[Janet Kenny]

Paul said:
Courtesy is a gift given. Political correctness is a conformity demanded. One flows from free will and generosity, the other from demands and coercion.

Oh yes! Beautifully said.

Paul, if I didn't add to your post in GT it was because I had already written at some length about that very topic and didn't want to start a fire. You know that I am absolutely with you about that matter. Unfortunately if we pursue that line we end up injuring some poets whom we both deeply admire and respect. As some well-meaning but monotonous people used to chant at me: "It's all connected".

I don't wish to criticise any poets, Janet. I have no criticism. I think Windschuttle is perfectly entitled to put that case. It's called historical debate, which I'm all in favour of, and which is the very method of History. Nor do I think anyone should not publish in Quadrant. I adore Les Murray's work, just as I do Tim's for all that he is an unregenerate redneck (joke, Tim ). The best formal poetry in Australia goes through there. I'd publish there myself if I were good enough. I'm just trying to suggest a less narrow perspective here.

[Gregory Dowling]

Yes, thanks Sam, for posting that link. It looks like a very good book. It's certainly a very enjoyable essay (with very different illustrations from what one usually finds in academic works of this sort).

Paul, I think I'm in basic agreement with you. I'm not entirely sure why we seemed to be arguing at some point...

[Janice D. Soderling]

What the dictionary says is not always what folks have in their noggins.

But the dictionary says that both meanings now being argued are considered true and valid.

politically correct
adj. Abbr. PC

1. Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

2. Being or perceived as being overconcerned with such change, often to the exclusion of other matters.

political correctness n

As some write at the end of a crit: I hope that helps.

Janice, it would be interesting to track down the origin of the phrase. I suspect with David that it originated amongst leftist and human rights activists, however much it was later taken over (as Janet mentions) by the Murdoch left-baiting media. I'm reading currently Alan Gould's fiction "Decency and Honour" from The Enduring Disguises (for the Seventh Chimaera's Gould feature). It evokes that whole late-60s political activism scene (in this case amongst students in Canberra) that gave rise to such attitudes. Highly recommended: it's a wonderful jolt of memory, and nice satire, and more. So many of the old phrases that had sunk into time. (I'm also re-reading the Four Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Feds 'N' Heads, which similarly bring that era back to life -- in a different kind of way.)

Paul, I think I'm in basic agreement with you. I'm not entirely sure why we seemed to be arguing at some point

Greg, I think you are right! My original remarks were somewhat elliptical and poorly framed.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Paul, now that is an interesting coincidence. I am also reading sixties and seventies history. I've read Making of the President 1964 and have Making of the President 1960 lined up. Just finishing off March of Folly which ends with the Vietnam war. Next will be a biography of Bobby Kennedy Robert Kennedy and His Times, and in the stack are Kissinger's Memoirs Från Krig till Fred, Part III, From War to Peace, 1000 pages in Swedish. It is nice to change specs, or perspectives, and create one's own picture.

And as a sideline I found on sale recently two books of history in photos. The Hulton Getty Picture Collections of 1960s and 1970s.

My action plan is to wind up this session with Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

And as you know, the ancient historians Herodotus, Homer et al, tell us that it has been going on for a long time.

So much to read, so little brain space.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Paul Stevens

Janice, it would be interesting to track down the origin of the phrase.

Paul,

It's my understanding the phrase had its roots in the chinese cultural revolution, so we're talking mid to late 60's. I can remember hearing it in left wing circles in the 70's, but never heard it from a right winger until the spring of 87. By the 90's, the right had completely co-opted the term, likely thanks to the spread of rightist talk radio in this country.

Of course, this is all anecdotal etymology, and I'm willing to suffer correction. Still, I've always thought it tremendously ironic that U.S. neo-fascists would employ a distinctly Maoist phrase, seemingly without even thinking about it. Naturally, one of their basic tenets is defense of the 2nd amendment, thereby declaring their adherence to the Maoist belief that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

Thanks,

Bill

[Janice D. Soderling]

FWIW or not.

In the USA
The earliest citation is not politically correct, found in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), denoting that the statement under judgment is literally incorrect, as understood in the eighteenth-century US: “The states, rather than the People, for whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal attention. . . . Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? [To] ‘The United States’, instead of [to] the ‘People of the United States’, is the toast given. This is not politically correct.” [4]

In Marxism–Leninism
In Marxist–Leninist and Trotskyist vocabulary, correct was the common term denoting the “appropriate party line” and the ideologic/ “correct line”.[6] Likewise in the People's Republic of China, as part of Mao’s declarations on the correct handling of “non-antagonistic contradictions”.[1][7][8][9] MIT professor of literature Ruth Perry traces the term from Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book (1964).

More at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Edited in: I was too quick on the Submit trigger. Sorry, Bill.

[David Rosenthal]

I think the Bill vs. BamBam analogy isn't quite right. It might get closer if textbooks, newscasts, institutional documents, history books, etc. referred to people like Bill as "BamBams" and included or assumed the validity of definite-sounding but poorly-substantiated conclusions about the supposed inability of "BamBams" to function as effectively as, or deserve equal treatment to, non-"BamBams." In that context Bill's demands, and his organized boycott, may be understood more as self-defense than coercion, and the shopkeeper's refusal to call Bill by his rightful name, despite his repeated reasonable requests that he do so, may seem like something quite worse than an absence of courtesy. Of course, the shopkeeper might have success gather sympathy by calling FOX news to report the boycott as "harassment" by "PC Maoists" or some such.

Analogies aside, I think what is being called "courtesy" here is something much more basic, perhaps "decency." Whatever it is, its opposite is a willful, unnecessary refusal to do what is reasonable, with clear knowledge that it will upset or injure others in some way. It is careless disregard at best, intentional harm-doing at worse. But it is more serious, I think, than is suggested by a continuum of "courtesy."

David R.