>But I don't think you' and other antimoralists are crazy or psychotic or
>otherwise unbalanced, just mistaken. I also (I am sure you will be reassured
>to know) don't think you are evil, even if you presume to suppose that my
>daughter finds me uncool. (In fact she does, but she's 10 years old. All 10
>year olds think their parents are uncool.)
I know you don't refer to me as crazy, etc. -- you don't need such words because you have the un-postmodern courage & good sense to call the idea you disagree with "mistaken." Hence my respect for you.
>PC is not a powerful Force, contrary to what rightwingers think, and it's
>nothing compared to Real Correctness that makes left wing ideas unspeakable.
>As I know, I fear, far better than you, having been at the business end of
>it. But I was in the acdemy long enough to recognize that there is PC which
>isn't Miss Manners--and after that little rant ("frat boy," indeed), you are
>in no position to lecture me on manners. PC is a quite real, absurd, and
>obsessive practice language policing to make sure that, in the absence of
>real equity, at least the local idiom is inclusive and inoffensive to the
>local sensibility. It's possible that in English departments PC is so
>pervasive that people do just think of it as good manners, which means, I
>suppose, that it is good manners in English departments. But elsewhere, it's
>just considered a pain.
OK, how's this for compromise? I think what you are referring to by the word PC is substitutionism: substitution of manners for substance. So, why not call it that (or something like that), since that would clarify and distinguish a real left-wing criticism from right-wing wailings against liberal hegemony?
As for suitable epithets for political evils, what's the use of your excellent education if you don't use it to come up with some original, creative, elegant, and devastating insults? Calling someone "psychotic" is banal, really.
Yoshie