Political Correctness
In democracies we're told that we live under free speech. Free speech means that every individual has a right to express his or her opinion democratically in media and debates. But like with many other things today, free speech is a catchy phrase that doesn't really live up to its own ideals. Not all ideas are legitimate to express, ideas our political leaders fittingly call "anti-democratic" or "anti-freedom." In other words, you're allowed to speak your mind as long as your opinion is not in conflict with the official political ideals.
This creates what we often address as "political correctness," that is, all political ideas are equal worth, but some ideas are more "correct" than others. This is a clever move by the authority, because it sustains a parallel world; one, where all of these good-sounding concepts such as "freedom" and "diversity" are praised, and another, where some people question these concepts and find that they don't correspond to reality. Nobody is noticing the clash, because as long as you don't put these concepts up to the test - and most people don't - you will never know just how "free" you really are.
Political correctness has also got a psychological dimension. For example, while many people are tired of mass immigration and ethnic conflicts, they're well aware that it is "racist", or politically incorrect, 
to express this in the open public, fearing that they'll be labelled as Nazis. A realistic point to make here, would be that you aren't necessarily full of hate towards other people, to express that you feel more comfortable around people sharing your culture and set of values. The authority has no arguments against this, so instead they choose to thrive on people's fear of being branded as someone who is "against" the morally positive things we see on TV.
Political correctness is just that: a fear of reality. Truths, if really true, should be able to stand on their own without a political dogma to support them. Today, most of our "truths" are not built around what's realistic, but what sounds good in the ears of those who've listened to the same message year after year. Suddenly, the dogmatic shell breaks and reality knocks on the door. By then, we stand up to our knees in problems we've been trying to hide for years: global ecological disasters, mass poverty, political corruption, race riots and generations of emotionally broken children.
But the worst thing about political correctness is that it breaks consensus on how we should live and organize our society. Two basic camps are created: those who are "correct" and agree with anything that is popular at the moment, and those who thus are automatically "incorrect" and shouldn't be listened to. Society will slowly fall apart due to these internal divisions, while the focus on realistic expectations for the future, is drowning among all the dogma and massmedia that are needed to support the "correct" ideas. The most effective way of dealing with dogmatic political correctness is to point to our shared reality and show how our current ideas do not meet the expectations we assess. We need to find a path that will lead to a better future, where ideas are measured logically and realistically, regardless of their market value or dogmatic capability.
by Alex Birch
June 25, 2007