The better kind of hypocrite |
2006-09-17 |
But there are also worse things. Far worse. Instead of being a politically correct hypocrite, you can be a nationalist hypocrite, someone who excuses in ourselves the behavior you condemn in others. And instead of being afraid of offending people who are different, you can be eager to. You can take pleasure in suspecting them, blaming your problems on them, presenting them as a threat we need to confront and fight to protect ourselves.
The second excess has always been the norm. The rule of thumb was that anyone who is not like me is potentially dangerous. Only very recently did some of us switch from excessive intolerance to excessive tolerance, from one kind of hypocrisy to another. Excessive tolerance is silly, but consider the improvement: The normal excess leads to large scale discrimination and murder, but the new kind leads only to relativism, self-deprecation, and cowardice in the face of reality. Of the two, I prefer the tolerant kind: I prefer the politically correct hypocrite over the nationalist.
In the new rightish victimology, politically correct hypocrisy exists in a vacum. Racism and xenophobia and cultural paranoia does not trouble us any more, it is not relevant. You can either be politically correct, or you can be honest. Those are the alternatives. Anyone who brings up nationalism is an alarmist. The old racism is dead, don't you see? It lies in that grave over there. Don't dig it up, let it rest, let historians deal with it.
With the intolerant excess out of the picture, we can focus everything on fighting the tolerant excess. Don't hold anything back, they're the only enemy that matters. Shout and whine if you like, don't be modest, no injustice is too small to be a National Disgrace.
"Look how everyone makes fun of Christians! But you don't ever see them do the same with Muslims, now do you?" Poor us, we're being mocked! Treated unfairly! And .. dare I say it .. persecuted! This is an injustice! It must end! Take to the streets, enroll all the pundits in this struggle of liberation against the oppression of the p.c. elites!
And .. they're basically right. Christianity is routinely misrepresented in the media. The secular culture does not understand Faith, and tries clumsily to translate it into terms it can understand. To the usual ignorant secularist, there are two kinds of religion: good religion, which is like secularism but with some vague and undemanding God-figure in the background, and bad religion, which is religion that actually stands for anything. Religion that says "you should not do that, it is not right", and "if you let Jesus into your heart he can change your life". I'm an atheist, but I'm also a former Christian. Trust me: The popular image of the believer is simply not correct. (Neither, of course, is the Christian image of the nonbeliever.)
Politically correct hypocrisy makes the distortion worse. Ideas that seem noble and exotic and excusable when we find them in Islam, appear dark and evil when we find them in Christianity. To someone with an aggressive sense of justice, this is intolerable. A scandal.
And it is a scandal, a small one. It is never good when people believe things that aren't true, or when they're dishonest, or hypocritical. The tolerant excess has all of this. So let's fight this hypocrisy! Protect truth and justice! Up up and away!
Well, now. I'm all for truth and justice, but on your way to the barricades, stop by the library and pick up some historical perspective. If the old intolerance truly is dead and irrelevant, and in no danger of ever coming back, then go ahead and fight the hypocrisy and injustice that remains. Political correctness is a silly thing to be angry and bitter over, but it wouldn't be wrong or dangerous.
But if, on the other hand, as I believe, intolerance is still relevant, if it has at best become unfashionable, and lies in waiting for an opportunity to return to us, then you should be more careful. Take care not to attack excessive tolerance in a way that could open the door for excessive intolerance. Keep both of them in view, attack both at the same time. And if you ever have to take sides, choose political correctness over nationalism.
You shouldn't be a politically correct hypocrite yourself, of course. But you should be more forgiving of their foolishness than that of the nationalists. Don't think "why oh why is the world full of fools, it makes me so angry", think "the world will always be full of fools, the best I can hope for is that they will be harmless". Nationalism, xenophobia and intolerance are some of the most destructive forces in history. Political correctness is a cute furry animal in comparison.
I believe that minority and class relations will always make us nervous, that the normal reaction to people outside of your in-group will always be irrational in some way or another. You can work at this, and try to improve yourself. You can study group psychology and the history of cultural relations, and learn to suspect your instincts. Go ahead and do that. But you also need to deal with the fact that most people around you will never do this. They're doomed to see the world through the lens of silly fashions, fashions that are beyond your control.
