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November 05, 2003
PC Exclusion
I've just read about Derbyshire via Clayton Cramer. Derbyshire said something considered highly objectionable.
Again, I am seeking some enlightenment about the degree of outrage over the injustices suffered by provocateurs who lose a gig because of a pique. Quoth Cramer:
There is a new McCarthyism going on in America. If you state opinions that offend homosexuals, you are in danger of being blacklisted. There are homosexuals who can tolerate differences of opinion--but the homosexuals that matter--those that run America's universities--are remarkably intolerant of differing opinions. You will shut up, and pretend to be happy about shutting up, or there will be consequences.
How dangerous is it to run afoul of the PC Police? Isn't this just a failure of privilege? Isn't this simply turnabout, or is the rage of a homo scorned something to be seriously concerned about?
My prejudice is that these are strictly bourgie complaints which while they don't lack merit are ultimately worthy of moderate sympathy and not alarm. I doubt the ability of the PC Police to chill or supress the ideas gents such as John Derbyshire are likely to support. I doubt that this kind of firing (see Easterbrook), venal as it is, deserves any more attention than those of your ordinary locked out supermarket employee. In fact, it deserves much less.
My bottom line is that people who make a living by talking should be able to afford the righteous indignation they suffer from being fired, or else join the priesthood. The marketplace of ideas is ultimately defined by those who control the largest chunk of market share. If one is too timorous to risk investing one's own skin in such a marketplace, then one should go private and collect one's one crowd of warrant holders.
The truth does not serve you, so stop trying to profit from it.
Posted by mbowen at November 5, 2003 02:20 PM
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