The psychology of political correctness

When what you mean isn't what you said, how would we know it from when you do mean what you said? You're requesting an impossible courtesy. What choice do we have but to take you at your word, especially when it's unambiguous as in this case, and given your long history of making and defending ad infinitum incorrect statements. This is an obviously false post facto rationalization. Your more complete statement from Message 79 was this: This is plain English saying that the term "Progressive" was invented by the Communist Party USA's propaganda machine. Instead of all these strained rationalizations, why not just say the simple, "I misspoke. I should have said 'used' instead of invented." Then stop saying silly things.--Percy

Well, what someone said a long time ago does not change the fact that language evolves. You sling PC around as an insult to anyone who disagrees with you and we can see that you are yourself a perfect example of RWFPC.Roman Catholics invented Christianity and no matter how hard you try you to deny it you are a Catholic. And we know the Catholics were major supporters of Hitler. We know your heart Faith, Catholic to the core. Christianity and Catholic mean the same thing.

My thoughts on political correctness are, like everything in my mind, conflicted.As I routinely mention, I was raised Mormon. I grew up in a very conservative home with multiple generations of Mormon tradition, and harbored very conservative views about everything up until my college education and beyond. I married a Mormon with an equally deep Mormon heritage, at a time when my Mormon convictions were still strong, but my philosophy was shifting in response to my new training in science and reason. I am now thoroughly convinced that continuing to pursue religious thinking and a religious lifestyle is not a productive use of my time and resources.That said, transitioning away from it is not very simple. My impression of it is that it's kind of like learning a new language. You learn how to take what you want to express and convert it into the closest approximation in the other language. If you get good at it, you can do it really quickly; you may even start to find that you prefer the second language's ways of expressing certain things, and sometimes you even find these expressions integrating themselves into the way you think.Right now, in some ways I feel like I'm "socially bilingual." I'm mostly developing liberal viewpoints on a lot of social issues, but I still find that I frequently empathize with conservatives rather than liberals during debates or discussions. Conservative talking points still resonate in my mind, even if my liberal-influenced intellect finds them unsatisfying.I don’t think I've reached full "liberal fluency" yet. I don't know if I ever will, or if I really want to. But, in some ways, liberalism feels like an alien invader in my brain. I often find myself thinking in two ways on the same issue, which makes me really indecisive and unwilling to trust my own thinking. So, I'm kind of inclined to substitute someone else's judgment in place of my own.To get to the point, I often get the vague impression that I'm not really becoming more liberal in my reasoning or viewpoints: I'm just learning how to mimic a system of protocols that comes in a book entitled, "How to act like a liberal in twenty-two thousand, four hundred and seventeen easy steps!" Maybe it's some weird from of impostor syndrome: if I behave like a liberal, it's mainly because I'm following a script so the other liberals will think I'm one of them. I mean, I am usually very guarded about how I speak and about how I choose my battles: it's probably affecting me more than I know. But, I still feel like reason leads me to these conclusions, even if they feel a little unnatural to me.I wonder if this is the same sort of sensation that makes conservatives accuse the left of "political correctness." The only way they could reason themselves to a liberal position is by going against their ingrained philosophies, so that must be how other liberals got there too. And, I have to admit, based on my personal experience, the criticism resonates a little bit.

By organizing a food bank? Really, Faith, this is beyond the pale.

I read once that the more educated and the more one travels and seeks out new expediences and cultures. The more tolerant one becomes and thus the more accepting and liberal over time.It is isolation and ignorance that imo breeds intolerance. It is resistance to change and judgmental attitudes That, at least to me, smack of conservatism.As I get older I become more liberal.Edited by 1.61803, : changed get to become.

I can completely empathize. You could have substituted your name with mine, and almost everything about the story would have been relevant to mine.It's a lonely place for a moderate or a libertarian. You're too liberal to be a conservative, and too conservative to be a liberal. When I first arrived here, I was the prototypical Christian conservative... which seems so foreign now. And yet for however much I have changed, there are still elements that are more typical to conservative perspectives. On any given topic, my liberal or conservative hat might change. As a result, some have said that I was phony then while others that I'm a phony now.Well, my views are intricate and reasoned by both experiences and clever argumentation from once opposed viewpoints. I realize that neither of us has to fulfill the role of carbon copy. We don't need to toe any party line. We just need to remain open-minded and be willing to speak up but also to know when it's time to shut up and listen.