An elitist response to this would be to advocate political correctness in public, even if you don't believe in it yourself. This is what some people think about religion: There is no God, but it is useful for the "masses" to think that there is, so we should tell them so. I don't believe in that. It's wrong, and lies tend to take on lives of their own. I lie to myself too often as it is, why encourage more?
The right response is not to change your views, but the way you approach the views of others. Drop the puritanical approach to justice and honesty. Don't be that person who keeps a score of everything good and bad that has happened to them, and screams out the moment the balance goes below zero. "But they mock my God more than that other God! Look, I can prove it! I counted every religious joke on television for a week!" Well poor you. Did your God tell you it would be easy? Did he tell you that people would applaud you for telling them that the whole foundation of their lives is rotten? No, he told you they would spit in your face and persecute you. And now you're crying over a few jokes and harsh words.
All you ideologists too. "I want my party to get exactly as many positive mentions in the newspapers as the other parties! It's my right as a citizen!" Why are you so desperate for mainstream approval? The people who write in these newspapers are fools, so why do you expect them to agree with your ideology? It sure would be nice if they did, but what good does a sense of entitlement do you? Stop sulking over imbalance and bias, and just explain your views once more - carefully, politely, with solid arguments. Do it again. And again. And again. It might do some good, or it might not, but then the odds were always against you.
Grow some backbone. Rise above the foolishness of the mainstream. Drop that acute sense of justice and entitlement. Learn to accept that it is not the most important thing in the world that everyone should agree with you. There are other considerations too, the most important of which is that we must never go back to where we came from. Political correctness is silly. Nationalism is deadly.
Don't ever compromise on truth, but don't let your methods for promoting it undermine your goals. If the way you scream and exaggerate as you attack a harmless folly drives people to a more dangerous one, then you've done something wrong. If your anger and bitterness on behalf of Truth convinces people that anger and bitterness has a natural place in political debate, then you've done more harm than good. If, on your way to Perfection, you brand all your opponents as evil, and tell lies about them, and whip up public outrage against them, then you should have kept silent and left well enough alone.
Let this be your guide instead:
If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits.
- Cardinal Newman, Definition of a Gentleman (1852)
As a society we've gambled and won a great deal, but the game is not over. We should take care that we in our greed for more do not gamble away what we have already won. Excessive tolerance is one of those winnings. We don't know that we, as a whole, can ever do better. As individuals, yes, but as a society, who knows? Don't let that stop you from trying, but do let it influence your methods.
"Political correctness is silly. Nationalism is deadly."
- a succint summary of an excellent point. But how would you respond to the claim that political correctness as well could turn out to be deadly - to ourselves, if we lose our moral compass, and become prey to those that haven't?
"But how would you respond to the claim that political correctness as well could turn out to be deadly - to ourselves, if we lose our moral compass, and become prey to those that haven't?"
Which predators do you have in mind? In what ways could they be deadly?
What you're citing is the Hitler lesson from history. It's a good lesson, but it's just one of many. Other lessons that are just as relevant, but often overlooked because they're a bit duller, can be found in the 19th century, and the time up to World War 1. Look at the nationalism, and cultural paranoia, and widespread racism of that time. Look at the arrogance and jingoism and casual indifference and ideological fanaticism. What strikes me about that period is how the exaggerated fear of predators was often behind these things. Fear of other nations, fear of religious minorities. "We mustn't show any weakness! We must stand up for our values!"
So of course we shouldn't allow ourselves to become prey to someone evil and powerful who knows how to exploit our tolerance and good intentions. But neither do we want to see threats where there aren't any, or see them as larger than they really are - and I believe this is more common.
The trick then is in knowing which is which. Is it a large threat, a small threat, or no threat at all? There's no formula for that, we have to judge it case by case. We have to watch, and learn, and be honest.
To answer your question, though, I believe an excessively tolerant foreign policy is less deadly to everyone including ourselves than an excessively intolerant one. We're not dealing with theoretical excesses here, only the ones that really happen. It's only in anti-p.c. hyperbole that the self-loathing, relativistic, left-leaning etc. etc. elites will lay out the welcoming mat for their new Islamist overlords. In reality they'll never take it that far. They'll make stupid mistakes, but they're smaller than the ones made by nationalists.
