Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

The woke/politically correct crowd is driving society to hell in a handbasket. Morals are being obfuscated and even the word morals will soon likely be removed from dictionaries.

Biology is no longer a real science. Just ask President Joe Biden. He believes biological males should beat girls in sports and then share their locker room after the competition. He signed an executive order to force that on our daughters and granddaughters.

Follow the science is the government mantra to beating COVID. Lock down and quarantine citizens but allow thousands of people every day to enter through the southern border illegally, without even testing for COVID.

The Grace Church School in New York City is the latest, and not the last, school teaching our children to be woke. Its new Inclusive Language Guide wants to cancel and eliminate all the following: mom, dad, parents, boys, girls, guys, ladies, gentlemen, sweetheart, honey, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, nanny, babysitter, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and OCD. That is just the short list in its 12-page reconstruction of the English language. Many more cancellations are soon to follow.

The new melting pot of America will have a society where everyone is the same gender and color. No one is allowed to choose their religion. Every type of family can have babies biology be dammed. No one will have to work and everyone can get a living wage from the government. If you are not an LGBTQ+ member, you soon will be, or your gender identity will be canceled.

Originally posted here:

Letter to the editor: Political correctness is running amok - Journal Inquirer

D. Eric Schansberg, Opinion contributor Published 5:36 a.m. ET March 29, 2021

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial opened their defense Friday arguing that the trial is "constitutional cancel culture" by Democrats trying to retain power. (Feb. 12) AP Domestic

I wonder if Ill get canceled someday. I could trip up and say something awkward or inappropriate and get crushed for it. It could be a phrase in a Facebook post or a newspaper article like this. It could be a slip in the classroom that gets reported by a student. It doesnt bother me a lot. I know Im not perfect in word, deed, motiveor thought. And I dont worry much about what others think about me. But itd be painful and would hurt those around me.

Todays cancel culture is not entirely new. Political correctness (PC) started in the 1980s and prompted people to speak more carefully about certain topics. If you crossed the line, some people would call you out and make life difficult for you. But there was a relatively healthy balance between valid concerns and silliness. Some people took it too seriously, while others would respond with eyerolls.

Cancel culture is PC on steroids. The approach is similar increased sensitivities for better and for worse with a heavy dose of fascism. Its practitioners rely on a powerful combination of public policy, social stigmaand economic consequences to enforce the regime. If you transgress today, you may lose your reputation, your joband your career.

You might also think of cancel culture as similar to the recent emergence of #Karen a light social-media poke at aspects of middle-aged, middle-class, social conservatism. Cancel culture is a type of #Karen on the left. But while theres a tongue-in-cheek humor to #Karen, cancel culture is deadly serious with much more at stake.

Opinion: Staff slamming Teen Vogue's editor. Protesters targeting cheerleaders. Where is our grace?

Cancel culture starts with principles that range from legitimate to debatable and incoherent. Its practitioners can quickly get insistent and dogmatic. Its a religion that lacks mercy and grace, forgiveness and redemption. As any other religion, its never any fun arguing with its fundamentalists. It wars against civil liberties, free speechand free thought. It is a threat to institutions ranging from higher education to comedy. It is stunningly illiberal. (Labeling it liberal is a terrible and ironic error.)

So, cancel culture is highly problematic and ought to be canceled itself. But canceling is a matter of degree. We can all agree that some things ought to be canceled for example, sneezing more than two times in a row; the Teletubbies (at least black-and-white photos of them); and microwaving fish at work. Even so, as C.S. Lewis notes, we should try to love the sinner and hate the sin as we do this so well with ourselves.

And there is a time for some people to be canceled if not overall, then in terms of their supposed membership in certain groups. If you support military interventionism or oppose school choice for the poor and middle class, then you might well be on the left or a run-of-the-mill Democrat, but you should quit calling yourself a liberal.

If you said little or nothing about massive spending and debt under the last two GOP presidents or you routinely advocate federal government solutions to state/local problems, then you might be an ordinary Republican, but you should be canceled as a conservative.

