VERBAL MAGIC CAN BACKFIRE

Below is something I wrote recently on Dissecting Leftism:

“Verbal Magic” is of course a great Leftist ploy in general. They think that renaming things can do all sorts of wonders. That it cannot was shown very well many years ago in Australia. Shortly after WWII, a Leftist Australian government wanted to encourage immigration into Australia but faced prejudice against immigrants from many native Australians. The government thought it could fix this by banning the words “immigrant” or “migrant” and replacing it by the more positive term “New Australian”. And they did succeeed in getting their new term widely adopted. What they did NOT succeed in doing, however, was to alter people’s attitudes thereby. The term “New Australian” very rapidly came to be used with contemptuous connotations. People were NOT influenced by the attempted verbal magic.

So we have there an instance of the complete failure of an early attempt at political correctness. But it seems to me that what often results from attempts at political correctness these days is WORSE than failure. It seems to me that politically correct terms are now often used derisively. For instance, to say of a man that he was “short” was in the past little more than a statement of fact, but to describe him nowadays as “vertically challenged” is bordering on the contemptuous. So, in historic Leftist fashion, the Leftist sponsors of political correctness have achieved the opposite of what they claimed to be aiming at.