I think we agree that PC is a belief in tolerance as a major, if not the only, social good. Further, I think we can all agree that it's better to be too tolerant than too intolerant. However, that implies there is a balancing point for tolerance. Where is it? Should we put it where PC would put it?
More to the point in these days, when two societies interact and one of them is pegged out at 100% on the intolerant side of the scale, then how tolerant should the other society be of this intolerance? Does the answer change any if violence, or even declarations of war, accompany this intolerance from the other?
Somewhere between surrendering to the intolerance of the other and making total war on the other without provocation is the proper balance between tolerance and intolerance. But this balance moves depending on the actions and tolerance or intolerance of the other. In a dangerous world, where intolerant others can acquire nuclear bombs to pre-emptively express their intolerance, we who prefer tolerance must be pragmatic, be prepared to punish attacks with counter-attacks, and be prepared to take forceful action to prevent attacks before they happen. If that leaves us open to accusations of imperfect tolerance, or even of extreme intolerance, then so be it.
To make an irreverent comparison, Bugs Bunny was always a friendly rabbit, a live and let live bunny, but when pushed too far he would say, "Of course you realize, Dis means War!!!" Then he would ruthlessly crush the current enemy, humiliating them in increasingly imaginative ways, until they surrendered totally.
If we can actually learn one lesson from Bugs Bunny, who has been opposed by anti-violent politically correct types for about 40 years now, it is that when we take action against a real enemy who means to do us harm, tolerance is no virtue until the enemy surrenders completely. At that point, trust but verify. But, until the enemy surrenders, to trust or tolerate is to invite treachery and attacks.
Pangloss: "I think we can all agree that it's better to be too tolerant than too intolerant. However, that implies there is a balancing point for tolerance. Where is it? Should we put it where PC would put it?"
Well of course not. But that is another discussion. If we want to discuss what the best policy is, then we need to find the right balance between intolerance and tolerance. My point here is something very different, and it is about the way one should attack excessive tolerance. Essentially, be more forgiving of these people. There's a strong tendency on the right to paint political correctness and all that as the main enemy of Freedom and Truth etc. It's not, and it never will be. The rhetoric we use should reflect that. It should reflect the relief we ought to feel at the fact that for instance racism and imperialism is no longer commonly acceptable. The way our history is brushed away by these hyperbolic pundits is irresponsible. As the Islam debate has shown us, it's a short way from attacking excessive tolerance to reviving excessive intolerance - or at least there is when it is down without perspective and without history.
Thank you!
This conversation stirred something rare in me and I responded later to another post on another site. But there is an extract that I believe explains why political correctness, atheism, and excessive tolerance are dangerous to us. Are they as dangerous as declared enemies? Of course not! But they are dangerous in the same way that it is dangerous to build your house on sand when a tsunami is headed your way.
"Atheism has become the official belief system of the European intellectual and taste-making classes, and to a somewhat lesser degree their American counterparts. Certainly it is the belief system of the New York Times, Reuters, all Ivy League faculties, the UN, and other NGO's.
"I hope it does not happen. But it is possible (probable if not inevitable) that some day Islam will dominate the government of some European countries, or even of America. At that point, all atheists will be told they must accept Islam or die. When they are given a choice between death within a religion that tells them they are no better than a pile of compost, and life under a religion that tells them they are slaves of Allah, most will choose a life of slavery over death and compost.
"They will turn to Islam and join the Jihad. Or they will pretend to believe in Islam and their children or grandchildren will be true believers who join the Jihad."
They are easy converts for aggressive Moslems.
We need something stronger and more inherently meaningful than atheism and multicultural tolerance if we are to survive as a civilization. Atheism, tolerance, PC, and the peace movement won't cut it.
Well, actually, many of the "politically correct" I've known (which originally was an euphanism for "Communist" and related ideologies on american campuses by the way) are not tolerant people. On the contrary they are filled with hate.
Now this certainly isn't true for everyone, but this is a significant group, and you can sure run into them on the internet. In the american context they hate americans, or rather the subset of americans who aren't "politically correct," which is to say most americans. There may be a similar sort of thing going in Norway aimed at Norwegians for all I know.