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What if youre against abortion as a personal matterbut dont want to impose your views on others to protect the lives of the unborn? You change policy to take money from current and future taxpayers to finance abortion. And you choose a prominent cabinet member who played a prominent part in suing a bunch of nuns to require them to have birth control in their health care coverage. Shouldnt you be canceled as a Catholic?

D. Eric Schansberg is a professor of economics at IU Southeast in New Albany and an adjunct scholar for the Indiana Policy Review Foundation.(Photo: provided)

In Christian circles, this is often called church discipline.In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus says If your brother or sistersins,go and point out their fault,just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church;and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

This is terrific counsel. If someone wrongs you, talk with him. Maybe it was a misperception on your part. If not, hopefully, he will apologize and repent. If this doesnt solve the problem, bring in a third party to mediate. Often, the additional person can be more reasonable and objective in arbitrating the dispute. If this doesnt work, bring it to the group and cancel the wrongdoer if he wont repent.

We should never try to cancel people from their humanity. And we should rarely cancel them from their livelihoods. But we should cancel people from groups when they insist on violating its tenets and norms.

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D. Eric Schansberg is a professor of economics at IU Southeast in New Albany and an adjunct scholar for the Indiana Policy Review Foundation.

Read or Share this story: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2021/03/29/cancel-culture-america-political-correctness/6991235002/

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Political correctness on steroids: What cancel culture is and why it matters - Courier Journal

Prince Harry has copped a pasting in the British media for his new job as chief impact officer with Silicon Valley startup BetterUp.

His role, and the companys business model, has been called the latest expression of woke capitalism in venerable conservative magazine The Spectator. Other critics have chimed in, derideing the Prince of Woke Capital for surfing a wave of wokery towards an economic abyss.

Ridiculing people and corporations for being woke is, of course, a relatively easy sport for pundits on the right of the political spectrum. Harrys critics have a point that woke capitalism involves vapid political correctness, even if they are missing its more serious ramifications for social and economic inequality.

First, lets recap the meaning of woke and woke capitalism.

The use of the term woke by African Americans has been traced back at least to the 1920s, though Oxford English Dictionary researchers say its meaning as being alert to systemic issues of injustice and discrimination emerged from the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.

It became more widely known with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013 (following the acquittal of Florida man George Zimmerman for shooting dead African-American teen Trayvon Martin).

As academics Elaine Richardson and Alice Ragland explain in a 2018 article, BLM activists used the hashtag #staywoke to urge fellow African Americans to remain aware of what is going on around you and in society, more specifically, to remain politically aware or conscious.

It didnt take long for woke to enter mainstream culture. In 2016 the American Dialect Society declared it the slang word of the year. They defined woke as being conscious, aware or enlightened, especially with regards to matters of social justice and racial inequity.

Read more: Woke washing: what happens when marketing communications don't match corporate practice

In entering the mainstream, though, the meaning of woke was soon distorted. Those on the right of politics co-opted it as a term of derision akin to social justice warrior for people (especially white people) who bragged about their self-righteous positions on political issues.

What started as a serious call to political consciousness was manipulated to become a way of dismissing anyone who professed vaguely progressive views.

This wasnt limited to individuals. Corporations too could be chastised for being woke.

In 2018, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote about the trend of corporations and chief executives aligning themselves to progressive social concerns, such as immigration and gay and transgender rights, while they continued to push their own economic self-interest on tax policy and corporate stinginess in paychecks.

The term woke capitalism soon came to express the approach of companies who claim a social licence to operate through their public advocacy on social issues, without affecting the economic status quo.

Read more: Swollen executive pay packets reveal the limits of corporate activism

What has all of this got to do with Prince Harry and BetterUp?

Lets clarify what BetterUp is.

Media reports have described the San Francisco-based company as a startup that provides employee coaching and mental health assistance.

The company itself describes its business as being about changing the world by bringing the power of transformation to each and every person. Announcing the princes appointment, chief executive Alexi Robichaux declared:

Prince Harry will expand on the work hes been doing for years, as he educates and inspires our community and champions the importance of focusing on preventative mental fitness and human potential worldwide.

