National Observer Home > No. 46 - Spring 2000 > Articles

Political Correctness Today

Geoffrey Partington

Every society has had its own brand of orthodoxy about what is proper conduct and correct thinking. Karl Popper noted that "closed societies" have been the norm and "open societies" the exception. Members of each tribal society shared the same beliefs as their fellows. Monotheist religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, demanded for many generations full acceptance of given doctrines and regular enactment of given practices. This is so today in several fundamentalist Islamic states. So Political Correctness is by no means something new.

Hypocrisy and self-righteousness are strong characteristics of the Politically Correct today, but again this is hardly a novelty. Jesus asked the hypocrites of his time: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" He denounced "blind guides which strain at a gnat but swallow a camel". During the English Civil Wars, Samuel Butler satirised those who

"Compound for sins they are inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to".

What are the roots of contemporary Political Correctness? Political Correctness is a form of counter-culture, and counter cultures differ profoundly from the political orthodoxies of traditional societies. Thought in traditionalist societies was usually dominated by ethnocentrism: a conviction that one's own society's ways of doing things are absolutely right and the ways of others are evil or at best strange. Western counter-cultures have been obsessed by supposed iniquities within their own society and have often been very ready to praise other societies as superior to their own. Rousseau's cult of the Noble Savage, perpetuated today in pretended admiration of Indigenous Peoples, has been one important strand. Fellow travelling was an important form of twentieth century counter-culture. Indeed, Political Correctness is suffused with hatred and contempt for many of the key features of western societies and often adopts the stance that the enemies of those societies are likely to be its friends. Unfortunately for the Politically Correct, western societies are the only ones in which their own way of life can flourish.

Western societies are highly pluralist and power is diffused and divided between many groups and organisations. One negative result of this generally healthy separation of powers is that each group, however influential, feels that the real power lies elsewhere. Many people feel impotent in such conditions and are very susceptible to conspiracy theories. Many intellectuals are resentful that they themselves exert insufficient power in society. One favourite theorist among the Politically Correct has been the French Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser, who argued that in advanced capitalist societies the old methods used by ruling classes to keep down the masses, instruments such as the army and police, have become far less important than in the past, whereas ways of influencing opinion through education and the media have become far more important. Althusser termed this the replacement of the Repressive State Apparatus by an Ideological State Apparatus. Education and the media do indeed exert far more influence than ever before, but it is mainly the Politically Correct, not any right-wing groups, who control them. Furthermore, the efforts of the Politically Correct to make it appear that there is only one morally acceptable view, namely their own, of matters which are highly contestable and on which conflicting views may rationally be held and expressed, have gained many successes. Yet the university teachers, senior public servants and journalists who manipulate this new extended I.S.A. are still not satisfied. Although they are so very clever, and proud of being so, they do not always get their own way, largely because of the "stupidity" of electorates, which include numerous ignorant rednecks who buy from Macdonalds, watch football on television and favour the death sentence for murderers.

The Politically Correct try to make sure that the opposition is routed whatever may be the relevant facts. This is an old strategy, sometimes known as Morton's Fork, after John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and financial adviser to Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England. Morton advised the King that whenever he was entertained well by his nobles he should tell them that their heavy spending showed that they were very wealthy and thus they should be highly taxed. Should entertainment be sparse and meagre, Henry said their miserliness meant that they must have accumulated great wealth and therefore they should be highly taxed. In the British Army Morton's Fork was often used when men were needed for an unpleasant job. If a soldier had recently done the job, he was picked because he was a man of experience; those who knew nothing about the job were told this was their opportunity to get the experience. Some people once opposed non-white immigration on the grounds that these immigrants wouldn't work, but would also accuse them of taking all the jobs. The complaint one day was that immigrants were lowering living standards by living five to a room, the next day that immigrants were taking all the houses. The double standards and special pleading which disfigure Political Correctness today are not peculiar to one part of the ideological spectrum.

However, our current left-wing Political Correctness beats the rest easily when it comes to double standards and special pleading. Advertising is a good example. Political Correctness holds that advertisements of activities of which it disapproves have immense power over the young and might damage their health, so that strict censorship is needed. Cigarettes are prominent in this category. However, when it comes to activities of which they approve, the Politically Correct denounces any interference and defends freedom of choice, irrespective of what the dangers to health might be. Homosexuality and pornography, heterosexual or homosexual, are prominent in this category.