For the most part I don't think these people have any real connection to immigrants (of any sort) and aren't motivated by a concern for them. The driving motivation is the perception of an opportunity to distmantle and undermine a society that they hate.
Why they hate so much, I don't know. I've been trying to figure that one for years.
I also people who are called "politically correct" that seem genuinely tolerant. I know a lot of people like this and I like them. The amazing thing though, and sure others have noticed, is that very often these people live in communities nearly lily white and their children associate practically exclusively with children of a very similar background.
Meanwhile you find politically conservate whites in racially mixed communities.
It's just amazing how contradictory people can be.
Pangloss (in your blog entry): Like Satanism, Atheism in Europe and the Americas is defined by its opposition to Christianity. Like Satanism, at bottom its message lacks hope. Satanists eventually realize they are serving the forces of disorder and chaos. Atheists eventually realize their belief system leads to nihilism. For if in the final tally each man is nothing more than compost, then what distinguishes a man from an animal, or from a sack of guts and bones?
This shows that you do not understand atheism. You have a map of what atheism ought to be like, but you have not checked the map against the terrain. I can help you do that, if you're genuinely curious. Ask me anything you want. Ask me if I am a nihilist. Ask me if I would convert to Islam at gunpoint. You have a hypothesis, but you've lacked a test subject - well, here I am.
Mark Amerman: Well, actually, many of the "politically correct" I've known (which originally was an euphanism for "Communist" and related ideologies on american campuses by the way) are not tolerant people. On the contrary they are filled with hate.
In what way does this politically correct "hatred" harm you? I think there is a process of victimization on the right which teaches them that they have a right to be respected and admired. And if you get som bad press in the media, or some people mock your beliefs, then you need to complain loudly about it. Accuse them of treason and self-hatred. I don't think that's right. It's not right when anyone uses this kind of rhetoric - and it is in addition hypocritical when the right, which claims to be made of tougher stuff, does it.
As I think more about it, I realize I didn't say enough. What I said above is true but I didn't really get to the substantive issues.
There's a difference between being intolerant of your neighbor (because of your neighbor's ethnicity) and being opposed to the further immigration of that same ethnicity. People today often treat the two as if they are equivalent. But are they?
People are at times hostile and suspicious of neighbors who come from a different culture. I would argue that this is bad-thing and destructive and something we should strive to teach people, to the degree it's possible, not to do.
But is it morally wrong to oppose the immigration of others because they are ethnically different?
I think this is a different question. If we open our eyes and look at the world we find example after example of long-running, seemingly impossible to resolve (and often terrible) ethnic conflicts in country after country.
What kind of man would want to set up such a highly possible, highly probable, conflict for his grandchildren?
Leaving aside those who are motivated by an actual anticipation of such a conflict, and looking only at those who are motivated by "tolerance" --- to the degree that they seek out such situations to test their virtue, and, not so incidently, impose them on their less virtuous neighbors -- I have to say I find this moral calculus wanting.
The second subtantive issue is democracy. It's an obvious incongruity.
With the exception of the haters, people who believe in "tolerance" and mean by that unlimited immigration also believe in democracy.
Democracy.
And yet there is not one country in europe where the majority of the people want this immigration.
And everyone knows it.
Something doesn't add up. Perhaps the haters are more numerous than we want to think.
Bjorn,
I have to laugh. I'm used to not being respected and admired. I mean sometimes I am respected and I like that. And sometimes I'm not, and I don't like that. But really I have been in the circumstance of not being respected and admired many times. It kind of ceased being frightening sometime ago.
Also I think you're misunderstanding my meaning. Or to turn it around I'm not communicating it clearly enough. When I speak of some people being motivated by hate for the dominant culture they are born into I mean just that. They "hate." I'm not saying tolerance is hate.
Which I'm not sure is what you're attributing to me, but it sounds like it could be.
And also, please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that you are a hater. I absolute see you as a person that is motivated by idealism.
I'm glad you don't expect admiration. Many who complain about political correctness seem to do, however. There's a culture of whining on the right that is often just as bad as anything that is associated with the left. That's the acute sense of justice I was talking about.
