This year's "niggardly"

My dear sir, I am not surprised at all by this. After all, no one ever said such people qualified as intelligent life !

Your servant,

Lord Karth

PC == Fascism

My kids are racists against southern Louisianans. They don't like red pepper sauce.

You're right, Rod, I won't believe how it ends--because you never told us!

This is nuts

Yes, this absolutely seems like facism in the name of political correctness. And this suppression of freedom of thought by the politically correct and the ignorant is going to come around to bite the people who are currently enjoying wallowing in moral outrage in the butt, in my opinion.

Wasn't this student's real crime to be interested in a topic that his African-American co-workers might have felt was their sole province? Or perhaps the suggestion that some white people, somewhere, might have been opposed to the Klan was the source of the offense? This should outrage anyone with half a brain.

I never read a book outside of my house without wrapping it in a cover. To keep it clean, of course.

"Lord Karth?" Is "Lord" your given name, or are you British, or what?

Just curious.

Hi, newenglander. The ignorance of history is not the point, I think. It's the unwillingness to believe a view of history that contradicts a sense that one's oppression is so great that no one else's oppression, or resistance to that oppression, could be of any consequence.

Historically, I believe, the Klan were also anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish. I think the source of the offense that this student committed was a sense that he was not "entitled" to learn about a view of history that contradicted the exclusive sense of victimhood of his African-American co-workers. The fact that a university administration colluded in this nonsense is appalling.

Confirms what I have long suspected: scratch a PC liberal, and you'll find a Fascist underneath.

That Daily Telegraph story reminds me of some of the things I don't miss about the British press. The upside of its wilful disregard for elementary fact-checking is that it is somewhat livelier that America's rather staid newspapers. The downside is its ability to transform "An organisation that is partially funded by government grants has published a book that advocates that schools should not be hesitant to report racist incidents to the local education authority, and also suggests that a resistance to foreign foods might be an early indicator of subtly racist attitudes" into "ZOMG TAXPAYERS MONEY IS BEING USED TO REPORT KIDS WHO DON'T LIKE SPICY FOOD TO THE COUNCIL!!!!11eleven"

About the toddler, etc.: On the one hand, the Telegraph is a bit of a silly newspaper - the Times is about the same politically, but more rational. I do think the idea that small children who don't like foreign food should be classed as racist is both stupid and offensive. On the other hand, if children start mocking a child who's brought such food to school for his lunch, then, yes, that could be racist. Personally, I think the word "racist" is over-used, and the objection should really to children behaving discourteously, which laughing at a classmate's curry and chapatis definitely is. This seems only to be an area of discussion, and I think you're reading too much into it.

In most areas, I think the UK is less PC than the USA. I don't think that stuff about someone being reprimanded for reading a book about the KKK would have happened here. I got into trouble once with a group of liberal (I guess) US academics, at a conference, when we were chatting, and they were laughing about new chemical terms being named after cartoon characters, etc. - I said that it's a shame that people don't learn Latin much anymore, and the whole group went silent with horror at what I'd said.

Nick, you may have put your finger on it with the "code-word" thing. When we start trying to jump on someone's every word and action in a hypersensitive way that looks for hidden meanings rather than simply asking them what they meant, we do eliminate the possiblity of real dialogue. When people are forced to defend every action or word against the charge of hidden meanings (or, if you like, thought crimes) then real liberty becomes impossible.

Instead of interpreting what someone says in the most negative way, why not simply ask them to say more about what they were talking about?

FBC, thanks for asking. I avoided additional verbiage in my previous post because in my experience with this topic most people see me abusing a deceased equine... :-)

My observation is based on my action-reaction premise. I hasten to point out that while I am complying with the prevailing usage of "conservative" and "liberal", in this case I mean them to be those who maintain and profit from the status quo (conservative) and those who want to change it (liberal).

Political correctness per se is a liberal construction, no doubt about it at least in my mind. As a person who self-identifies as a liberal -- intended in the status quo sense -- I am especially bitter about it. It permits bias to exist and continue to be applied in the status quo without actually causing -- let alone promoting -- change. My point is that a conservative will "accept" the verbiage of PC while in his own mind continuing and maintaining the meanings and connotations of the usages that PC intends to replace or suppress. I again hasten to add that I don't mean to use a broad brush and accuse every conservative, or even many of them, of using a PC term but thinking the offensive term. It simply serves as a brief way to illustrate my point.

So, "joint creation" is a confusing phrase. I apologize for not extending at least that part of my previous post to something like this: political correctness is a collaborative effort between the liberal creators of PC and the conservatives it targets to place a feel-good veneer over the fact that they are doing nothing to address the root causes. They have jointly created the atmosphere of superficiality we currently "enjoy".

The term PC actually comes from the Chinese Cultural Revolution (or from Mao's "Little Red Book,") doesn't it? So, anyone who is "politically incorrect," must be corrected, gently, if possible, but ultimately through "re-education camps."

I agree with Franklin, Facism is Facism whether it comes from the Left or the Right.

Having supervised Keith, I am convinced that he did this with the knowledge that he would make trouble. Keith is student, yes but he was working as a janitor before he started taking classes. So the "student" is a misnomer, because he actually an employee.
Regardless, knowing that Keith is a troublemaker and a rabble rouser, I can only guess that he was reading the material, not because he sided with Notre Dame, but because he empathized with the Klan. Keith has tried the "reverse discrimination" thing before and failed. He is surrounded by blacks in his line of work, most are his co-workers and others are his supervisors usually.

This was calculated, but he again failed to get any money, which is his true agenda.