Cultural Fascism
Some readers have questioned why I advocate so much for men, call women the same names they call men or just plain seem politically incorrect. I do so more for effect than to be rude, obnoxious or display hostility. I tried the nice way--you know--where you politely disagree with others and try to make a point and I kept waiting for the politically correct crowd to change their ways, but that approach did not work. Why?--because they have intimidated, frightened and just plain punished those who disagree with them--into silence. And we let them. Maybe something more drastic is needed.
I believe there is something sinister in our midst--a kind of cultural fascism (I will be writing more about this in a subsequent book review)--that is prevalent in our society. People's speech is being hijacked by the political correctness police and many are afraid to speak up. We keep our mouths shut so we will not be deemed a racist, sexist or homophobe. In this way, the cultural fascists are winning. But if every person who believed in free speech and differing viewpoints would speak up--there would be more of a discussion--a diaglogue that might result in a more even-handed way in which people of all worldviews are treated.
I believe there is something sinister in our midst--a kind of cultural fascism (I will be writing more about this in a subsequent book review)--that is prevalent in our society. People's speech is being hijacked by the political correctness police and many are afraid to speak up. We keep our mouths shut so we will not be deemed a racist, sexist or homophobe. In this way, the cultural fascists are winning. But if every person who believed in free speech and differing viewpoints would speak up--there would be more of a discussion--a diaglogue that might result in a more even-handed way in which people of all worldviews are treated.
posted by Helen at 7:57 AM
30 Comments:
As someone who is by nature nonconfrontational I find it very difficult to speak my mind about such issues. I just do my talking with the ballot box. It looks as if a lot of people feel the same way in that it is the rare community that has true moonbats in leadership positions.
to Al,
You are so right--the American public rarely lets extremists of left or right views in office but some of these moonbats do seem to be hanging around the universities where they unleash their views on young people--luckily many students ignore the behavior until they get out but for some, it is hard.
I SO agree with you about the need for less cultural/speech fascism. Neil Cavuto has an essay about this, today, too. In our passion for being nice to each other - which is fine - we go waaaayyyy too far.
Fifty years ago, most people - especially women - wouldn't have spoken up at all. We've made progress, but with the result of having more contentious dialogue.
Most of my friends are liberals (politically, socially, and economically), and I find it disturbing that what I consider dispassionate matters have slapped-on labels of good or evil from their side. If I suggest a view they hold in disdain -- that much recycling is ineffective or that men deserve equal treatment to women -- no reasoned dialogue results. Instead, I'm treated as though I had just kicked a puppy, as if I were a bad person for daring to hold a different opinion.
And yes, most times I bite my tongue after speaking out once. Sometimes I never speak out at all face-to-face, avoiding the inevitable confrontation. So I do what I can: I voice those opinions in the blogosphere, where people can dissent and discuss, but I'm somewhat insulated from the scorn I would receive from saying similar things at a mixed-opinion dinner party.
I think the indoctrination begins long before college. We're taught in elementary school to associate appropriate behavior with virtue; in the middle of the century, the behaviors and opinions that were rewarded were blindly pro-American, anti-communist, and often racist. Now, the values instilled are mindlessly pro-environment, pro-tolerance (except for religion), and internationalist. What parent hasn't had a young child scold him self-righteously for doing or saying something that their teachers had told them was "bad"? By the time those same students get to college, the correlation is firmly established, and it just gets worse from there.
Last year my son and I drove 250 miles to have Thanksgiving with my parents and siblings, all liberals except for one brother. I brought a ham, homemade rolls and mashed pototoes all of which I cooked and/or from scratch. My son (11 years old at the time) made pigs in a blanket once we arrived. (My brother also brough items he had made as he always does (great oyster dressing).
After everything was prepared and we were waiting for the final warming of the food in the microwave and oven (not cooking, warming) to finish, most of the men migrated to the couch and chairs to wait. As the house has a great room layout this did not involve going into another room.