As for political correctness, you've presented some arguments against politically correct ideas. That's fine, I have similar objections of my own. I think the fear of ethnic conflict is often exaggerated, (the Yugoslavia wars for instance were not inevitable, they were fueled by nationalist rhetoric), but that's another debate. But hypocritical and foolish as these people are, they're better than what they replaced. You say that many of them (who?) "hate" Americans. I doubt there's much hatred except from on the fringes, but even so, what harm does such self-hatred do to a culture, compared to its historically more common opposite?
If we had reason to think that humans have a great potential to be rational, then political correctness / excessive tolerance would be a tragedy. But I'm not so sure that we do. And that's why we should at least be relieved that that is the direction many of us are irrational these days, and not the other one. As the joke goes, there's something wrong with a world where the Germans don't want to go to war. Right, but would anyone want back the old Germans? There's all this mocking of European diplomats who think they can talk their way through any conflict. But don't fight each other any more! They don't enslave entire continents any more! Isn't that progress?
Instead of quoting real humans - people whose ideas and views are typical for their side in a certain debate - Stærk is instead making up all the quotes himself in this text. And having chosen this intellectually dishonest shortcut so commonly traveled by, he opts, not surprisingly, to reduce his adversary's views to absurd and complete parodies - this, rather than presenting them in an at least somewhat decent, objective and fair manner.
"But they mock my God more than that other God! Look, I can prove it! I counted every religious joke on television for a week!"
"I want my party to get exactly as many positive mentions in the newspapers as the other parties! It's my right as a citizen!"
How can anyone take this seriously? Still, Stærk has the nerve to pretend that he is taking the high road, and even quotes Cardinal Newman's definition of a Gentleman. I wondering if he has in fact taken the time to actually read it himself.
Furthermore, now it seems that all those who refuse to accept his views regarding political correctness, multiculturalism and Islam, are dangerous nationalists. I thought this was the very same mentality to which he objected. Lastly, wasn't the preferred term just a few weeks ago islamophobes? Why the switch to nationalists? Oh well, variety is the spice of life - why shouldn't that hold true for name-calling as well.
Now all that is missing is Øyvind Strømmen coming and yelling "fascists"...
Nvan: Furthermore, now it seems that all those who refuse to accept his views regarding political correctness, multiculturalism and Islam, are dangerous nationalists.
The way many on the right attack political correctness, without historical perspective, opens the door for excesses in the other direction. We can see some of those excesses in the islamophobes, who have revived the cultural paranoia of the 19th century. I'm not really attacking the islamophobes here - I do that often enough - but those who spend all their angry rhetoric on mostly harmless forms of political correctness, and say nothing at all against worse ideas at the other end. They think these ideas are dead. The islamophobes prove they're not.
But this is a larger point than about Islam. There's a pattern here. Ideas that were excessively intolerant and very harmful have been replaced by ideas that are excessively tolerant and mostly harmless - and this is worth remembering when we criticize those excessive tolerant ideas, (as we should).
Bjorn,
I don't think nationalism caused World War II. It's not the thing that made Nazi Germany so fundamentally wrong. Nor do I think nationalism caused the Yugoslav war. True in both these cases, without nationalism, these wars would not have been possible, but nationalism is a tool. It has its good and bad potentials.
For one thing without nationalism, a people cannot fight invasion and subjudgation by another. World War II would have been quickly over and we would have lost completely without polish and british and american nationalism.
The foundation and origin of the Yugoslav war lies in the ethnic hatred of the various groups for each other. This antagonism was long-standing and in fact this is just the latest of many wars. Communism aggravated it because communism as it played out under Tito was a zero-sum game where people got privileges only via others losing theirs. And instead of individuals competing with each other, it became ethnic groups competing against each other. But of course the antagonism was long-standing, and maybe it would have happened even without Tito and company.
Yes, somehow if we had the right people in there, this whole tragedy would have been avoided.
But that doesn't change the fact that it was very easy to make this war, and what made it so easy was the tremendous division within the country. Ethnic division is a natural fault line that can be exploited to create war. Look at what's happening in Iraq.
