This week a moment of sanity that could begin to unpick the
web of PC stupidity that councillors, bureaucrats, and secularists in general
weave (and sadly, a group which includes far too many teachers and Guardian
viewers) came from a very unexpected source – the Muslim Council of Britain. PC
advocates and practitioners have the sheer arrogance to assume and act on
‘offence’ vicariously, without actually bothering to check with the people they
consider to be ‘victims’. So the word ‘brainstorming’, for intensive and
non-critical think-ins designed to generate ideas, was banned (by a government
department, no less) in case it offended people with epilepsy. Did they bother to check
with the Epilepsy Society to see if anybody with epilepsy was likely to be
offended? No. But the Society very sensibly carried out its own survey in 2005
to see what people with epilepsy thought, and 93% weren’t offended in the
least. One response read -
"I have no objection whatsoever to the term
brainstorming. I am sure the public do not, in any way, associate this with
epilepsy, so why should we?"
It didn’t do any good, though. Political Correctness is still
with us, corroding our language and denying us access to our own past, as
though we were not capable of making up our own minds, given the benefit of
hindsight. PC is informed by nothing more than petit-mindedness and a woeful
failing of education, and it puts too much power in the hands of people not
intellectually equipped to wield it.
I’ve fulminated at length about PC in modern hymn books,
where not even the poetry of Robert Bridges is safe from the hands of vandals (most of whom can’t even grasp the
difference between the archaic –est and –eth verb suffixes,
though their schoolboy howlers provide much mirth in many a vestry and choirstall.)
What the Muslim Council of Britain did this week was to
challenge, very politely and wittily, people who take offence on somebody
else’s behalf. It is a response from wise Muslims to stupidities like ‘Winter
Festival’ in Birmingham (Christmas renamed so as not to offend Muslims.) That bit of nonsense offended me, and I'm a Christian.
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