The Murdoch Press, especially "The Australian", excels in the use of double standards and special pleading. Early in 2000 "The Australian" campaigned against John Laws and Alan Jones for their willingness to accept cash for favourable comment about companies. Laws and Jones ought to have declared any material interests they had in companies whose products they praised, but "The Australian" was in no position to chide them, since it was waging a campaign against Qantas without disclosing that its proprietor owns half of Qantas' main rival, Ansett. Bronwyn Bishop was also prodded by Morton's Fork. She was attacked first for not intervening quickly enough to close nursing homes with apparently unsatisfactory standards, but next for actually intervening and closing one.

The Politically Correct are usually in favour of subordinating Australian legislation to international laws and conventions, since the U.N. and U.N.E.S.C.O. are even greater hotbeds of Political Correctness than Canberra or our State capitals. The Commonwealth government was instructed by "The Australian", and by the A.B.C. and all the other bastions of Political Correctness, that it should overrule "mandatory sentencing" laws in Western Australia and the Northern Territory because these laws offended against an ill-defined international convention. On the other hand "The Australian" accused the Commonwealth government of wrongly using its acceptance of clear and explicit international regulations on drug use and trafficking to block the provision of free needles and good quality heroin in legalised shooting galleries. Most of the Politically Correct also hold that the Commonwealth government ought not to force the Tasmanian state government to accept Canadian fish, even though that trade has been specifically authorised by the international body specifically set up, with Australia's concurrence, to judge on such matters.

Political Correctness uses Morton's Fork all the time on Aboriginal policies. If Aborigines are not given the same or similar treatment to that applied to other Australians, Political Correctness deplores the lack of equality displayed and talks darkly of apartheid. If Aborigines are given the same or similar treatment to that received by other Australians, Political Correctness denounces this as cultural insensitivity, even as cultural genocide. Political Correctness opposes religious education for children of Christian, Jewish, Islamic and other families, but advocates "Dreamtime" education for Aboriginal children, in order to strengthen their "Aboriginal Identity". Political Correctness favours removing mainstream children away from drug-dominated and otherwise delinquent families, but condemns the removal of Aboriginal children under any circumstances. Sir Ronald Wilson, like Kim Beazley's father an ardent advocate in Perth during the 1950s of giving part-Aborigines a better chance in life by removing them from bad conditions, now reviles that policy as wicked and inhumane. Sir Ronald also claims that mandatory sentencing laws "impact disproportionately on Aboriginal people and therefore discriminate against them". If "disproportionate impact" is the test, then virtually every criminal law in every Australian State and Territory is unfairly discriminatory, since proportionally more Aborigines than non-Aborigines are arrested and charged with offences and subsequently found guilty and sentenced. In like manner, if disproportionate impact" is the test, then virtually every section of our criminal laws discriminates against males, since far more males than females are arrested, charged, found guilty and sentenced for offences designated as crimes. Proportionally more men than women also commit suicide in prison (and outside as well).

Political Correctness specialises in moral posturing. When defending its own ways from criticism, Political Correctness scoffs at the very notion of absolute moral standards. When on the attack Political Correctness accuses its targets of failing to meet absolute moral standards, especially in terms of human rights. In the schools Political Correctness has honed a very effective two-stage strategy. In stage one students are assured that there are no moral absolutes, merely social conventions which may be followed or disregarded according to students' own personal judgement. Once students have been purged of moral certainties or parental values, stage two begins and students are urged to accept new moral absolutes of "non-racism", "non-sexism" and the like. In stage one they learn that drugs, homosexuality and abortion are alternative lifestyles; in stage two they learn that "sexist pronouns", tobacco smoking, logging and hunting (except by Aborigines) are morally unacceptable.

Political Correctness requires empathy with religions other than Christianity, especially with beliefs of indigenous peoples. Mockery of any Dreamtime belief would lose Australian academics or public servants their jobs, but abusive representations of Christian symbols will be described as innovative and experimental. Portrayals of Jesus and his Mother covered in urine or excrement are at the cutting edge of creativity, as are similar treatments of the Queen, but doing the same to Kathy Freeman or Lois O'Donoghue would land the perpetrator swiftly into the dock. The Politically Correct avoid unpleasant representations of Islam on prudential grounds. They have a sensible concern for the preservation of their private parts.

Most of the Old Left followed the Soviet Union in retaining highly traditionalist and conservative attitudes in many cultural fields. Soviet critics barely tolerated Picasso, despite his propaganda value, and dealt harshly with most forms of modernism in art, literature and music. The Politically Correct have embraced Avant-Gardism and are determined to outrage convention and upset existing institutions. However, for a quarter of a century or more, the Avant-Garde Politically Correct have themselves controlled most of the art galleries, museums and theatres, as well as educational institutions. Just think of recent Adelaide Festivals! Political Correctness combines the radical rhetoric of outsiders with tenured posts and the cultural privileges of insiders.

