The Wonderful World of PC - Political Correctness or Popularity Contest?

Pretty much everybody wants to be popular. At some level, people want to be liked and admired by the people in their lives, and that's natural and even healthy, to a point. But we all know the dangers and pitfalls that seeking popularity can lead to. The all-too-familiar peer pressure most associated with junior high and high school students is usually driven by a hunger for acceptance and love from others, and often leads to behavior that is destructive, immoral, and reflective of poor character. It is my belief that this desire to be accepted and popular can also lead people into a related pitfall, that of political correctness.

At its root, political correctness stems from a desire to be popular, to be looked upon approvingly by others for the opinions one expresses. I think an example can be used to best demonstrate how this works. Most people are aware that the United States has experienced many problems due to the large influx of illegal aliens from other countries, primarily Mexico. Now the sentence I just wrote would be considered politically incorrect by what I'll call the PC (politically correct) crowd. This group has decided that the term illegal aliens, especially as applied to Mexicans who have entered the U.S. illegally, is demeaning, and perhaps even racist, toward Hispanics. Now why should this be? "Illegal" is an adjective used to describe an action that is against the law. "Alien" is a noun that means a foreign resident of a country who has not attained citizenship in that country. So the term "illegal alien" describes the movement of immigrants from one country to another country in a way that breaks the immigration laws of the destination country. And that is exactly what we have experienced in the United States over the past 50-65 years, as millions of Mexicans (and some others) have entered our nation without following the immigration requirements of the U.S. government.

So why accuse people who refer to these people as "illegal aliens" of being anti-Hispanic, insensitive to minorities, or even racist? I think it's pretty obvious: those who want large numbers of Mexicans to be able to live in the U.S. without following U.S. immigration laws have an agenda, and that agenda is made smoother if the opposition is squelched. No one wants to be accused of being a racist or a bigot, so, in an attempt to be viewed as more accepting of others and less outside the orthodox, accepted way of thinking, people are encouraged to give in to the PC crowd's call for acceptance of people who are here illegally. So what does one call "illegal aliens" so as not to offend the sensibilities of the PC crowd? How about undocumented immigrants? That's one I hear a lot. Foreign-born guests of transitional status - I just made that one up, but it sounds so sweet! But if someone, God forbid, uses the term "illegal alien," then he is dehumanizing people in a bigoted and Nazi-like manner.

Here's another example. I think affirmative action is downright stupid. The idea that employers should seek to hire a certain number of people from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups in order to reflect their proportion in society is bigoted. People should be hired or not hired based on their qualifications or lack of qualifications, and for no other reason. If I need to hire 25 people to fill positions in a company, and the top 25 candidates I interview happen to all be white men, then I'm hiring 25 white men. Does that make me racist? Or does it make me a good businessman? But the PC crowd would not waste a minute in accusing me of bigotry and racism if such a situation were to occur. Personally, I want to be well-liked and popular, to be viewed as "acceptable" by the "crowd" around me. But if I were to use affirmative action as my guide, I would be using race in a way that might hurt my business and which discriminated against certain people simply because they come from a majority group. Personally, I would hire 25 blacks, 25 whites, 25 Hispanics, 25 purple people...I don't really care what color or ethnicity a person is, I'm hiring the 25 best people I can get, end of story. Well, the PC crowd would not be happy with me!

