FREEDOM OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

How much is America preoccupied these days with the word freedom! Much more, it seems, than when no such preoccupation was in evidence, in the good old days, when the Americans certainly practiced freedom more than they talked about it.
I have written at length on the reprehensible perversion of the word freedom (similar indignities have been perpetrated against the words humanism, socialism, and others), but in this entry I wish to stress one single aspect of this perversion: the fact that the fundamental concept of freedom is incompatible with the current practices of Washington and of modern American society as a whole. Apparently, there is no understanding of what the concept of freedom implies, insofar as free speech is concerned, none at all! I am referring to the so-called political correctness, both explicitly and implicitly forbidding all sorts of taboo talk, which covers not only what is actually being said, but even the choice of subjects for the Tischreden.
This by now generally accepted in America practice of self-censorship (woe to him or to her who refuses to abide by this vital prerequisite of political survival) is undoubtedly inimical to individual freedom. I am not considering the tremendously harsh restrictions on the freedom of speech in Germany, and in other parts of Europe, having to do with the legacy of the Third Reich, and as such not quite in the same category with the American phenomenon of political correctness. Those restrictions have a specific historical basis: they were introduced as punishment against the losers of World War II, purposely designed as deliberate restrictions on certain countries’ freedom of speech, whereas the corresponding American phenomenon has no such excuse.

Mind you, I am by no means advocating “absolute freedom,” which is inimical to the principles underlying social organization in the first place. The origin of restrictions on individual freedoms lies in the very nature of society itself. As Schopenhauer puts it, “constraint is always present in society” and ironically, “it is only when he is alone that [a man] is really free.” Thus, the demagogue who complains too much about the fact of restrictions as such, does not get my sympathy for his cause.
The problem with political correctness is mostly due to its notorious excesses and glaring inconsistencies in its application. It is not the fact that it restrains free speech, but that it takes restraint to great lengths in some areas, while allowing virtual permissiveness for other “selective” types of “free expression.” It is politically correct in America to burn the American Flag (unless a special Constitutional Amendment makes it illegal), to promote extreme brutality, rape, and murder through a virtually unrestricted sale of videogames (see the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on this issue), to insult and desecrate unprotected world religions (most commonly, Christianity and Islam), to encourage pornography, profanity, promiscuity of all sorts, as well as other types of aberrant behavior, elevating all of them to the status of social norm. All right, we may say, as long as such permissiveness protects all free speech, including our own. But this is not so, as we know. Political correctness is not a blanket license for all. It is also a scourge, and woe to him or to her who does not know the difference between the allowed and the forbidden. Poor souls, how are they supposed to find it out when even asking an innocent question on a forbidden subject is immediately deemed anathema?!