Flame — HabitableZone

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Fox — (archived)

Sorry for the unwarranted scorn. I'm not really interested in flaming, just annihilating PC thinking.

"Politically Correct" is a term of derision applied by bigots to language or usage designed purposefully to avoid bigotry. Labelling a phrase or an idea "PC" is their way of whining that their worldview no longer dominates. It is their way of reducing modern concepts of non-offense to ridicule of the attempt to not offend. The way I was raised, what now is denigrated as "PC" used to be called manners.

Some people I know who complain about "PC" don't think twice about using the phrase "Jew them down" in reference to haggling over price, in my hearing, already knowing that I'm a Jew. Their defense: "It's just an expression!"

To which I say: Horseshit.

What I understand you to be doing in this thread is not "annihilating PC thinking", but an experiment with a far better purpose: to get answers that are not knee-jerk quotes from the Standard Manual of either "the Left" or "the Right".

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It only takes one with evil intent to make that situation a potential unless you consider lethal self defense immoral which your ideal may do. I'm asking you to consider what the right thing to do is when being reasonable and rational fails as it does in the real world. The larger scale scenario is an extension of that same dilemma IMO.

The key concept is prior knowledge of intent (it wasn't included in your plot device, but we're beyond that now). Under my principle, "evil intent" is judged by whether it violates the principle. Arsonists, murderers, and other types of sociopath are not automatically protected. Extension of the principle of sanctity from individuals to groups isn't counter-intuitive - per my discussion with Tom (above), it's a result of the natural tendency of humans to congregate; victims of mass oppression (or worse) are still individuals, after all.

While it is still imperative to attempt to end a threat to individual sanctity (or multiple violations by the same perpetrator) through non-lethal means, it's not, as you point out, always practical.

Finally, I realize "sanctity of the individual" is at least vague, if not positively New Age-y. For a detailed list, we can start with Jefferson's "inalienable rights" from the Declaration of Independence, and Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 15, 19 and 26 to the US Constitution.

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