Opinion of political correctness

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

My thoughts on this are rather complex, and I don't have time to write a 50-page dissertation on this at the moment, but this is a broad summary of my views on "political correctness."

On the one hand, I sympathize with the argument that a democracy can only function so long as citizens can speak their minds without fear of negative social or political repercussions. Whenever the majority becomes so rigid in its beliefs that it refuses to entertain alternative ideas or approaches, it is no longer possible to maintain a liberal democracy (this is one reason why the Civil War came about in the 1860s). If citizens are afraid to speak out for fear that their words will be offensive to those around them, then we have lost the opportunity to grow as a society. Confronting issues like racism, xenophobia, and the like is going to be hard, and we can't effectively address these issues if we're running from uncomfortable situations. In that sense, I feel like the activists calling for "safe spaces" and the like are misguided and immature.

On the other, my personal experience has been that many of those who complain about "political correctness" just want to say racist/sexist/bigoted things without having to deal with the fact that such is no longer socially acceptable. This isn't true of every opponent of political correctness, but it's true of enough people to be noticeable. I have very little sympathy for people who go off on rants about how 'minorities are lazy moochers' and 'God wants rape to happen' and then complain about the 'PC police' when people call them out on it. In these cases, my opposition to screaming racist/sexist/bigoted slurs has nothing to do with being "politically correct" and everything to do with my belief in the importance of not being an a$$h*le.

In short, I think both sides of this debate hold a fair mixture of respectable and absurd beliefs. I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe in being a decent human being, and I don't have a high opinion of those who use opposition to the former to justify noncompliance with the latter.