Have you read this first-hand account by Iraq the Model?
see http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/08/tale-of-two-tribes-gang-and-militia.html
As for hatred for americans; it's a big problem for americans. We'd be so foolish to think its not. If was just confined to the United States it'd be much easier to deal with. But in fact it crosses national borders and is very easily picked up by others.
Bjørn: "Excessive tolerance is silly, but consider the improvement: The normal excess leads to large scale discrimination and murder, but the new kind leads only to relativism, self-deprecation, and cowardice in the face of reality. Of the two, I prefer the tolerant kind: I prefer the politically correct hypocrite over the nationalist."
I think you are wrong here. It is excessive tolerance that leads to large scale discrimination and murder as it is excessive tolerance that emboldens the intolerant/ extremist/ nationalist.
From The Belmont Club today: "A false kind of tolerance has abolished the fence between the piggery and mosque, the adult video store and the cathedral, the flaming match and the stick of dynamite and called it progress. It is no such thing. It is called stupidity."
Very interesting article, Bjørn. I wonder, though, if it is necessarily the case the there is a zero sum game between political correctness and xenophobia.
Mark Amerman: I don't think nationalism caused World War II. It's not the thing that made Nazi Germany so fundamentally wrong. Nor do I think nationalism caused the Yugoslav war. True in both these cases, without nationalism, these wars would not have been possible, but nationalism is a tool.
It's difficult to look all the factors that contributed to an event, and select one of them as "the cause". A lot of factors caused World War 2, and focusing on one over the others is largerly a matter of subjective preference. But isn't it relevant that nationalism was a constant negative factor in European politics for such a long time? You say the war could not have happened without nationalism - true, and neither could many other wars. Doesn't that support my point that we should see nationalism as a great threat?
About the Yugoslavian wars, my understanding is that the ethnic angle was overplayed by outsiders, who preferred to see the conflict as the inevitable product of a messy ethnic situation. If the blame lay mostly on Milosevic and his nationalist rhetoric, then there would have been an obligation for Europe to do something about it. But if the blame could be put on "ethnic differences", and centuries-old hatred, then it was okay to shrug it off. "If those people hate each others so much, what do you expect us to do about it?" And of course they did hate each other, so the breakup was probably inevitable, and perhaps some level of conflict. But the size of the conflict, and the genocide, that lay on the specific actions of the Serbian government - which took place in the context of extreme Serbian nationalism.
World War II would have been quickly over and we would have lost completely without polish and british and american nationalism.
Or patriotism. Patriotism is defensive, nationalism is offensive. I'm not saying there wasn't a lot of nationalism in the UK and US during World War 2, just that patriotism is sufficient to defend yourselves.
Taco: It is excessive tolerance that leads to large scale discrimination and murder as it is excessive tolerance that emboldens the intolerant/ extremist/ nationalist.
I think that's a slogan, and very little more. Think about it: Where specifically does this apply? It can't apply to many wars. Or did the European powers go to war with each other in 1914 because the other powers were too friendly with them? It's true that they all thought their enemies were soft and easy to beat, but that was because of their own nationalist arrogance. How about the other European wars? Which of them specifically happened because of excessive tolerance on part of the victim? Apart perhaps from World War 2?
It doesn't apply to any of the large scale atrocities that I can see. Did Stalin starve peasants to death because they were too tolerant of communism? Did Hitler gas Jews for that reason? No, they did it because it made sense in the warped world they thought they lived in. Or are you going to tell me that if only the peasants and Jews had been better armed, they could have saved themselves? Remotely possible, but what does that have to do with tolerance?
And I don't think it applies to small scale discrimination either. Norwegian discrimination of the Sami. American discrimination of blacks. Everyone's discrimination of Jews until World War 2. Explain to me how this was the fault of excessive tolerance on anyone's part. I don't see it.
Jan Haugland: I wonder, though, if it is necessarily the case the there is a zero sum game between political correctness and xenophobia.
I'm not sure what you mean by a zero sum game here. But I'm aware that I have no reason to think that political correctness is the best we can do. I just think that might be the case. And as a minimum everyone should have in mind the previous ways people have been irrational about minorities, race and class when they criticize the current ways ..
