Painting by Jeff Wilkie
The moderate men have done it again in generally declining to investigate a precise motive for the Chattanooga shooting, while using the word “extremist” to designate their enemies on either Left or Right.
This will be a short blog, for I have beaten this horse to death, investigating the origins of political correctness in German Romanticism, the hegemony of multiculturalism (shockingly taken up by the once anti-racist Left), and the reluctance to admit to antisemitic subtexts in our political discourses. (For one example among many see https://clarespark.com/2013/07/02/groupiness-group-think-and-race/.)
In the weekend Wall Street Journal, for instance, linguistics professor at Columbia U, John McWhorter, ostensibly a neocon, writes at length about changing meanings of curse words as if they evolved, without identifiable causes. (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-dare-you-say-that-the-evolution-of-profanity-1437168515.) What he left out in his essay was the time-tested tactic of the liberal establishment, acting in the interests of the neutral state, to promote politeness as a tactic in bringing warring factions into line, so that artful mediators could promote social harmony and their version of stability. For these liberals, offensive language only polarizes the conflict, promoting hate, not love and mutual “understanding.”*
Image by Jesse Lenz
Even Andrew McCarthy, in a National Review piece that correctly identifies the Palestinian background of Muhammad Youssuf Abdulazeez (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421346/chattanooga-shooting-muslim-jihad-muhammad-abdulazeez), does not identify the stakes in the widespread reticence in even suggesting that international terrorism, not some radicalized “lone wolf” was responsible for the mayhem. For we cannot suggest that all Muslims might not be agreeable to peaceful co-existence. That would evade the tenets of mandatory collectivist discourses, prompting broader investigations into individual motives, and in this bogus “lone wolf” case, polluting the dominant “moderate” view that finds moral equivalence in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Social media, rightly or wrongly, has become the new facilitator of terrorism. Yet these media are our only route to dissent in the cultural monopolies staffed by the moderate men.
*In fairness to McWhorter, in his WSJ piece, he does historicize taboo expressions, brings up middle class mores, and mentioning that groups may not be stigmatized by outsiders, but he doesn’t go far enough. All we are left with is changing times, with examples of outdated naughty speech. This from an author frequently identified with the Republican “right-wing.”
The Clare Spark Blog 
“the time-tested tactic of the liberal establishment … to promote politeness as a tactic in bringing warring factions into line”
You might be interested in the whole category of posts at Ann Althouse’s blog that she calls “civility bullshit”:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/search/label/civility%20bullshit
Those posts are about people (mainly on the left) issuing calls for “civility” that are little more than attempts to bully their critics into submission.
Comment by Random Reader — July 28, 2015 @ 6:53 am |