When politically correct language contributes to justice and honour, it is a good thing. Justice is beautiful and God loves it. It is therefore a fundamental Christian value to honour others and not give offense. So, why is there a gathering disquiet about politically correct language? The short answer is: when it is no longer used to give equal honour, but to bludgeon people into conforming to an imposed ideological culture.
What sorts of things are happening in the world, that are causing concern?
Canada has recently passed a law making it illegal to use the wrong gender pronouns. Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-16, puts “gender identity” and “gender expression” into both the country’s Human Rights Code, as well as the hate crime category of its Criminal Code.
Critics say that Canadians who do not subscribe to progressive gender theory could be accused of hate crimes, and be jailed, fined, and made to take anti-bias training.
Those who proposed the bill say that it is not aimed at gaoling those who use the wrong pronoun. It is aimed at punishing those who wilfully promoted gender hatred. However, this offers poor protection in today’s sociological climate in which you can be accused of hatred if someone “feels” your comment to be hate… because they don’t like the fact that you didn’t refer to them by one of the new gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘ze’ or ‘zir’.
Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, is one of the bill’s fiercest critics. He insists that it infringes people’s freedom of speech and institutes dubious gender ideology into law.
So… what do you think?
The use of language has changed
It is important to note that the use of language has changed in this post-modern world we’re living in. The validity of language used to be determined by truth. However, in these postmodern times, this has changed. The validity of language is no longer determined by truth, but by how it makes someone feel. Therefore, if your language makes me feel shame, or makes me feel devalued, it is wrong — whether or not what you say is true.
The other thing that has changed in our time is what determines “right behaviour.” Morality used to define what was right. But now, the “rightness” of behaviour is not determined by morality, it is determined by whether or not it makes me “happy.” My happiness is the sole measure of what is right.
The pre-eminence of what I “feel,” and what makes me “happy,” in determining language and behaviour, are both symptoms of a society delaminating from its Christian bedrock.
Identity politics
Identity politics have sought to make good use of politically correct language. It has done so in order to promote the political power/rights/interests/perspectives of groups defining themselves by their: sexual orientation; ethnicity; disability; class; diet; generation; nationality… and a host of other things.
Of course, everyone loves justice. It is a beautiful and godly thing. But people are now asking if the language of political correctness has been pushed too far.
It is a sad fact that “identity politics” can use the language of “justice” and “rights” to oppress those who disagree with it… and also be used to promote “victimology” (i.e. a culture of playing the “victim”).
When people are true victims, they should, unquestionably, have justice. However, when being a victim is overplayed, it can result in a culture of “victimology.” Victimology traps people in a whirlpool of resentfulness and entitlement.
Use and abuse of language
Language is power.
Causes seeking social acceptance and political power choose the words for their slogans with great care. Wherever possible, the politics of social engineering will seek ways to represent their cause as a “justice issue.” This can be abused. No issue can rightly be seen as a “justice issue” until the issue has first been determined to be inherently “good.” Only once this has been determined, can it be considered to be a justice issue. Too many activists try and put the cart before the horse.
Activists will also try to enlist positive-sounding words and images to support their cause. They will try to use words such as “progressive,” “yes” and “correct.” After all, no one wants to be associated with the reverse of what these words say: it’s just not cool.
A huge problem with identity politics is its inability to self-evaluate and self-criticise. Today; there are some things which those seeking truth are simply not allowed to voice or investigate without you being accused of hate, abuse or intolerance. When the language of identity politics shuts down debate, it can do the very reverse of what it claims to do — seek justice. Instead, it can become a tool of repression used to enforce conformity.
So, the right use of politically correct language is laudable. However, the abuse of politically correct language is sociologically frightening. When objective, truth-seeking, debate is impossible because those seeking it are shut down by accusations of racism, imperialism, and being hateful… you have arrived at a scary place.
