The errors of being politically correct

AS A minor forecaster and foot so!dier in the fight against looneys who claim to be liberals I vonder why it has taken some people so long to understand what is going on in that department. But it is goed to see that the scales are falling

from a few eyes.

You have probably heard about “political correctness,’ an expres- sion that has already become a cliche. It is the demand in academe, especially, that people must conform to left-liberalism or be hounded, just like in the good old days of the religious wars.

They must not be racist, sexist or anti-queer (or, as the queers put it “homophobic’’). They must not be anti-abortion or pro- heterosexual. They must not be pro-male and above all not pro- white male,

Mary Poppins is out, of course, and lovely Winnie Mandela and her smoking necklaces are in. Free inquiry is a no-no and minority tyranny a yes-yes.

It follows that contentious issues are matters for harassment and intimidation. Canada is a leader in those arts, which were given respectability with the hate laws and human rights nonsense against which I have been warning for years. (In case you haven’t

noticed it, this space is about as politically incorrect as can be.)

The revolt, meanwhile, comes from academics who have realized that the monster they helped to create is now turning on them. For what is happening makes the McCarthyism of the 1950s look like pattycake. Its U.S. version was featured last year in Atlantic magazine, and Maclean’s has now picked up on the Canadian ver- sion. Belatedly.

Actually, the only thing that’s new about “‘political correctness’’ and the intellectual thuggery that walks with it is the label.

I recall that nearly 20 years ago two South African opposition pol- iticians were invited to speak at UBC. They were opposed to apartheid, but that made no dif- ference to the hordes of junior

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ON THE OTHER HAND

lunatics who prevented ther: from speaking. It was enough that they were South Africans.

Then there was the case of the famous mural that adorned the lobby of the Hotel Vancouver.

It showed the arrival of Captain Cook on these shores and was given to UBC because the hotel was being renovated. Alas, it depicted an Indian on bended knee. Loud hollering ensued. Ever gutless, UBC refused to accept what it had already accepted.

Today the situation is far worse. Students who make fun of Indians and women are made to lick their critics’ boots and submit to ‘‘re-education’’ courses, just like in China.

They are also threatened with expulsion. And no one would even think of inviting a South African to speak. Not unless he was black.

It is the same all over the True North, which is running ona wonky compass,

In Ontario an anthropologist who organized an exhibition on

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the colonization of Africa was hounded from the University of Toronto by colored thugs and was actually chased down a university corridor by one. The standards of Bongo-Kongo loom.

Acihe University of Western Ontario professor Phillipe Rushton was forced to give his lectures by closed-circuit TV. His sin: a study that claimed Asiatics are cleverer than whites and that whites are cleverer than blacks.

The hue and cry was joined by the then provincial premier, who asked the university to fire him.

In the U.S., bowing to racist pressure from people who say they oppose racism, 16 major univer- sities have abandoned courses on the origins of Western civilization. Black studies are preferred. Also women’s studies. Thus the chickens of phoney liberalism come home to roost, and ideology replaces scholarship and academic freedom.

The sickness is not confined to academe. In politically correct Canada the CRTC lords of the airwaves plan to ban ‘‘negative comments’’ on homosexuals. No doubt they will soon announce that AIDS is good for you or that Tilley hats are racist.

Already, ‘‘racist and sexist’’ comments are banned, with bu- reaucrats deciding what is racist and sexist. Out at UBC, com- missars of political correctness control that stinking little student rag The Ubyssey.

As with the children, so with the elders. The CBC apologizes for a radio play that a few nin- nyhammers denounced as racist. (A “racist’’ play on the CBC? Gimme a break!) The few includ- ed Pay-Day Parton of the politi- cally correct Vancouver Evening Wimp.

Enviromaniacs are part of the picture, of course. Mordecai Richler calls them ‘‘the new health Nazis.”” But time marches on. And so do the Thought Police. CC Oe

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Wednesday, June 12, 1991 - North Shore News - 9

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