One more example. On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by an organization known as Al-Qaeda, which consists of radical followers of an extremist Muslim ideology known as Wahhabism, which promotes a violent agenda of jihad (holy war) against infidels (non-Muslims) who are seen as oppressing the Muslim world and preventing the establishment of a world-wide caliphate (Muslim-governed region) ruled by Sharia law (Islamic law). Now, it's true that most Muslims do not follow this radical, extremist agenda and are normal, peaceful, productive members of their societies. Most Muslims in the United States and in the world were horrified by the murderous attacks of 9/11. But it's also true that almost all terrorism in the world, especially of a religious nature, is carried out by radical Muslims. Whoops, that wasn't very PC of me, was it? I just revealed myself to be an Islamophobe! Or did I? During World War 2, could you imagine someone referring to the enemy as "German Nazis" being accused of being Germanophobic? Everyone understood that we were anti-Nazi, not anti-German. Once the Nazis were defeated, our fight with Germany ended. In the same way, Americans can be anti-Muslim extremists without being anti-Muslim. But the second someone refers to present-day terrorists such as those in Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other like-minded groups, as Islamic terrorists, the PC crowd immediately issues statements decrying such remarks as anti-Muslim bigotry.

So, what is my conclusion? It is to promote the idea of being truthful in what one says, even if it doesn't increase one's popularity. The PC crowd has a totalitarian instinct to control what people can say and do by pointing an accusing finger at those who dare to break from their orthodox views of the world. It is up to each individual to resist the urge to be part of the crowd, part of the popular group, when doing so conflicts with truth and what is right. The PC crowd uses political correctness as a form of intellectual blackmail: we can shut up those who disagree with us by threatening to blacklist them into the "unpopular" or "outside" group; this is simply a repeat of the McCarthyism of the 1950's used to blacklist so-called communist sympathizers. They also use political correctness as a way to be lazy in their thinking: we don't have to win debates on different topics based on the merits of our arguments; rather, we simply accuse the opposition of harboring racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, or some other unacceptable viewpoint, and the argument is over. In the final analysis, the PC of political correctness is really another form of a different PC, a popularity contest. And I thought grown ups were supposed to leave behind the immature peer pressure of their youth and join the adult world, where ideas can be expressed and discussed without fear of being relegated to the status of pariah. Let's hope our culture catches on!

Keeping It Civil In the Gay Marriage Debate

Same sex marriage...o.k, that's about as much as I can say on the subject without getting someone angry! Well, I'm not going to take a position on the issue of same sex marriage in this blog entry (even though I have one), but I am going to take a position on civil discourse on the issue. And I'll start by being blunt: many supporters of same sex marriage use downright despicable tactics in trying to forward their agenda, and that's what I will be addressing.

Those who express a view that is against gay marriage (I will use same sex and gay marriage interchangeably) do so for a variety of reasons, which I don't want to get into too much right now. But regardless of the reason expressed by a particular gay marriage opponent to support his position, I have noticed that some, and often the most vocal, pro-gay marriage advocates lash out at the anti-gay marriage people with venomous accusations of bigotry and homophobia. Now I agree that there certainly is bigotry out there against gay people, and I definitely find such bigotry to be vile. But I don't believe that most support for traditional marriage (I'll also refer to this as man-woman unions) is based in bigotry against gay people. Also, I never cared much for the term homophobia (not all people who disagree with the morality of homosexual behavior are afraid of homosexuals), but the term has come to mean the equivalent of racism in racial matters. Again, there are those who express anti-gay attitudes, but not all those against gay marriage are homophobes, or anti-gay, as I prefer to call it.

This comparison between the treatment of gays and the treatment of minority races is what really bothers me. Here is where I must express my disdain for the attitude shown by some gay marriage proponents toward those who are for keeping the definition of marriage as man-woman unions. First of all, gay people were never loaded on to slave ships, forced into brutal bondage, kept as property, and subjected to degrading segregation for hundreds of years in the United States, as blacks were. I would argue that nothing that the U.S. has ever done even approaches the shamefulness of slavery and Jim Crow. Yes, gay people have been subjected to unfair treatment and unjust laws in many cases in America, and, thankfully, many of these injustices have been and are being corrected; but the comparison between the struggles of gay people and the history of the injustice towards blacks in American history is obscene.

