tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post4834522174395650832..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Abolition movement as a precursor of political correctnessBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-58929714568318254892010-11-14T10:46:39.210+00:002010-11-14T10:46:39.210+00:00The PC of CP was different to modern PC.
Everyone...The PC of CP was different to modern PC.<br /><br />Everyone was PC out of fear, even the enforcers were scared that they would be punished if they didn't punish the transgressor. It was a PC based on survival.<br /><br />No, Modern PC is a far more insidious beast. Here PC's "guards" are "altruistic". They punish not because of power, but because they think they hold the moral high ground. And they do so with <i>pleasure</i>.The Social Pathologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-25554029205761081472010-11-14T10:30:15.263+00:002010-11-14T10:30:15.263+00:00@dearieme - the CP fell, did it?
That's news...@dearieme - the CP fell, did it? <br /><br />That's news to me!<br /><br />More seriously, you make the point that PC is merely a rearrangment of CP; which is true enough.<br /><br />Except that Communism never became so wilfully blind as to behave like PC. No doubt it would have become so, but collapsed before that could happen. Because it has a stronger rival overseas. <br /><br />The only reason that PC has not yet collapsed is absence of a stonger (and organized) rival overseas (or at home) - but that may soon change, with the decline falling below more and more rival powers (first China, then who knows how many more).Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-71087084147411237742010-11-13T22:47:05.959+00:002010-11-13T22:47:05.959+00:00PC rose as the CP fell.PC rose as the CP fell.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-14979025381934314112010-11-13T20:50:04.853+00:002010-11-13T20:50:04.853+00:00@SP - "I don't think that the abolition m...@SP - "I don't think that the abolition movement was responsible for PC." <br /><br />Neither do I - where did you get the idea that I did think this? <br /><br />The reason I am writing/ thinking so much about PC is that I am not convinced by the standard/ old explanations that you cite. <br /><br />If you are happy with the standard explanations, then naturally you will not find what I say to be convincing.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-89622528141059635922010-11-13T12:13:18.403+00:002010-11-13T12:13:18.403+00:00And here's another piece by the good doctor.
...And <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/190464" rel="nofollow">here's another piece by the good doctor.</a><br /><br />PC is the product of a culture that values feeling over thought.The Social Pathologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-81473560297640350702010-11-13T11:52:09.222+00:002010-11-13T11:52:09.222+00:00I'm not sure if you got my reply at my blog. I...I'm not sure if you got my reply at my blog. I'd rather expand on it more over here.<br /><br />I don't think that the abolition movement was responsible for PC. Rather the abolitionists probably accidentally discovered a method that gets things done in an Anglo-Protestant environment. The Quakers were peaceful (and rich); nice people, not being able to resort to violence they resorted to "non violent" mechanisms to achieve their aims.<br /><br />If I had to use a crude form of expression, PC is a product of the Anglo <a href="http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye" rel="nofollow">"temperament"</a>. The value that the culture places on feelings, and the moral legitimacy that the culture accords to acting on ones feelings, especially when they are "nice". It's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten:_The_Toxic_Cult_of_Sentimentality" rel="nofollow"> The Culture of Sentimentality"</a>. It is a culture that is the accidental product of England's tolerant Protestant heritage.The Social Pathologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-75577657853668650862010-11-13T06:42:34.593+00:002010-11-13T06:42:34.593+00:00Henry Adams, Grandson of President John Quincy Ada...Henry Adams, Grandson of President John Quincy Adams, wrote of his first trip into the American South in 1850 through the eyes of a twelve year old boy on a railroad car. It is an incredibly unnerving experience, to the boy and to the reader. As an old man, he described again what he had seen in 1850 as if it were a completely different play and players. He had lost confidence in his part in ending slavery, and even more in what had replaced it.<br /><br />If John Brown couldn't shake the general faith toward the abolition movement, nobody can. Good luck with that.xlbrlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01931950075332608449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-7094881376465388392010-11-12T18:43:38.790+00:002010-11-12T18:43:38.790+00:00@dearieme - if you want to continue as a commenter...@dearieme - if you want to continue as a commenter on my blog, these pro-Norman comments must STOP!<br /><br />Presumably I am glad that there is not much slavery in the UK nowadays - but I think it is fair to say there are worse things than slavery - in the sense that there were several societies which did have slavery that were much better than some societies without slavery. On that basis there cannot be an over-riding imperative to abolish slavery *at any cost*. <br /><br />At any rate, whatever people *say* (words are cheap) they are not really bothered about slavery, and do not take any active steps to prevent, detect or stop it - as contrasted with the vast efforts to prevent the British middle classes from breaking the speed limit by 7 mph. or punishing them for failing to declare small sums of taxable income etc.<br /><br />Places like Mauretania and Congo have always had slavery, and it has been resurgent in recent decades. Are the UN up in arms? <br /><br />Exemplia gratia - slavery was in force for two years, apparently undetected, just a few hundred yards from where I am sitting: http://tinyurl.com/32moox2 <br /><br />How hard would it be, really, to detect slavery in modern England - if you really gave a damn about it?<br /><br />* <br /><br />@ SS - I hadn't come across Diarmid McCullough; from a swift look at Wiki he seems to be a liberal theologian or church historian of some kind? But PC is so mainstream in academia that surely there is no need to be suble about mongering it.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-22286938555440663652010-11-12T18:16:15.770+00:002010-11-12T18:16:15.770+00:00Certainly it was in England - but oddly, so was ...Certainly it was in England - but oddly, so was the pro-slavery forces in the US at least, which successfully forced a kind of prohibition on anti-slavery speech in America before and to some extend after the Civil war, which was much like the shutdown on speech that the proponents of "Islamophobia" advocate - and similarly based on the threat of violence. Northern-state authorities were very hard on abolitionists because they were regarded as responsible for the violence actually carried out by Southern-state pro-slavery forces. Like Biblically based defenses of American slave-holders and abolitionism, isn't PC also a consequence of the Reformation and Calvinist (or spilt Calvinism) in essence? - and isn't it ironic and apt (if my impression is true that) Prof. Diarmid McCullough is some kind of past master at subtle PC-mongering?HofJudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02709538079720873322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-70821697659242922442010-11-12T17:17:30.686+00:002010-11-12T17:17:30.686+00:00Interesting stuff, Bruce. I suppose at American h...Interesting stuff, Bruce. I suppose at American hands abolitionism degenerated into the terrorism of John Brown and the slaughter of the Civil War. But then any good cause can degenerate at someone's hands.<br /><br />We are presumably glad that the slavery pursued by and on our ancestors - Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Gaels - dwindled away, under Norman rule or influence, before the modern age.deariemenoreply@blogger.com