"Taco: It is excessive tolerance that leads to large scale discrimination and murder as it is excessive tolerance that emboldens the intolerant/ extremist/ nationalist" I think the point he makes is valid. There is a saying that "good fences make good neighbors". To use an analogy, you can invite abuse thru inaction or obsesquieous behavior. Human nature being what it is, it is often expecting too much to count on the charitable regard of your neighbor to practice restraint. You, the individual are ultimately responsible for safeguarding your life, liberty, etc. Is this so different on the societal level? In this way, yes, political correctness & radical tolerance can be quite as dangerous as nationalism for they set up a dangerous (and historically short-lived) discontinuity between the expectations of the naive intolerant ones and the hyper-tolerant us. How is this discontinuity to be resolved? To use WWII (and, yes, I think the analogy applies), the Japanese realized that they could not win a protracted war with the US. They concluded - not entirely unreasonably - that they wouldn't have to wage one.
Mark: I think the point he makes is valid. There is a saying that "good fences make good neighbors". To use an analogy, you can invite abuse thru inaction or obsesquieous behavior.
I'm sure you can. But how often has it actually happened in, let's say, Europe since the French Revolution? If the only case anyone can think of is the appeasement of Hitler, then I think that makes my point.
Let's make a distinction between PC that's self-imposed vs. PC that's imposed via state beaurecracy implementing the PC will of the elites. In the former case, I would be hardpressed to disagree with the central thrust of your point. After all, it really comes down to being an overly tolerant individual; one who partially invites the abuse of his neighbors. I'm thinking of Ned Flanders of the Simpsons. However, in the latter case, what you have is the state coercing its citizens into playing the role of Ned Flanders unwillingly. It is this case of PC - state sponsored & state coerced that is dangerous because it does not comport with individual human nature. It will, with good intensions, accelerate and artifically foster the very dark forces of racism and nationalism that you rightly abhor. The US gives constructive political outlet to the paranoid racialist, nationalist impulses to those citizens given to such beliefs. The more open polical market of the US better dissipates this potentially dark force by having it compete. Thus, when these beliefs lose - fair and square - in the polical market place, the losers have no recourse to paranoid recriminations about sinister conspiracies to silence "the will of the people". In the US, we allow our David Dukes their fair hearing and then we kick their butts at the ballot box. Now, some societies think they "know" the boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate discource and patrol these boundaries with legal sanction. This is the sort of PC that empowers its overreaction; hence, in the US we live with our David Dukes, marginal figures on the fringes of politics. In France, its different, it lives with its Jean de la Pen, not as marginalized as his views should make him and not so fringe a political figure.
I read someone recently who postulated(?) that PCism is the new classism.
Bjorn, there's something very odd about the standard narrative about the nazis. What's odd about it isn't that it's a valid viewpoint, but rather the absence of other valid viewpoints.
What I mean by "valid" is not necessarily that the viewpoint is true, but rather it's one that we can readily imagine reasonable people believing.
It's like Sherlock Holmes mystery where he solves a case by noticing the dog that didn't bark.
For instance, I'm reading along through Nora Waln's account of her experiences in germany, a modified diary really ("The Approaching Storm: One Woman's Story of Germany 1934-1938." Published in 1939), and discover that from 1934 on everyone in germany was required to, at a certain time, not stop what they were doing, but listen, listen for four hours to National Socialist exhortations on what they were supposed to think. And if they didn't listen, if they were caught not listening, then that was a crime and they could or would be sent to a re-education camp (or we might call it a concentration camp except that seems misleading because these earlier camps had little in common with the death camps the jews were later sent to).
And neither was it a paper threat apparently. Nora Waln introduces the subject via a doctor she meets. He's going to Berlin for an appointment with a bureacrat to plead for his life because (while operating on a patient) he turned off the radio. And somebody reported him.
It's an amazing thing.
It's an amazing image, over thirty million people turning on the radio every day at the same time to listen for four hours to Goebbels or Hitler or whomever speak.
Nora surprised me again when I learned that the country was organized into neighborhood committees that met once a week and which everyone was required to attend. Self-criticism was part of what they did.
I was surprised to discover that being unemployed was illegal and a crime.
