Wednesday, August 22, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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On political correctness
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
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To the Editor:
A city police department will provide local
control and local accountability.
The startup costs will be high, but the bene-
fits of having 24-hour coverage and dedicated
patrols far outweigh the startup costs.
A local department of the city will be much
more responsive to the values of Sisters.
The citizens of Sisters deserve a higher
level of service and accountability.
Scott Anderson
s
s
s
Top the Editor:
Our family has had a cabin on the Metolius
River for generations, and we adore the
ancient forests that line her gentle banks. So I
was quite disturbed when I recently heard that
a visitor, at another summer home, had a very
large fire in their pit.
This led me to the USFS where they
confirmed that fires are only allowed in “des-
ignated” campgrounds. Sommer Moyer, spe-
cial use permit administrator for the Deschutes
National Forest, Sisters Ranger District, kindly
gave me a raft of Extreme Fire fliers showing
the current rules, and we distributed them to
all 108 summer residences in Camp Sherman.
While doing so, I had some interesting con-
versations, confirming my greater concerns,
about campground fires.
Over the years I have seen some crazy
stuff: people dragging oversized logs into
small fire pits, fires that were burning bigger
and higher than allowed, and smoldering fires
left unattended. This summer has been no dif-
ferent. One night in particular we saw a very
large fire in the campground across from us
and when I visited the host to point out the
potential danger, he was both unaware and
disinterested.
See LETTERS on page 29
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A letter to the editor last
week defended “political
correctness” as “basically
another term for respect,
consideration, kindness, and
generosity towards others
despite their race, ethnicity,
gender, or disability.”
This definition elides the
modern origins of the term,
which lie in totalitarian
attempts to own language,
and thus to dominate culture
and ultimately the mecha-
nisms of power.
For the letter writer,
“political correctness” may
equate to simply being civil
— and certainly we could
all use a little more of that.
The problem is that, in its
fundamental nature, politi-
cal correctness is not about
being civil — it’s about
control. The term in its
modern context appeared
in the 1920s and ’30s, used
by Socialists, who decried
Communists’ adherence to
ideology and the party line
at the expense of truth. For a
true believer, the value of a
line of discourse was deter-
mined not by being factu-
ally correct, but by whether
it was politically correct and
served the Party’s ends.
“Political correctness” is
not a bogeyman invented by
the political right. It is man-
ifested in speech codes and
militant efforts to shut down
dissent from the dominant
culture on college cam-
puses. I can attest to this.
I graduated in 1987 with a
degree in history from the
University of California,
Santa Cruz, which was an
early adopter of the perni-
cious shackling of discourse
that has since percolated
across the nation.
My area of specialty,
then and now, was frontier
history. It became imme-
diately apparent that my
Native American History
class was not about the
study of history — it was an
exercise in ideological agit-
prop for ardent adherents of
a leftist, “anti-colonial” ide-
ology. This went far beyond
a valid and much-needed
corrective to triumphalist
mainstream history, present-
ing an anti-historical and
simplistic mirroring of an
old morality play, caricatur-
ing First Nations people as
“victims” and white settlers
as “oppressors.” I pushed
back on that — and a hand-
ful of students petitioned to
have me removed from the
class.
It didn’t matter that my
arguments were well-sup-
ported, sourced, and fac-
tually accurate. They dis-
rupted the desired ideologi-
cal arc of the class and vig-
orous presentation “intimi-
dated” students. My position
and my mode of presenta-
tion were not “politically
correct.” In those times, the
university stood up for open
and vigorous discourse and
the petition was tossed aside
without consideration. In
2018, I suspect the outcome
would have been different.
Some campus manifes-
tations of PC were amus-
ing — such as the insistence
on spelling “Women” as
“Womyn” or “Wymyn” (as
in, “no men in womyn”).
Well, OK. But it just looks
like Welsh.
The political right has
its own PC proclivities,
sometimes as risible as the
“no men in womyn” thing.
Who can forget the 2003
effort to rename French fries
“Freedom Fries” because
the French didn’t climb on
board with the invasion of
Iraq?
And “political correct-
ness” is by no means the
only threat to the kind of
vigorous discourse that is
the vital life’s blood of a
republic. President Trump
is also tapping totalitarian
roots when he decries the
press as “enemies of the
people.” Nice Bolshevik
turn of phrase there. I’ve
had experience with that
sort of thinking, too, receiv-
ing death threats after a
March 2003 Nugget edi-
torial in opposition to the
invasion of Iraq.
Yes, we should eschew
the sort of boorishness iden-
tified in last week’s letter.
But we should be wary of
any attempt to shut down
certain types of speech,
even (especially) speech
that makes us feel uncom-
fortable. Whether the cry is
“Fake News!” or a squeal
of outrage in PC griev-
ance theater, the goal is to
silence others and control
the discourse.
Whether it comes from
the left or the right, it is an
authoritarian impulse, inim-
ical to liberty and it should
be resisted wherever it is
found.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.