I have also heard the argument that denying marriage rights to homosexuals is similar to laws that once existed in the U.S. denying whites and blacks the ability to marry in many states. O.k., now, deep breath, because this is the argument that really angers me. Laws denying blacks and whites the right to marry were UNCONSTITUTIONAL because the 14th Amendment guarantees that equal protection of the laws can not be denied citizens because of their race. Such laws were also IMMORAL. No religious or philosophical tradition (maybe Nazism is an exception!) ever prohibited different races from marrying. Countries or states that have enacted such bigoted laws did so by departing from their founding and most cherished traditions, not by embracing them. Finally, such laws were based on STUPIDITY. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between a black person and a white person. NO DIFFERENCE. NO DIFFERENCE. Arguing that skin color should determine how people are treated is as meaningless as arguing that height or shoe size should matter in how people are treated. Laws that prohibited blacks and whites from marrying would be akin to laws prohibiting those born in the summer from marrying those born in the winter, or those born east of Iowa from marrying those born west of Iowa.

On the other hand, men and women are profoundly different from one another, and these differences are appropriately recognized in public policy and law. We have men's restrooms and women's restrooms, but, thank God, no more white restrooms and black restrooms. We have boy scouts and girl scouts, but no black scouts and white scouts. Men and women have very different physiques and brains, each offering different strengths and limitations. Most cogent arguments that I have heard against same-sex marriage address the real differences that exist between men and women, which are not in any way comparable to the nonexistent differences between blacks and whites. If men and women are intrinsically and fundamentally different from one another, then the arguments some make against gay marriage make sense, whether you agree with them or not. In other words, a union between a man and a woman is a very different thing from a union between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. To deny this is to deny the obvious differences between the sexes.

Now, in light of this, I believe it is still reasonable for one to argue for same-sex marriage. But I also feel it is absurd to simply dismiss those who are against gay marriage as being bigots, homophobes, or the equivalent of racists. Such tactics are used simply to shut down discussion. How does one argue with charges of bigotry and homophobia? These names are flung at people who are for traditional marriage to shut them up, to intimidate them, and to reduce them to the level of fascists. Last time I checked, such intimidation is a fascist trait, and has no place in civil discourse.

SONG BLOG #1 - MY JESUS

I decided to add another aspect to the JezBlog...songs that have changed my life, moved me deeply, or that just sound awesome (or some combination of these). This will be in addition to my weekly blog, that seems to come out on Monday evenings. So here's the first one. It's a song called, "My Jesus" by Todd Agnew. I don't think I've made it through this song once without some tears being shed...it's that powerful. I also included a link to a YouTube video someone put together to this song...it's pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoGCG9qUZ2U&feature=related

Without going into too much about why this song moves me so much (I think when you read the lyrics and hear the song, you'll get it!), I love the picture it paints of the real Jesus contrasted with the false image we sometimes have of Him in our minds, and Todd Agnew's (and my) desire to be like the true Jesus. It's the amazing love and sacrifice of the incomparable Jesus that moves me so much in this song...hope it does the same for you. Let me know! :)


My Jesus by Todd Agnew

Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ
Then why do you look so much like the world?

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Cause my Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the rich
So which one do you want to be?

Who is this that you follow
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part
Sometimes I doubt we'd recognize Him

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and the least of these
He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable
So which one do you want to be?

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud
And I think He'd prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!

Not a posterchild for American prosperity, but like my Jesus
You see I'm tired of living for success and popularity
I want to be like my Jesus but I'm not sure what that means to be like You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You, love like You but then You died for me
Can I be like You Jesus?
I want to be like you Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!

Why You Should Train For A Marathon

Last October, I ran my first marathon, completing the Chicago Marathon in 4 hours 36 minutes (and some seconds, but who's counting?). I am currently training for my second Chicago Marathon, and I'm hoping to improve on my time from last year. In training for and successfully completing last year's marathon, I gained some wisdom and insight into the value of taking on this endeavor, so I thought I would share my 5 reasons that you, too, should train for a marathon.

