Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

On Being Politically Incorrect

Piers Benn makes some deeply suspect observations.

There is much written these days on being politically correct. Quality newspapers and magazines have latched onto the predominantly American idea that certain habits of speech, ways of addressing people, social attitudes and even eating habits betray a fundamental lack of soundness in one’s ideological outlook and call for urgent and radical re-education. To be sure, the recent British interest in this phenomenon is largely from a critical angle; Peter Jenkins, writing in The Independent a few months ago, denounced the pressure for political correctness as dangerously illiberal, and the hackles have been raised of many a libertarian journalist such as Auberon Waugh. There is also, no doubt, a temptation to exaggerate the influence of the enforcers of political correctness, for such people are the perfect foil for the derision of many a bombastic individualist. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is real.

…