The title of chief impact officer or chimpo comes from the not-profit sector. Theres no one accepted job decription, but such roles generally involve working to ensure an organisation is actually achieving its stated vision and mission.

How does this apply to BetterUp? Thats unclear.

Remove all the marketing babble and this is a company that exists to make a profit. Its core business appears to be an app selling professional coaching services. Its promise is to make people more positive, engaged, and connected to every part of their lives, both personal and professional.

In reality, the chief impact the prince is likely to have is attracting publicity for the app helping BetterUps bottom line, and Harrys bank balance.

The way in which BetterUp has wrapped its reality in the language of social concern and human progress bears all the worst hallmarks of woke capitalism.

Its business model is all about individual empowerment. This shows no apparent awareness of the need to address systemic social and economic inequities. It would also have us believe we can all make it in that world, if we just get the right mental attitude.

Yet the connection between entrenched economic inequalities and myriad social problems including mental illness are well-documented. As the World Health Organization concludes, mental disorders are shaped by social and economic factors, with inequality being chief among them.

Over the past 30 years, according to the United Nations World Social Report for 2020, income inequality has become worse in most developed countries.

The irony is that Harry epitomises this inequality, and the limitations of meritocracy. He is the very embodiment of unearned wealth and privilege. Would he have gotten this job except for the family he was born into? Unlikely. How much is he being paid to push the idea that anyone can achieve success? BetterUp isnt saying. Nor is he.

So while it easy to agree with criticisms of Prince Harrys new job as an expression of woke capitalism, this cannot simply be dismissed as misplaced political correctness.

Inequality is the problem. Woke capitalism is not the solution.

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Prince Harrys critics have a point: woke capitalism is no solution - The Conversation AU

Participating in a legislative hearing on housing discrimination last week, state Rep. Michael Winkler, D-Vernon, may not have known (along with most of his constituents) a couple of disgraceful aspects of United States history: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during World War II when they were falsely suspected of disloyalty. Or maybe Winkler just forgot about them. That can happen.

So Winkler mistakenly remarked that a Greenwich housing official who was defending his town against complaints of exclusivity should not have counted residents of Asian descent as members of oppressed minorities because Asian Americans never faced discrimination.

While mistaken, Winkler had not "disparaged" people of Asian descent, as some people inferred and some news organizations reported. He was just opposing exclusive zoning and was a bit inept as he argued, accurately, that wealthy Greenwich is not as open residentially as it might like to pretend, and that Blacks are the most disadvantaged of Connecticut's minority groups.

But since this is the era of political correctness, indignation, intimidation, and posturing, Winkler's colleagues at the state Capitol couldn't just cordially correct him. They had to demonstrate their righteousness by denouncing him as if this avuncular liberal Democrat was actually a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

The next day state Attorney General William Tong, himself of Asian descent, carved time from his busy schedule posturing elsewhere to pile on, though Winkler had already apologized contritely at the end of the hearing the night before. His contrition did Winkler no good. The verdict was already in: Off with his head!

Tong bellowed: "The history of bias and hate against Asian Americans in this country is long and largely invisible, an unfortunate reality that has been highlighted by the ignorant comments made by Representative Winkler. The myth of the so-called model minority' is a dangerous fiction that for too long has allowed this country to erase and ignore this shameful history."

Of course nearly everybody these days wants to be considered a victim of one thing or another because victimhood is so powerful politically. If you're a victim, everyone is supposed to be cowed into doing whatever you demand, even if it isn't any fairer than what was done to you. Victim status is especially useful to politicians, even those who have reached high office, thereby inadvertently giving evidence that maybe they weren't such victims.

Anyone who questions this racket risks getting called an ugly name. So most people in politics endure it in silence.

But the "model minority" isnota myth about people of Asian descent in America. The social science and occasional political controversies suggest that despite the bigotry they have faced -- much reduced now, the Chinese Exclusion Act being long repealed and the internment of the Japanese Americans long repudiated by statute and reparations -- Americans of Asian descent indeed tend to work harder than they complain. As a result their success, as a proportion of their numbers, is much greater than that of other ethnic groups and whites, especially academically. This may have more to do with culture and family values than genetics.