1. IT'S HARD! You can't just decide to run 26.2 miles one day and just do it (Nike slogans be damned!). In fact, most people can't run 2 or 3 miles without working up to it. If marathons were easy, no one would pay much attention to them. I followed a challenging but doable 18 week program that prepared me to run more than 10 miles farther than I had ever run in my life. And even with all that training, the last 6 or 7 miles of that marathon were BRUTAL! But I did it, and the fist pump as I crossed the finish line was both a celebration of accomplishment and a gesture of defiance at my own body's telling me that I couldn't do it.
2. HAAGEN-DAZS CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH ICE CREAM! Packing 1050 calories in a 14 ounce container, this, the official food of Heaven, is one of the rewards of running anywhere from 25 to 50 miles a week, depending on which point of training you're at. For me, running 40 miles in a week burns about 5320 calories, in addition to the 16,835 calories I burn breathing, walking my dog, and being a funny guy. Those extra calories burned running allow me to eat in ways a man should not be able to eat without expanding his belly into the next zip code. By the way, I also bought big tubs of Dean's Fannie Mae Mint Meltaway and Dean's Chocolate Moose Tracks ice creams today. After all, a 40-year-old needs a balanced diet!
3. TRAINING FOR A MARATHON BUILDS CHARACTER! Now, that sounds trite, but allow me to expound. My 18-week odyssey through the Hal Higdon marathon training program was NOT smooth sailing. Sure, I had my good runs and even good weeks. But I had days where my couch potato genes were in full battle with my training genes. Needless to say, had I given in to my body's desire to sit it out on those hot summer days, I would not have finished the marathon in October. Also, training for a marathon hurts. It really hurts! Almost every runner I know has pain issues, and mine were focused in my shins. Shin splints were my constant companion as I trained for October glory. A bone scan even revealed a stress fracture in my left leg. But by learning some new stretches and taking plenty of Advil (sorry kidneys!), I managed to work through the pain and experience what the Cubs can only dream of - October success!
4. YOU GAIN NEW RELATIONSHIPS! Or at least some relationships you have change for the better. A common bond is shared by people with a common goal, and runners are no exception. During my training, I ran with 7 or 8 different people, as well as with the 8th grade basketball team I coach. I also began to "talk running" with people I knew from church, school, family, and other arenas of my life, many of whom I had never really talked to in depth before. And I ran the whole marathon with one of my training partners, which made the race day a lot more enjoyable.
   
5. YOU CAN PERFORM GREAT FEATS! Yesterday, after running 14.1 miles, I went home, showered, and brought my dog over to a friend's house and hooked him up to a tie-out on the lawn. Moments later, a cat ran through some tall grass about 80 feet in front of my beagle Sam, and he tore off after it, breaking his collar and escaping the safety of the tie-out. I spent the next 40 minutes, most of them in dusk, frantically running over grass, through weeds, in mosquito and deerfly infested woods, through bramble and branches that tripped and scratched me (I found 3 scratches and a bump on my head today), screaming for my Sam to come back to me. And thank God, with some help from a friend, I got him back. As I brought Sam back to my car, I realized that even after running 14 miles, I did not even notice the extra 2 or 3 miles I put in chasing my dog in a pair of loose Crocs over terrible terrain while bloodsucking insects attacked and darkness approached. My marathon training has transformed me into Batman! And that's pretty cool!
   

To Torture Or Not To Torture?

Nobody questions that there are pretty bad people out there who want to hurt Americans. But a lot of people disagree about what to do with these bad people once we capture them. There are, of course, the two extremes: on the one hand, you have the Nazi model of breaking bones, burning limbs, breaking more bones, removing eye balls, and breaking all remaining bones in the attempt to get information and confessions from their enemies; on the other hand, you have the ACLU model of reading captured terrorists their Miranda rights, putting them in a well-furnished room which is kept somewhere between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and giving them full access to the American legal system while subjecting them to absolutely no physical, mental, emotional, or any other conceivable form of discomfort. Between the Heinrich Himmler and Dr. Phil models lies the appropriate course of action, but coming to a sensible and reasonable middle ground seems to torture the consciences of policy makers and voters alike.

