appeased pampered students.d
"Now they are reaping the liberal whirlwind that they alone have sown."
Grace note: I consider myself a middle-of-the-road liberal and rarely find myself agreeing with anyone editorializing on the "right," but I can't deny Mr. Hanson makes some very valid points. We have raised our children and grandchildren to be so PC, they are in danger of losing all common sense.
Mr. Hanson mentions Yale's Silliman College. Below is a portion of a letter from an outraged Yale alumnus (Steven Kovacs, Yale '68) about the suggestion that Calhoun College be renamed.
"John C. Calhoun was not only a graduate of Yale, but one of the most distinguished political figures in American history. He was a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president of the United States. He was one of a triumvirate of brilliant political figures, along with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. He advocated states' rights, limited government, and free trade. To reduce him to being the leading champion of slavery is to do him injustice. So what are we to do with such a historical figure? In fact, what are we to do with any historical figure? Take them out of their historical context? Shall we rename all of our many institutions bearing the names of Washington and Jefferson because they owned slaves?
Let's stop being so politically correct and so very, very wrong. Let us accept the wide range of humanity and recognize that we are all situated in a particular historical reality.
I am fervently against renaming Calhoun College. But if, against all good reason and judgment, it is to be renamed, I sincerely hope it will carry the name of Cole Porter, the most brilliant American composer and songwriter of the twentieth century—who also happened to be a Yalie, gay, and disabled, having lost his leg in a riding accident. He's a hell of a lot more exciting than Abraham Pierson [yet another Yale residential college]. And he's politically correct!"
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I seem to have begun a topic that could go on forever. (I have a whole stack of recent articles I haven't touched yet. The Episcopal priest at Church of the Resurrection in Longwood (FL) even mentioned the problem of not raising our children with strength enough to meet life head on in his sermon this morning.
It is possible that in the long run, Donald Trump's heinous remarks in the current presidential campaign will actually do us all a service. No idea - in this case, sensitivity to other people's feelings - is so precious that it cannot run amuck, exploding into a chimera so distorted of its original purpose that it threatens us all.
We will definitely revisit this concern at a later date.
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Thanks for stopping by,
For Grace's website, listing all books as Blair Bancroft, click here.
For a brochure for Grace's editing service, Best Foot Forward, click here.
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