I was surprised to discover that the state owned everything, even jewelry, and that people were prosecuted for not taking care of what once upon a time would have been called their possessions.
It goes on.
So knowing this it seems to me that this state of affairs, plenty awful enough all by itself, is sufficient to explain and to be the "cause" of other things. Like the death camps and the war. It's a reasonable conjecture and I would expect lots of other people to share it -- even if not everyone.
But they don't apparently. It's a dog that's not barking that should be.
And my best guess as to why they don't is that they don't know of and have never read a first-person account such as that mentioned above. It's another dog that's not barking that should be.
Nationalism and patriotism go together in my eyes. They go hand in hand and I don't see how you can have one without the other. I also don't understand this distinction between "offensive nationalism" and "defensive nationalism."
Bjorn, What you are calling "excessive tolerance" is tolerance of intolerance. Which is an oxymoron. Tolerance of intolerance IS intolerance, by proxy if you will. Mark, did you read the essay by George Orwell Bjorn linked to? He makes a clear distinction between nationalism and patriotism. They have nothing in common. Anti-Americans have confused the terms to paint America as nationalistic. Indeed, America is the one nation that cannot get nationalistic, because nationalism is rooted in breed and we are mongrels, so we can't get stupid ideas like that. Nationalism can be wholly negative, as Orwell explains in that essay. As in anti-Americansim = negative nationalism. Just the same old European nationalism, inverted to pull it off left-handedly. Ironic, eh? And isn't this tolerance of Muslim intolerance just a way of viewing "the enemey of my enemy as my friend" = a face of anti-Americanism?
"I'm sure you can. But how often has it actually happened in, let's say, Europe since the French Revolution? If the only case anyone can think of is the appeasement of Hitler, then I think that makes my point. " The riots last year in France
I keep seeing and hearing these left-leaning Euro-weaklings as I call them trying to find a way not to do what is absolutely neccessary to stand up to the challenge. The Moslem extremists can easily smell the blood of the weaklings they intend to kill in the societal sense as well as in the physical sense. It is very easy to now begin to understand that the left/pacifist dream of no more wars is just that, a dream; that the modern Europeans will have to re-learn all about physical battling in the streets and just plain fighting to stay alive just as all humans in the past, including their forebearers and ancestors had to do. They will have to learn that they are not priviliged and above all others, that when you open yourself to harm, you've got to battle your way out into safety once again. The first generation that forgets that, dies a weakling's death. Marxist theology has had a devastating effect upon the once strong and proud lands of Europe that are now in economic decline and unless they rediscover their Christian strengths will cease to exist for the grandchildren of todays children.
The comparison is between one extreme of lying versus another. It is dishonest either way. Political Correctness and Extreme Nationalism attempt to force all debate, action, and perception of reality through a lens that favors the outcome of the ideology being pushed. Both attempt to steal individual freedoms by forcing all judgements on fairness, equality, justice, throught the lens of group dynamics. By teaching that it is ok to restict freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly if it benefits some specific group. The only difference between Political Correctness and Nationalism is the groups being favoed. There is no difference in the end. It is important to resist the loss of individual liberty at every turn. As an aside and from a purely Christian Relegious perspective, "False scales are an abomination to the Lord; an honest weight pleases Him” (11:1) Proverbs. Any judgement which purposfully encourages a dishonest view of a Christian truth must be actively resisted at every opertunity.
It is astonishing that 62 years after the fall of the Third Reich and 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment Europe's intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy. They maintain it is best to cede and retreat, and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet we are a long way off the dramatic circumstances of the 1930s, when the best minds threw themselves into the arms of Berlin or Moscow in the name of race, class or the Revolution. Today the threat is more diffuse and fragmented. There is nothing that resembles the formidable peril of the Third Reich. Even the government of Mullahs in Tehran is a paper tiger that could be brought to its knees with a minimum dose of rigour. Nevertheless the preachers of panic abound. Kant defined the Enlightenment with the motto: Sapere aude - dare to know. A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience. They are the symptoms of a fatigued, self-doubting Europe, one that is only too ready to acquiesce at the slightest alarm. Yet their good-willed rhetorical molasses covers a different tune: that of capitulation!