So the bigger history here is not, as Tong says, "shameful" butheroic-- a history of overcoming injustice and thus making the whole country more just. Indeed, that remains the American story generally, which in turn is part of what used to be called the ascent of man, though it may have slowed lately.

Even as the attorney general postures about injustice to people of Asian descent in the distant past and in the present inotherstates, he has dismissed injustice to them right in his own state. For Tong has taken the side of Yale University against the litigation brought on behalf of students of Asian descent who claim that in pursuit of "diversity," Yale, like other elite institutions, has imposed a quota on their admission, just as higher education long has done against Jewish students with superior qualifications.

If academic achievement determined admission, student populations in higher education would be even more Asian and Jewish than they already are. But the political correctness Tong strives to serve in pursuit of even higher office confuses diversity with justice.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

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Winkler isn't a Klansman and Tong is hardly a victim - Journal Inquirer

"Look at the state of the pathetic excuse for a proffessional. Her rediculous appearance says it all but she thinks she looks radical." (sic)

100% agree .. her adolescent stance is concerning considering her academic achievement. Covid celebrity and full of self-importance.

She loves her own voice.

She has zero scientific integrity.

The doctor needs a good taxidermist.

Just a big fat pig.

Actually she doesnt look very professional at all never thought she was anything but a mouth full of rubish [sic].

Prof Wiles has a PhD in microbiology from Oxford University, she has won numerous awards for her research and communication efforts, including the Prime Ministers Science Media Communication Prize, she has been a finalist for the 2018 New Zealander of the Year Award and in 2019, was appointed a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to microbiological and science communication but, of course, none of that matters because she is just a big fat pig.

This type of vitriol is not isolated and many high-profile women are recipients.

A few years ago, I attended an event, Women you can Bank on, where Raelene Castle, CEO of Sport New Zealand and past CEO of Rugby Australia and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, was the guest speaker.

She shared with the audience the abhorrent social media bullying she was subjected to. I remember reading the comments, and feeling physically sick, then asking myself , Why are we letting this happen?.

To all those people who complain about political correctness, woke cultures and cancel cultures, please have another think.

We have to do all that we can to address the inequities women face in terms of societal expectations around their physical appearance, especially when they dare to be in the public profile.

Congratulations to Wakatipu High School who have tweaked their Grease musical Summer Nights lyrics, "Tell me more, tell me more, did she put up a fight?" so that the play is more suited to modern thinking.

This is not taking a politically correct approach as described in the Otago Daily Times (March, 28, 2021), this is taking an approach which is respectful to women. By using the phrase politically correct we are undermining those seeking change and boy, do we need change.

Ex-prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard and the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, have published a book, Women and Leadership, demonstrating that these problems are global. They recognise this is not a male against female issue, but a society against female issue.

A stark demonstration of this was when internationally recognised feminist, Germain Greer, said of Julia Gillard, What I want her to do is get rid of those bloody jackets, every time she turns around youve got that strange horizontal crease, which means theyre cut too narrow in the hips. Youve got a big arse, Julia. Just get on with it.

March-on Wakatipu High, march-on Prof Siouxsie Wiles, march-on Raelene Castle, march-on Julia Gillard and march-on all women who strive to lead in the face of such abuse.

Why do we need to address this?

Many reasons, the most urgent being the future of young women.

My daughter is 15, her generation of young women are growing up in perhaps the most horrific time for young women in relation to body image. Its hard to compare across generations and other generations of women have had different challenges, but the proliferation and accessibility of pornography, social media bullying, botox and surgical enhancement offerings, mean these young women need all of our support in valuing them for who they truly are.

They need all of our support to show them that they are worth more than their looks that their actions, character and achievements mean more to us than the size of their bottoms.

We need to stop undermining and belittling this movement with snide comments about woke culture, and political correctness.

When we undermine these movements, we undermine the ambitions of many young women and in doing so, potentially create a body image crisis that will irreparably damage years of progress for womens equality. Please people, enough is enough.

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Time to fight the attack on young women's image - Otago Daily Times