My sister, the hostess, decides this is a sexist moment, calls for everyone's attention and points out that this is a sexist moment because all or most of the men are sitting down. I had just driven 250 miles earlier that same day, my father was 81 and uses a cane, my brother probably worked because he works in retail. This is true rudeness and, I believe, a good example of the day-to-day stuff DrHelen is talking about.
ah, hell, nobody cares if you are politically incorrect or "call women the same names they call men" (even though it's a very juvenile thing to do). but you say that you "tried the nice way", which implies that your current approach is "not nice". and i just find that doing things simply "for effect" is rather immature. it certainly doesn't raise the level of the dialogue.
and cultural fascism? i'm not saying there's not some truth in the essentials of what you assert, but liberals who toss around such phrases are generally referred to as paranoid and "moonbats".
Helen,
You really keep hitting home runs with your posts, becuase you take head on and with an obvious decency very difficult cultural problems which generally get only sporadic attention.
I think for me a real gestalt shift happened when I mentally made the connection between the casual anti-maleness of the recent era and the stereotypes of women I've been told were the cultural commonplaces of the 1950s and 60s and before. I found that a much more revealing line of thought than the hypothetical I had been thinking in terms of: "What if a man did that to a woman?"
Your observation in an earlier post that, in positions of power, women commonly act like the men they complained about, is spot on. And, like those complained about men, few of these women are ever told that they're wrong, or rude, or bullies. (The tone of your post very much reminded me of the "moral" of the wonderful film "Gentleman's Agreement," where Gregory Peck (a christian) writes an expose of antisemitism by passing himself off as jewish. The conclusion is basically that decent people must act when they despise what is being said or done; most people's minds don't need changing: so long as they speak out, the good guys win.
The lesson may be that a sense of cultural ascendance or entitlement is corrupting, and that women, just like men, lack any innate immunity to this effect.
Anonymous, re: "Nobody cares"
People do care. I don't particularly care if I am severely criticized for expressing opinions, in the abstract, but in the real world it gets more complicated. Bill Bennett lost/left his job and is now a public pariah for essentially saying that attempts to apply utilitarian logic to abortion policy would result in moral catastrophe. There was absolutely no reason for the outrage that occurred to have occurred. The outrage was entirely motivated on the bad faith assumption that, in proposing a morally reprehensible hypothetical, Bennett was "revealing" some sort of "racist" narrative.
What it really reveals is that, for the PC Police, even saying something they ostensibly agree with ("black genocide is morally reprehensible") is cause for damnation if you're not considered an "ally" by the PC Police. (That is, if you're Conservative, you're already considered evil, and if you say anything which indicates you may have considered an evil idea, even if you condemn it, the consideration alone is taken as a revelation of your evilness.)
If you don't think this state of affairs is ridiculous and needs fixing, you need to spend some more time thinking about it. If we're not even allowed to think certain ideas, even to reject them, lest we be tagged as thought criminals, then we might as well give up the pretenses of being thinking, rational individuals. An ideology that does not even permit the questioning of certain ideas without slandering the questioners as being motivated by evil desires to hurt and oppress others is not an ideology that is amenable to intellectual critique.
Helen
What you're complaining about seems to come under the heading of "dominance struggles". Somebody once said "While you're manipulating your environment, your environment is manipulating you" She was referring to the human social environment, where humans try to control other people's behavior and thinking, while simultaneously resisting having their own behavior and thinking controlled. Chimpanzees will sometimes displaceme one another, where the dominant individual causes the subordinate to physically move, by simply moving over to the subordinate's location and sitting down. When a subordinate tries to displace a dominant, the dominant either ignores the subordinate and actively attacks him. Among wolves, the dominant individuals will sometimes not let the subordinates eat from the kill. If this occurs often enough, the subordinates will become weaker and weaker until he or she dies. Humans, being smarter (but certainly not nicer) than your average dog or wolf, have far more sophisticated ways of struggling for dominance.
Well-said!!!
Unfortunately, in today's culture, about the only way to be taken seriously or to "slap someone to attention" is through harsh language. Civil communication is almost a dying art.
