Dick Palmer, a regular columnist for the Budgeteer News of Duluth, this week wrote, "Who masterminded 'political' correctness?" a diatribe against all the silly groupthink about what is appropriate speech.
I wanted to write a letter to the editor, "Who masterminded 'patriotic' correctness?" but I dithered too long to make the deadline for this week's issue.
Patriotic correctness in one of its guises is unquestioning obeisance to the federal government, especially in military matters. It also considers anyone who questions certain phrases as being against "our freedoms". I thought one of "our freedoms" was freedom of speech. I think the climate of patriotic correctness is more dangerous than political correctness because it stifles critical thought about our government's actions.
The whole flag worship issue is one; somehow the U.S. Flag has become more important than the U.S. Constitution. I don't care if some misguided person somewhere sometime burns a flag; they should be prosecuted for burning books, trash, or any other objects outside of approved containers. But we don't seem to be concerned about anybody burning the Constitution, especially the many symbolic "burnings" of the Constitution by Presidents and Congresses.
"Defense" became a patriotically correct word with the reorganization of the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the Department of Defense. This aids in the cover of calling any military action, no matter how questionable, as "Defense". How many places do you think you can get in a serious discussion with a diverse group of people that a President's decision to go to war had nothing to do with the "defense of our freedoms"?
Interestingly, those who argue for patriotic correctness in matters of symbols and wars are most often those who can think government can do nothing right in almost every other matter - whether it's running a weather service, designing highways, managing the economy, or just providing for the "General Welfare". How does government magically and correctly decide that a war is a good thing?
Years ago I borrowed from some library "PCPC: Political Correctness and Patriotic Correctness". It took on both of these stiflers of free thought. I have tried to find it with many different searches including WorldCat without result.
I did find something similar: Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America by Robert Hughes. A copy is at the University of Minnesota, Duluth library.
Two interesting online reviews are by Scott London and John P. Sisk.
I could go on all day on references to these two silly ideas, but I'll leave you the The Coffee Place's Joke Stack.