Hey Blue Jay,Why do you find it necessary to reach "liberal fluency" instead of merely adopting the approach of following the evidence wherever it leads? In this way, you should not feel like there is an "alien invader" creeping through your neurons' ion channels, as you seem to have already developed the toolset necessary to examine evidence and see where it points.I'm just curious about this, as you seem to be conflicted between choosing two worldview "boxes" such that you are limiting your perspective and your mode of thinking.I could care less if someone considers me liberal or not. While many of my views do happen to fall into a liberal and progressive paradigm, that's not because of an a priori commitment to liberalism. I just find that conservatives mostly disregard the importance of empirical evidence in justifying their worldview.

You are doing it wrong.I think of myself as moderately conservative, though I test as liberal on some of those test sites.In any case, the proper way to do it (IMO) is to judge each issue on its own merits. It's okay if you agree with the conservatives on some issues and with the liberals on other issues, and perhaps occasionally with neither. What's more important is to think it through, and to be willing to change if the evidence requires that.And some issues are difficult to decide. It's okay to sit on the fence with such an issue.

For an example of the kind of thing folks have been talking about here, check out this post by Theodoric.Though Faith asks a perfectly legitimate question in a perfectly academic fashion, Theodoric responds with a typical pathetic Left round of 'spot the bigot' to avoid addressing the question by trying to paint Faith as a bigot for daring to ask it so as to declare himself the winner on some trumped up 'moral superiority' grounds because he would never even think of asking such a thing, the good little Leftist PC soldier he is.Is this any different than the attitudes in many fundamentalist churches, where even innocent questions are punished merely because they are questions?This is the kind of horribly destructive and unproductive behavior I was talking about in my posts, and I think others mentioned as well.

Sorry, Jon. I don't see it. I think you are discrediting your own claim. Yes, Theodoric was harshly critical of Faith. But then Blue Jay took Theodoric to task for that.Do keep in mind that Faith often has some choice things to say about those who disagree with her.You seem to be saying that when a conservative makes a harsh criticism of a liberal, that's just free speech, while when a liberal makes a harsh criticism of a conservative that's PC.I think you are painting with too broad a brush.

All I was saying is that the CPUSA chose the term Progressive to stand for their political positions to keep the American public from knowing their true source, so when the term is used by the left it should be suspected to be a cover for something the CP dreamed up, and OK I should have acknowledged the confusion in how I used the terms.

Jon is right.

I appreciate your thoughtful analysis. In my case I didn't start out conservative, I had a lot of liberal influence on me from my teenage years through the next few decades and accepted it because I wasn't aware there was another point of view, or, more accurately, the conservative point of view was disparaged by being filtered through liberalism, as it is at EvC, and who wants to identify with that? It was simply unthinkable. When I became a Christian in my mid to late forties I was still liberal for a while but gradually saw that the Christian worldview fit the conservative worldview better.

More to the point, it seems a number of us were taken aback by Theodoric's position, in part because of his fairly rational posting history. I've certainly noticed that. And it is worse that that. Insults on liberals are apparently always true, while insults directed at conservatives are considered to be falsehoods directed at shutting off conversation. Goose/gander? Pot/Kettle?

Hi, Genomicus. I don't think it's necessary, per se: I"m just describing what I think is happening. I sometimes find myself thinking in two very different ways. Even though I've rejected Mormonism, I still get angry when other people criticize Mormonism, and I still feel uncomfortable walking down the beer aisle at the grocery store, things like that.In a similar way, I don't agree with conservative views on most things, but I have a hard time arguing against them when I hear them, because in a way, they still "make sense" to me. I'm no psychologist, but I think my specific issue is that rejecting a lifetime of my own reasoning has generated a lot of doubts about my own reasoning, so it's easy to just accept that somebody else is right, and let their reasoning substitute for my own.I guess the main point is that my intellect leads me to agree with liberal viewpoints on most social issues, but my ingrained "comfort zones" haven't extended to cover these viewpoints yet.So, even though I think many of the liberal viewpoints are better, they feel unnatural, like somebody else is telling me what to think. And that sounds a lot like what conservatives say about liberals and PC: "The Left thinks you must agree with them, or you get labeled. So, leftists don't think for themselves: they just think and say what they're told to think and say." Edited by Blue Jay, : No reason given.