The biggest problem I see is that a great majority of the political correctness comes from those who want to bring me down with "white male guilt".
Take some time out to read an interesting article by Lawrence Auster titled "Guilty Whites".
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19672
To anonymous:
Nobody cares--yeah right--that's why there are zero, yes zero Republican faculty members in Stanford's psychology program, why 97% of articles in the American Psychologist advance liberal themes or policies and a past APA president "urged psychologists to advocate radical lefist positions and explicitly blend our data and values in order to make strong arguments for the kinds of [radical]change we think is necessary." (Fox, 1991, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation).
And this is just psychology--imagine the liberal agenda in other fields that influence politics and policies in this country.
This problem is much larger than underrepresentation of Republicans. It's a safe bet that almost no one in the Stanford physics department believes in God. Moreover, many of their papers advance themes that go against the book of Genesis.
Do you think that these physics departments are simply hostile to Christianity? If not, where are the Christian physicists?
Greg Kuperberg--
Aren't your remarks just a tad rude? I mean, granted, you're not outright trolling but the snideness is not warranted and disruptive.
Are you really unwilling to even consider the evidence showing that academic-professional institutions are overwhelmingly politicized in one direction? Are you really unwilling to consider the potential negative effects this can cause for these institutions and intellectual pursuit and social policy?
Helen
Stanford's psychology program may have zero Republicans, but the campus is also home to the Hoover Institute, which is solidly conservative. Based on my conversations with both psychology and anthropology professors and students, I've concluded that many students are very aware of what the professors are doing and the professors are becoming aware of their students viewpoints.
Exactly why did this past APA president think that radical change was "necessary"? Is his or her opinion based on good research or not? Many cultural anthropologists have long been advocates of radical leftist positions based on sloppy, incomplete and biased research and thinking. Their disdain for science was the apparent cause for the division of the Stanford University Anthropology department into two separate departments.
At least where I take classes, most (but not all) of the psychology professors seem very willing to let their opinions be governed by experimental data. This is particularly true of the professors who are active researchers themselves.
"What parent hasn't had a young child scold him self-righteously for doing or saying something that their teachers had told them was "bad"? By the time those same students get to college, the correlation is firmly established, and it just gets worse from there."
This parent hasn't... My wife and I have made it a point to educate our son (who is now 12) on what is right versus what he is being taught about America and Americans.
We have provided a clear and reasoned perspective on matters that were presented at school as 'fact' allowing him to truly see through and deal with the mind-numbing indoctrination (as "nice" as it may seem) and social engineering efforts underway at his school.
Due to the heavy handed control exerted by the state educational boards with their "thought police" tactics (which many of his teachers clearly don't agree with but are powerless to do anything about) we must be ever vigilant to their efforts to coerce our son to their mandated way of thinking.
The truth is that their efforts - when illuminated by the light of truth - are pretty simplistic and though effective if not addressed, are easily dealt with by reasonable parents. The problem is, we should not have to be monitoring our son's education for such air-headed social engineering efforts.
To Anonymous:
You said: "An ideology that does not even permit the questioning of certain ideas without slandering the questioners as being motivated by evil desires to hurt and oppress others is not an ideology that is amenable to intellectual critique."
This is funny in light of the reaction to liberal criticism of the war in Iraq. I think there's enough fascism to go around.
to Helen:
"imagine the liberal agenda in other fields that influence politics and policies in this country."
Yes, I think that's exactly what you're asking us to do....just imagine....
Anonymous who responded to me: You're talking as if I made it all up. But I didn't. There was some sarcasm in what I said, but the fact is that Christians are grossly underrepresented in math and physics departments. I ought to know; I'm in one of them. And the fact is that some Christian groups do routinely condemn top universities as being hostile to Christianity. They see an atheist agenda, which they couple to certain scientific topics that they don't like, notably evolution and the Big Bang.
So if we are preaching intellectual affirmative action here, someone should explain whether these Christian groups are really wrong. And if they are wrong, why their case is different from the case made by Republicans, Libertarians, and conservatives.