"Alternative lifestyles", such as those associated with public displays of homosexuality, were generally frowned upon by the Old Left, as they still are in Castro's Cuba, as evidence of growing bourgeois decadence. Resort to abortion was regarded, both by those who thought it should be legalised and those who did not, as evidence of failure by society to provide adequate guidance and support. Today, however, enthusiasm for Gay and Lesbian Rights and abortion "rights" are central planks of the contemporary Political Correctness platform. A few months ago Kym Beazley confirmed his support for the demands of ultra-feminists in Western Australia for even greater resources to be devoted to abortion on demand. A week or so later he launched a new A.L.P. policy statement on immigration, which argued that the low current birthrate in Australia will result in a dangerous drop in population very soon, unless there is a large increase in immigration. Beazley is like the man who shot both his parents and then applied for an orphan's pension.

Many influential feminist groups, together with numerous Politically Correct men, judge politicians very largely on the basis of their attitudes towards abortion and homosexuality. Bill Clinton is not a homosexual and may never have sought to procure an abortion for any of the women of his acquaintance, but the consistent support he and his wife have given to gay rights and abortion on demand were critical factors in ensuring that the Politically Correct defended him against impeachment. Here was a perfect example of how moral principles may be corrupted. We should all be opposed to the use of power or office to obtain sexual favours, and feminists were right to attack men who abuse power in such ways, although exploitation of men by women, women by women and men by men should equally be taken into consideration. What is disgusting is the contrast between the way feminist groups hounded many men out of their jobs, even when the evidence against them was very weak and dubious, and their clemency towards Clinton. Helen Garner's "The First Stone" exposed how Australian feminists have been able to destroy careers and reputations. The systematic campaign against the Black American judge, Clarence Thomas, was even more disgraceful. It still seems wellnigh incredible that, after all their supposedly high-minded campaigns against sexual harassment, so many militant Politically Correct feminists could urge that Clinton's demands for oral sex from a young office worker and other powerless women were trivial offences, and could suggest that he had been entrapped by scheming women. And only a year after the impeachment proceedings, an American male general is being court-martialled for placing his hand on the bottom of a female general. Will unsolicited bottom squeezes by homosexuals in the American military be followed by courts-martial? Cries of "McCarthyism!" or "Homophobia!" would immediate rend the American airwaves.

Hans Eysenck suggested that any left-right political spectrum needs to be supplemented by a tough-tender axis. Fellow travellers and old communists were in general at the tough end of this second spectrum and were often highly punitive. It would have been almost impossible to defend the Soviet Union without defending capital punishment for supposed traitors, splitters and spies, etc. Political Correctness appears at first sight to be very tender-minded. Political Correctness is utterly opposed to the death penalty for any criminal act, however cruel and barbaric , and irrespective of the number of its victims. Some Politically Correct clergy denounce calls for the restoration of capital punishment as threatening a "return to the dark ages". They might recall the words: "whosoever offendeth against one of these my little ones, it were better for him that he should be cast into the sea with a millstone about his neck". Another claim made by the Politically Correct is that capital punishment, or for that matter every other sort of punishment, does not act as a deterrent, yet Political Correctness demands ever higher penalties for infractions of which it disapproves, such as manufacturing cigarettes, in the belief that severe punishments will prove an effective deterrent. There is also a marked contrast in the sustained interest the Politically Correct media take in people who in the past may have been wrongly sentenced for murder, and the rapid fading from media memories of the dead victims.

In any case Political Correctness does support death sentences for thousands of non-criminals, in the forms of abortion and euthanasia. When attacking capital punishment for criminals, Political Correctness sometimes concentrates on the barbarity of hanging, the electric chair or whatever may be the means of execution, and denies that non-barbaric ways of execution are possible. However, Political Correctness also urges that the terminally sick feel no pain during voluntary euthanasia and that no barbarity is implicated. I would be content if the worst murderers lost their lives by the means the Politically Correct advocate as merciful in voluntary euthanasia.

By and large the Politically Correct have given up the workers and pin their hopes on the new minorities of the rainbow coalition. There are still a few occasions when the Politically Correct and the workers come together, as when Joan Kirner and Jennie George linked arms with the Maritime Union. Yet, although the A.L.P. and A.C.T.U. feminists have long demanded that all jobs be thrown open to women, no women have been allowed to join the Maritime Union or to work on the wharves even though sitting in a crane is far less physically demanding than many jobs in the armed forces, fire services or police. Joan and Jennie, both great advocates of Multiculturalism, might also have noted the absence among the Maritime Union strikers of Aborigines, Asian and other ethnic minorities, unless the Irish be counted as such, in which case they were more than amply represented.

