tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post2925567943759283449..comments2024-03-29T12:03:37.344+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Political correctness cannot be explained by selfishness among the eliteBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-48260289900398622212010-12-02T08:05:20.108+00:002010-12-02T08:05:20.108+00:00@Laeeth - thanks for these ideas and references.
...@Laeeth - thanks for these ideas and references. <br /><br />I was brought up in the Fabian tradition, which was a pragmatic form of British socialism - and I can see PC having evolved from that as well or alternatively as that of Europe.<br /><br />(Of course, Marx was a European working in England. There were several strains of socialism in England in the late 1800s - from pure Marxism, through Fabian socialism and the Trades Union based Labour party to utopian William Morris type agrarianism.) <br /><br />The amazing strength and spread of PC is that it has colonized such a variety of Western societies, with quite different traditions. <br /><br />The anti-intellectualism of the English is still seen in PC by its refusal to look more than one step ahead in policy. <br /><br />This means that perfectly obvious consequences can be ignored as being too 'theoretical' and (it is implied) speculative. <br /><br />e.g. The highly predictable outcomes of paying people (a lot) more for not working than for working; the demographic effects of massively differential birth rates and effects of sustained massive population migration into England; the effects of managerial bureaucratic control of skilled professional activities such as science, medicine, engineering; the demotivating effects of high taxation... these are some random examples.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-43971631433368909922010-12-02T04:59:55.917+00:002010-12-02T04:59:55.917+00:00Bruce - in 'The Logic of Liberty' Karl Pol...Bruce - in 'The Logic of Liberty' Karl Polanyi makes a similar point to yours, tracing the origin of the suicidal impulse within Western civilization to corrosive Greek scepticism. He says that this was kept at bay in the past in Britain for much longer than in Europe by characteristic English restraint - an unwillingness to take this stance to its logical conclusion.<br /><br />I suspect that the emigration of European intellectuals during the 30s and 40s to the US and their greater influence on English-speaking thought explains the shift in the character of the dominant philosophical strain.Laeethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11531224993903662094noreply@blogger.com