Conformity
The ultimate end of extreme politically correct language, when hand in hand with identity politics, is enforced conformity on everyone. It says:
‘This is how you will speak. This is what you will believe. There must be no questions asked. No objective scholarly truth must be allowed to intrude. No critique will be tolerated. You must conform. If you don’t, you will be sacked from your job in a child-care centre. If you don’t, you will not win a government grant or be employed as a youth worker. If you don’t, you will be caricatured by half-truths and “beat ups”… and pilloried by the press. And you will be stalked by media trolls who will seek to destroy your business and your reputation. We, will punish you if you do not conform.’
This is frightening language. It is the power play of ideological activists seeking to take control of a disintegrating civilisation.
A larger debate
The politically-correct language debate is really part of a much larger debate about where society is going — and its current trajectory is taking it a long way from Christianity. The fact that today’s society is letting its Christian heritage slip through its fingers, is a concern.
A major newspaper this week reports that Australian ‘millenials’ now want to embrace socialism. They do so, evidently, because they have no knowledge of how the socialist world-view has played out in history. No one has tapped them on the shoulder and pointed out that refugees are not flocking to seek out the civility and culture of any Communist or neo-Marxist state. Communism, in the form of Lenin, Stalin and Mau was responsible for killing tens of millions of people. Many were murdered and many others were starved to death because of the enforced ideology of collective farming. Pol Pol was less subtle: he simply engaged in blatant genocide. By any measure: Marxism’s socialist heritage is “blood red.”
But it seems that many Australians don’t remember. This is ironic because in their lust for unbridled liberty, they are, in fact, laying themselves open to a repressive ideology that will enforce conformity… and which will lack any form of Christian civility.
At a conference on Marxism in Melbourne in 2015, Roz Ward spoke about how she developed the Safe Schools program for the express purpose of implementing Marxism in the classroom. This sort of indoctrination of our children should be of concern. It should also be of concern that the state, rather than parents, is taking control over the sexual patterning, teaching and upbringing of our children. This sort of forced conformity is deeply disturbing.
The removal of God from society
The Russian philosopher and dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was asked to give the address at the University of Harvard’s anniversary in 1978. It’s worth hearing what he said:
The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society … defenseless against certain individuals. …Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defence against the abyss of human decadence. …As a survivor of the Communist Holocaust I am horrified to witness how my beloved America, my adopted country, is gradually being transformed into a secularist and atheistic utopia, where communist ideals are glorified and promoted, while Judeo-Christian values and morality are ridiculed and increasingly eradicated from the public and social consciousness of our nation. Under the decades-long assault and militant radicalism of many so-called “liberal” and “progressive” elites, God has been progressively erased from our public and educational institutions, to be replaced with all manner of delusion, perversion, corruption, violence, decadence, and insanity. It was Dostoevsky … who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.” That is absolutely true. …Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, … hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. … millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism. … Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.
Hmmm.
In our nation, Jesus is now being banned from the societal landscape and societal norms have been turned on their heads. Fathers are becoming sidelined; sexuality has become anything you want it to be; morality is scorned… and tolerance has become intolerance.
Tolerance
A catchcry of some political correctness is “tolerance.” But, as G.K. Chesterton once said: Tolerance is the virtue of someone who doesn’t actually believe anything.
So, should everything be tolerated? Who decides what’s in and what’s out? Who has the power… and by what means do they choose?
Tolerance, as it pertains to civility and gracious behaviour, is a good thing; but preaching “tolerance” can be a trick used by those in power to erase traditional truth from society. It works like this:
If everything must be tolerated… then nothing can be said to be really true. And if Christianity, with its exclusive claims about hope, salvation and godly behaviour can be said to not really be true, then it can be relegated to a place of insignificance in society. This leaves “rationalism” as the only thing left standing. But this rationalism has no “ground of truth.” It can therefore be manipulated by “politically correctness” so that it becomes irrational, coercive and controlling.
If you disallow the Christian world-view a place in society—you are not journeying towards tolerance; you have become intolerant. You are reversing the centuries of good work by people who fought to have religious freedom and for their lives to be determined by God’s consistent principles in Scripture.
And if Christianity is repressed, it should be of huge concern… for no other world-view other than Christ-like, authentic Christianity has ever produced civilisations that have been so fruitful, emancipating and civil.