Before I get to what I believe is the sensible bottom line, I need to say a word about some of the techniques used by the CIA and other intelligence operatives working under the guidance and authority of the Bush Administration over the past six or seven years. The one that seems to get the most attention is waterboarding. Almost everyone on the left end of the political spectrum calls this torture. Some on the right agree, but many conservatives call it something less than torture. Anyone with any level of honesty, however, has to admit that it is definitely NOT torture in the Nazi sense of the word. Nazi torture caused permanent injury, excruciating physical pain, and, in many cases, death. Waterboarding causes none of these. People of some celebrity have recently volunteered to be waterboarded, either to prove that they can take it or to "discover for themselves" if it is indeed torture. But the very fact they are willing to endure it, even with some level of trepidation, is proof that it is not torture. How many people have volunteered to have a finger chopped off, just to see if it is really torture? How about acid in the eye? Anybody up for being hanged by their wrists as their feet dangle over an open flame, just to see what it's like? C'mon, now, we all know there is a significant difference between these forms of cruel, excruciating inflictions of pain and using techniques like waterboarding, however uncomfortable or frightening it may be. To simply say, "Torture is torture," to equate sleep deprivation, cold room temperatures, forced uncomfortable postures, and even waterboarding with the Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Tse-Tung forms of abuse, is to rob the word "torture" of any real meaning.

Now I come to the hardest question: Is it o.k. to torture, and I mean really torture, dangerous terrorists who we know to have knowledge about ongoing threats to the safety and very lives of our citizens? Well, it depends. Yeah, that's right, IT DEPENDS. Nobody seems to have the guts to say that, but sometimes it depends on the situation. Some situations in life offer no simple, formulaic solutions. The idea that it is NEVER right to torture flies in the face of common sense, and, indeed, morality. An example should make this clear. Imagine that the U.S. military has captured a terrorist who has knowledge about the time and place of a series of terrorist attacks on American malls. Fellow terrorists with machine guns and grenades will be initiating mass murder at 50 malls throughout the country, but we do not know when and where this will occur. Tens of thousands of lives are at risk. Our captured terrorist is asking for his lawyer, not volunteering any information. Shockingly, asking him politely to tell us the information needed to stop the attacks isn't working. I would argue that it is the moral obligation of our intelligence agents to sleep deprive, waterboard, and, if nothing else works, torture this person to get the information needed to save American lives. And I do mean torture. We shoot the person in the knee, plunge the knife into his shoulder, and stuff his head under water if that is the only way to save innocent lives. If the person needs to have a little Jack Bauer (of 24 television fame) time, a little Mitch Rapp (CIA agent in Vince Flynn novels) session, to save American lives, then so be it. If not, we then condemn tens of thousands of people to torture by terrorists who will kill, injure, and brutalize the innocent. I would argue that those who condemn the use of torture on captured terrorists in every situation are, in effect, in favor of torturing the innocent who will be maimed and killed because of our inaction. That seems like a position lacking moral clarity.

A final note: I hate torture. I wish we never had to use it. We should NEVER engage in torture, or even enhanced interrogation techniques, to obtain confessions from terrorists. The Nazis, and especially the Stalinist and Maoist Communists, were specialists in torturing confessions out of their victims for political purposes. This serves no purpose beyond the political, and does not save lives. And I also believe that the use of enhanced interrogations, and, in extreme cases, torture, should only be initiated by a direct order from the President in situations where lives are at stake, not as the normal course of action. Unfortunately, in the real world, horribly difficult decisions have to be made, and it is up to our government to make these decisions. Some say that if we treat terrorists badly, subject them to discomfort, and in some cases use torture, that we are just a bad as the terrorists. But if we fail to act to save innocent lives, then we enable the terrorists to torture us. Allowing such evil to succeed is wrong and must not be permitted.