From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Sep 12 2004 - 00:17:57 BST
Mel and all MOQers:
mel asked dmb:
...Does this delineation make ANY sense, in
context, to you? For brevity I tried to avoid
quoting "chapter and verse" of several e-mails.
dmb says:
No, sorry. You lost me. Well, I have a vague idea that you're trying to be
big about it and strike a moderate tone, but I still don't see that you've
addressed my objections, which are fairly specific. (We ARE talking about
political correctness, aren't we?) This exchange gets back to the topic...
dmb had said:
...But bigotry judges the value of persons according to race, ethnicity,
gender and other unchangeable and irrelevant standards. ...And in Pirsigian
terms, bigotry is a low quality social value and rigorous rejection of an
idea is an intellectual activity. They're different levels of reality.
mel replied:
Intolerance is also a choice regarding ideas, or concepts, and their
adherents. One may chose to be intoletant of communists, fascists,
white or black supremacists, Packer's, Raider's, or Manchester
United fans, or because of lifestyle.
e.g. A fundamentalist-literalist church member may choose
an intolerant stand regarding a "gay lifestyle", as a possibility
in the community and work to pass legislation aimed at preventing
the situation as much as possible. (Unrelated same sex
individuals may be barred from purchasing property together.)
dmb says:
Intolance is also a choice regarding ideas, their adherents and sports fans?
There are two major problems with this. The first is a conflation of the two
major conventional definitions of "intolerance". The second includes this
conflations and adds a failure to respects Pirsig's levels. The word
"intolerant", in the context of political correctness and the angry white
guys who oppose it, refers to one who is "unwilling to grant equal freedom
of expression or share social, political or professionnal rights. BIGOTED",
as Wester's dictionary puts it. But you have also mixed that definition with
the broader meaning; "Unable or unwilling to endure < a plant intolerant of
direct sunlight>", again as Webster's puts it. We could talk about rapid
sports fans and lactose intolerance, but I very much prefer to stay focused
on the topic. You know? The second problem is on display in your list of
choices. You've got ideas, those who believe them, political ideologues,
racists, sports teams, and gay people all mixed together as if it doesn't
matter what we're talking about. But it does matter. The choices on your
list can be sorted out with the MOQ's hierarchy, where societies CAN be
judged and measured, where there are standards for intellectual quality, AND
where race and gender, as biological qualities, are unrelated and irrelevant
to those judgements and standards.
In terms of the bigger picture, I see the PC wars as just one more
manifestation of the conflict between social and intellectual values.
Neither are very proud examples, but basically I see a spirit of equaltiy
and inclusiveness in the attempt to soften insulting terms like "retarded"
and "cripple". I don't think it really works to effect any changes in
attitude on the park of the speaker, but the motives are good and the gimps
really love it. Its not fair to say every critic of this movement is a
member of the klan, but every member of the klan is a critic of this
movement - and so is every other kind of bigot. (I should mention that I
worked in talk radio for about five years, where I heard this kind of
bigoted critic every single day.)
Or forget all that and ask yourself a common sense question. What's worse,
college kids with a pile of lame euphemisms or centuries or the continuing
legacy of rights denied?
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