Saturday, January 23, 2010

Free speech and fine speech

Victor Davis Hanson, "Post-election Thoughts," Works and Days. 22 January 2010.

"PC (which serves a variety of purposes from stifling free expression to claiming some mythical higher moral ground through gratuitous censure) ends only when we collectively shrug, and sigh, “Linguistic extortion has zero influence on me.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/post-election-thoughts/2/

1 comment:

truepeers said...

That's fine for an older guy to say; but for kids brought up on this poison, it's not so simple. If they want to think in a freer vein, they have go go back to school, as it were, starting over just when they are expected to be out of school and making their way in the world. The evil of PC is not so much that it trashes all the "dead white males"; it is probably inevitable in modernity, with the rise of youth culture, that every generation will feed off its resentment of those who come before. No, the evil is that in so feeding the present generation of teachers have come up with so little to offer young people in turn. Everyone wants to turn them off, but how many then know where to go? What do young people know that we don't know they know? Asking and investigating such questions are necessary for us all to find a way forward.