…but when I hear someone insisting on PC standards of language and policy, my automatic response is, “What are you trying to hide?”

What, exactly, is Political Correctness?

According to Wikipedia (that great repository of untested theories, unchallenged truisms and unquestioned popular doctrines) Political Correctness is the policy of avoiding giving offence by use of language, ideas, policies, or behaviour.

At this point I have to make myself clear: I am talking about that policy. I am not talking about the principles, espoused by those who defend PC-ness, of liberality and enlightenment. But I have to say that no-one was ever liberated or enlightened by the censorship of offensive language, ideas, policies, or behaviour.

If you want liberty and enlightenment then, I say, Political Correctness is exactly the
wrong way to go about it. This is because there is no causal link between a person’s verbal lexicon and their ethical conduct; getting someone to speak ethically does not make them behave ethically. Praxis, not rhetoric, teaches ethics.

In fact, rhetoric, in the form of Political Correctness, is the art of concealment, dissemblance and misdirection – and therefore the perfect tool for the bigot and the deceiver whose intentions are to do nothing for those they claim to be assisting.