Tolerating Challenge

It’s more than tedious I know, and a subject I seem to be thrashing unnecessarily at present, but political correctness stubbornly remains an ideology where it is perfectly acceptable to stifle any discussion on opposing views by labeling them `bigoted’. If you are described as bigoted often enough there is the danger that you might begin to believe it and even take steps to make changes in your biased and blinkered beliefs. A similar thing happens should you be described as `racist’. For example if you dare to mention that a certain ethnic group make up a large proportion of the current prison population or that more children of a certain ethnic group suffer serious injury and sometimes death at the hands of their extended family, those very people who should be protecting them, you are likely to be viciously rebuked. The claims might very well be true but it is one hundred per cent racist to start pointing it out because to do so immediately puts you into a most unpleasant xenophobic category of humankind. And sadly if you are called a racist often enough you start to think more deeply on the issue and sometimes discover that you are in serious danger of becoming one whether you like it or not. Now possibly this is what your opponents actually want, more bigots and racists to re-assure them that there is only one correct life philosophy – their own! Furthermore, if you allow your thoughts to meander and consider such matters critically from a political viewpoint it appears that Liberalism and Communism are extraordinarily similar - neither side can tolerate challenge.