Another word for `politically correct' is `intolerant'

MY ONLINE dictionary has a politically correct definition of "politically correct," saying that the phrase refers to support for "broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation."

It gives a hint at the real meaning when it says the phrase can point to someone who is perceived as being "overconcerned with such change, often to the exclusion of other matters," and that PC behavior "involves changing or avoiding language that might offend anyone." But the definition still misses the boat.

Should the American Heritage Dictionary call on me for advice, I would tell its editors that the phrase refers to the attitude in certain circles that there is just one acceptable view of a host of issues related to supposed bigotry or insensitivity, and that those who don't conform are inarguably wrong and worse.

The politically incorrect are, in fact, probably racist or sexist or otherwise misshapen human beings, according to this ideologically instructed, one-sided mode of thinking. Such malformed creatures really ought to shut up, the politically correct crowd believes. If they don't, coercive steps may be taken. And there is also the tactic of branding the miscreants publicly for their imagined crimes while ignoring outrages committed in the name of the one true, politically correct way.

Thus it is that if you believe affirmative action usually translates into group preference in contradiction of a principle meant to safeguard all of us, including minorities, you are a redneck segregationist.

If you think courts have usurped the constitutional prerogative of legislatures in determining that marriage must be permitted people of the same sex for the first time in recorded history, you are a homophobe.

If you are repulsed by the thought of vacuuming babies' brains from their skulls in what is euphemistically called "partial-birth abortion," you have no respect for women.

And if you believe that Israelis are justified in fighting back against the suicide bombers who murder their children and wish the abolition of their nation, you are a moral thug intent on further marginalizing an indigenous people whose gravest error was finding themselves next door to the only Westernized democracy in the Middle East.

Let's get concrete. Let's visit Chicago's DePaul University, where a math professor, Jonathan Cohen, talked to me about the politically correct atmosphere, such as the faculty session on Sept. 13, 2001, just two days after terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The session, he said, was hostile to the United States. One professor advised the others to identify with the terrorists and thereby see where their motivation came from - namely, how U.S. policies were responsible. Cohen gave other examples of how "political correctness has run amok" at the campus, but the major one we discussed is one I have written about before, the case of Thomas Klocek.

An untenured professor at the school, Klocek got in an argument with Muslim and pro-Palestinian students outside the classroom about the Israel-Palestine conflict, taking the Israeli side, and soon found himself removed from a teaching assignment with no other assignments coming his direction.

The school's after-the-fact rationale is that it was the professor's "belligerent" conduct that was at issue, but the chief complaint of the students was what he said. To some, it was racist and cause for firing that he identified the Palestinians as purposeful killers of civilians and denied that their claim to nationhood was historically legitimate.

Even though the students had called Israelis murderers and compared their leaders to Hitler, a dean worried in a letter to a student newspaper about how the students' "perspective was dishonored" and their ideas demeaned. DePaul, she wrote, makes "a particular point of diversity." And here we had a professor pressing "erroneous assertions," which is to say, taking positions the dean did not like.

Contrary to what happened at Columbia University, where an ad-hoc committee pronounced everything hunky-dory after professors teaching about the Middle East and other subjects were accused of anti-Semitism and classroom intimidation of students not bowing obediently to their anti-Israel views, Klocek was clobbered. His career seems ruined. His life is wrecked.

Now that's political correctness - injustice, not redressing injustice. I hope the people at American Heritage are taking note

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ANIMAL CORRECTNESS

So, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is really an animal-rights front group wearing the sheep's clothing of the medical profession. And "responsible" medicine apparently means no animals may be harmed to save the life of your child, your parent, or your spouse.

How could doctors write such a prescription? Very few do, which is why people with no medical degrees comprise more than 95 percent of this group's membership.

The animal-rights theme carries over into PCRM's activism on food issues as well. Dr. Barnard has written that feeding kids meat and milk "is a form of child abuse." He has also compared meat-eating and milk-drinking to smoking. In a 2003 FDA hearing, he tried to convince federal regulators that cheese was (literally) an addictive narcotic, calling it "morphine on a cracker" and "dairy crack."

PCRM's animal-rights sympathies are clear. Some of its most public figures have participated in PETA's naked street protests, acted as spokespersons for "direct action" protesters outside research labs, sued school districts over field trips to the rodeo and threatened lawsuits against dairy producers. At a recent animal-rights convention, one activist (then a PCRM spokesperson) even endorsed the idea of "political assassination" directed at doctors who test tomorrow's miracle drugs on animals.

Dr. Jerry Vlasak was billed on the "Animal Rights 2003" conference program as a PCRM representative. Dr. Vlasak spoke his mind, and it wasn't pretty. "I don't think you'd have to kill -- assassinate -- too many vivisectors," Dr. Vlasak told a room full of activists, "before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives."

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Big fat mistake: "'We misled you. And we plan to keep on misleading you.' That's essentially what the Centers for Disease Control announced this week. The agency said Tuesday that it has greatly over-exaggerated the number of lives lost each year to obesity. After years of putting the figure somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000, the agency now says the number is just under 26,000, meaning the government has been telling us obesity is fourteen times the threat it actually is, leading policymakers at all levels of governance to prescribe all matter of intrusive, expensive, choice-restrictive public policies aimed at addressing it. ... If all of that weren't bad enough, press reports indicate the CDC will still continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on anti-obesity programs, and will not be using the new data in those programs."