Political Correctness Vs. Real Intelligence

Political correctness is rightfully regarded by many conservatives and libertarians as intellectual fascism. The academia is meant to teach people how to think, not what to think. In a democracy, wrongful ideas are meant to be met with rational refutation rather than censorship.

This includes such ideas as that black are inferior, that women are stupid or that Jews are evil. And this also includes such ideas as that love and beauty are patriarchial institutions designed to oppress women or that some people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do, however hard they work or whatever work they do on themselves.

I have rational refutations to all of the above.

The long-time failure of most African countries was not due to any kind of racial inferiority; it was due to history. These countries had been governed – brutally – by alien powers for centuries, and they did not know how to govern themselves. They are getting better at it, and some of the world's fastest economic growth in the last decade and a half were recorded by African countries.

There are plenty of highly intelligent women, from Hillary Clinton to Anne Coulter to Sandy Lerner and Marie Curie. The men who believed such things were able to get away with believing them because they destroyed intelligence in women. For a long time they did not allow education of women, and women of intellect were burned at the stake. Many people still regard intelligence in women as arrogance, or as sociopathy, or as witchcraft. In fact many of the women whom they treat like dirt are naturally not only their intellectual equals but their intellectual superiors; and the countries in which women are allowed to reach their potential have far better economic and political conditions than do countries in which they aren't.

The Jews have made vast positive contributions to the Western civilization, in areas ranging from science to medicine to culture to economics. And they did so without engaging in genocide or colonialism at anywhere near the level of the Spanish, the English, the Germans, the Russians or the Muslims.

The feminist attack on beauty and love is equally misguided. Women are oppressed far more in the Muslim and Hindu societies where marriages are arranged than they are in the societies where romantic love is allowed. It were the Renaissance and Romantic poets and artists who did the most to fight the aggressive misogyny of Western civilization and inspire men to see in women their goodness and value them for what they are. Marriages based in love are far less oppressive than arranged marriages. And while romantic love did not work out for many in the baby boom generation, it worked wonderfully for their parents; and I know a number of people in that generation who, making their match as “love at first sight,” have maintained positive, successful, productive long-term relationships and continued loving each other well into their 80s.

As for beauty, it is something in which women are endowed naturally more than are men. Denying women the right to beauty is like denying men the right to physical strength. It takes away an area in which they are clearly superior to men and as such puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Attacking beauty out of the idea that it destroys women's self-esteem because some women aren't beautiful is like attacking intelligence out of the idea that it destroys people's self-esteem because some people aren't intelligent, or attacking wealth out of the idea that it destroys people's self-esteem because some people are poor. People are differently endowed with different things. And people go to different lengths to develop or not develop their gifts.

Finally, the idea that some people - such as “sociopaths” - are evil and can only be evil whatever they do goes against most basic rationality. If people are responsible for their behavior then anyone, including a “sociopath,” can act rightfully; and if some people cannot act rightfully then people are not responsible for their behavior. This is a worthless mentality, useful only for running witch hunts; and that is exactly what we have seen from the believers in such things.

Political correctness is in fact intellectual fascism; and it is completely unnecessary. Real intelligence can confront wrong ideas far better than censorship or shaming. I do not need political correctness, as a Jew, to protect myself; I can do so through my own cognitive faculties. The strong, articulate women such as Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin do not need political correctness to speak for them either. And Barack Obama, as a black person, likewise does not need political correctness to protect his place as the most powerful man in the world.