Political Correctness shows relatively little interest in business and the economy, as compared with its intense preoccupation with non-economic questions. Bill Clinton once told his advisers to put the economy first when campaigning, and he and the First Lady claim credit for the flourishing of the American economy and Wall Street. Yet, although they are good at looking after their own interests, economic issues are not of first-order concern to them. The Clintons and the Blairs have presided over exceptionally favourable conditions, but they would soon denounce the "irrationality of the market" if it turned against them. Many Politically Correct thinkers sneer at capitalism for its inefficiency if companies make losses, but denounce it as exploitative if companies make profits. Yet these are not central Politically Correct concerns.

Political Correctness is by no means as monolithic as was the Old Left of the communists and fellow travellers, many of whom considered the Bolshevik Revolution the greatest single turning point in history. In 2000 Politically Correct positions on international issues are relatively fluid and current "Peace Movements" are but a shadow of their predecessors which acted as transmission belts to further Soviet interests. Surprisingly enough, China seems never to have tried to create comparable fronts. In general the Politically Correct in the United States, Britain, Australia and the like were lukewarm about the Gulf War, in which important western economic interests were involved, but enthusiastic for the bombing of Serbia, although no western economic interests were at stake in Kosovo. And despite its support for the pursuit of offenders against the Jews in wartime Europe, Political Correctness rarely favours the Israelis over the Arab states which seek to destroy it.

There is some continuity, of course, between fellow travelling and Political Correctness. Politically Correct criticism of past and present communist regimes is generally muted, whereas its denunciations of fascism in the past and "right-wing" regimes at present are virulent. The slightest favourable allusion to any policy associated by the Politically Correct with Hitlerite Germany, Franco's Spain or Mussolini's Italy ensures pariah status, as with Herr Haider and the Austrian Freedom Party. On the other hand tributes to the ways of Lenin, Stalin or Mao are no barrier to political acceptance. Denial, or even underestimation, of the Holocaust is an unforgivable evil, whereas denial or underestimation of the Gulags is entirely defensible. A mirror-image of this folly is, of course, not unknown in some circles in Australia, including here in Adelaide. Soviet war criminals who ordered massacres and deportations in the Baltic States between 1939 and 1941 are of no interest to the Politically Correct, nor are Japanese jailers of Australian prisoners of war, but Nazi war criminals must be hunted down at all costs. Campaigns were launched to have Pinochet put on trial in Spain, but none to treat Castro, or the leaders of China, Vietnam or North Korea, in like manner.

The Politically Correct often operate on the principle that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. For example, Paul Keating's attachment to Asia, especially Indonesia, owed more to his hatred of Britain and the former British Empire than to any positive affection for Asian ways of life. After all, Keating would not even be able to sell his pork to most Indonesians. Keating alleged that Robert Menzies' "[e]ndless and almost endlessly regressive era sunk a generation of Australians in Anglophilia and torpor" and that this pro-British attitude "[h]as long been, and remains debilitating to our national culture, our economic future, our destiny as a nation in Asia and the Pacific". Keating linked his republican and Asian policies, declaring, "I am pleased, though not surprised, by the positive reaction in South-East Asia to the recent surge of independent and republican thinking in Australia". He insisted, "Geophysically speaking this continent is old Asia." Yet it is hard to think of a single cultural attribute or political structure of any Asian regime that even the most ardent of the Politically Correct would like to see become part of Australia's way of life.

Objectionable as it is, Political Correctness is by no means so great a threat to Australia and other liberal-democracies as were communism and fascism. The student rentamobs of Political Correctness, even the mob assembled at Seattle, are not so frightening as the Storm Troopers or Red Guards. The censorship exerted by the A.B.C., the Murdoch press and the rest of the media is far less effective than the controls operated by totalitarian regimes. The success of the No Vote in the recent referendum is evidence of the limited effects of Political Correctness propaganda. The Politically Correct merit our contempt rather than our fear.

Wisdom is hard to gain in politics and morals. Some basic dilemmas face even the most honest of people. We all have to confront the Paradox of Freedom: we would all like as must freedom as possible to carry out our own desires, yet we are terrified of what might happen if others were equally free to carry out their desires. We should strive whenever possible to be merciful rather than vindictive, yet we should also ensure that justice is done to those who are offended against. In the last analysis what is wrong with Political Correctness and other forms of double standards and special pleading is that their exponents do not honestly try to find a just accommodation between first order moral principles when these are in conflict with each other. Irrespective of their specific persuasion, people who feel passionately about the human condition are often tempted to use crooked means to achieve what seem highly desirable ends. Let us ensure that we can not only identify and expose crooked thinking in Political Correctness, but also apply fair standards consistently to our own words and actions.

 

National Observer No. 46 - Spring 2000