(NB: I would also prefer to have discussions with non-anonymous people.)
Sometimes we need to forget all the theory and just tell it like it is. I think this guy says it all. Look at selection entitled "GoF...Yourself"
http://www.thekidfrombrooklyn.com/
With your permission, doctor, I'll reprise my comment in response to your own comment at my blog. It seems just as relevant here:
Where I disagree is in the notion that etiquette or decorum means, or entails, giving way before tyrants. Indeed it does not. It means, among other things, learning how to fight effectively. In this fashion, it is a discipline of war -- which is why it arose among gentlemen, whose defining attribute was the right to bear arms.
I cited Miss Manners in the piece because she is the one among all who seems to understand this, and frequently explains it. In one of her books, for example, she gives the rule for how to discipline other peoples' unruly children without giving cause for offense. It can be done, she pointed out, only if you pretend to be concerned for the child's welfare. The thing to say, pleasantly but with a sharp look, is this: "I wish you wouldn't do that, dear. I would hate to see you get hurt."
Say that in just the right way, and no one could possibly take offense; but the child will get the point. And, furthermore, it achieves the goal: the bad behavior is stopped, society's right to enforce discipline on unruly children is upheld, and order is maintained. The other options simply don't achieve the same quality of result.
As for the cultural fascists, I think I understand what is meant, and have encountered one or two people who have attempted to bully me into silence in that way. It hasn't worked out to their satisfaction, I think I can honestly say, though I was never rude. What you have to remember is to pay less attention to who you are fighting, than where you are fighitng. The battlefield here isn't the actual evildoer, but the society which they are trying to bully or coerce. The people you want to sway are not the ones pushing, but the ones who are letting them get away with pushing. They are best swayed by showing them that your path leads to a ground they would prefer to dwell upon, a better place.
Someone who can assert the right forcefully but with politeness will always be admired. As the Beowulf says, "Behavior that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere." If you wish to change the world, I think that is a good place to begin.
Grim,
Thanks for your comment--I appreciate it.
Grim.
Well put.
IMO, part of the effectiveness of the PC police depends on the perception that their accusation will be believed by some hypothetical audience.
The best example would be a debate before a live audience.
If a PC police type claims the other person is a racist, it is because the other person has made a point which cannot be challenged substantively.
It is expected that the other person will drop the point, apologize, go onto the defensive, and self-censor in the rest of the debate in order to avoid something which might remind the audience that he is a racist.
If we presume the audience doesn't buy it, we are freer to continue to make our points.
My point is that few people actually buy that any longer. It's true that some applaud its use as a manipulative scam and pretend to believe. But most don't.
The emperor has no clothes.
The scam doesn't work unless we allow it to work and if we picture the emperor in his jockeys, we should be okay.
We should apply this picture to all circumstances, not just to the rare occurrence of our participating in a live debate.
The PC crowd has gradually, little by little, narrowed the boundaries of conversation. It's becomming Orwellian. I'm waiting for the first edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Great post. Keep hammmering away.
Don't have time to commment on the main theme of the thread, but I wanted to comment on something that was mentioned.
eden-
Not to nitpick, but you mentioned anti-communist sentiments espoused during the middle of the 20th century. The various totalitarian (there's basically no other way to establish them) communist and socialist regimes killed many times more people than the Nazis (who were also socialist) and were responsible for untold amounts of human suffering in the last century. Shouldn't there be at least some level of skepticism for those failed ideologies?
I realize anti-communist sentiments were whipped up into witch hunts during the cold war - oddly being used for the same kind of reduction in freedoms used in totalitarian communist/socialist regimes - but I don't think a healthy skepticism towards communism and socialism is that out of line.
Fair enough, latest anonymous. I wasn't using that example to compare the relative merits of the ideologies being spouted, though, but simply to indicate that using the educational system from earliest days to shape children into the sort of unquestioning adults you (those who control education at the time) want them to be, is nothing new. My example was clumsy.
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