The Blogspot version of "PC Watch" is HERE and "Dissecting Leftism" is HERE. The Blogroll; John Ray's Home Page; Email John Ray here. Other sites viewable in China: Greenie Watch, Dissecting Leftism and Recipes. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing)
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30 September, 2003

AN ISLAMICALLY CORRECT BARBIE DOLL!

At first glance, this new girl on the block wouldn't give Barbie much of a run for her money. After all, Barbie is everything Razanne is not _- curvacious, flashy and loaded with sex appeal. But that's exactly why many Muslim Americans prefer the newer doll.

With her long-sleeved dresses, Muslim head scarf and, by her creator Ammar Saadeh's own admission, a less-than-flattering bust-line, Razanne is all about modesty and piety.

More here



29 September, 2003

BRAIN-DEAD PC

"Jake Trembath, a Maple Grove, Minnesota High School junior who served on the student council, is the latest victim of the incredibly stupid idea of 'zero tolerance.' Jake is being expelled from school for unknowingly bringing a cap gun onto school grounds in his car. Not a real gun -- Not into the school -- Not knowingly -- Not a weapon in any sense -- Not dangerous in any sense.

More here



David Limbaugh sums up the conflict between Leftist political correctness and Christianity pretty well: "When school administrators tell little 5-year-old Kayla that she can't join hands with her classmates to thank Jesus over their snacks, they are not protecting us from religious tyranny by preventing the establishment of a state church; they are suppressing religious liberties. When they tell a high school gospel choir that it cannot sing at a church memorial event to honor the victims of 9-11, they are not safeguarding our religious liberties but smothering them."



28 September, 2003

A driver hits a woman walking backwards in the middle of a busy carriageway - who's responsible? It happened in Britain so I am sure you know the answer.


PC AS INSANITY

"In The New Thought Police, Tammy Bruce wrote about the assault on freedom perpetuated by what she calls "the Left Elite". This book is a counterpart, its theme being the Left's attempt to destroy our values. Unless you know about this enemy within from experience, you will be shocked by the information Bruce presents. She claims that it is only in a society devoid of a sense of right and wrong, of any semblance of personal responsibility, that people could:
-Declare, despite all the evidence, a criminal not guilty because he was black and his victim was white.
-Claim that a woman who murdered her children is a victim of patriarchy.
-Declare absolutely vulgar and insulting depictions of Christian symbols as "art" when it would be a hate crime if done to symbols of any other religion.
-Declare that murdering 3000 American civilians as actions of "Freedom Fighters."
-Censure an organization of men who meet to discuss how to treat women in their life better because it is Christian, while lauding pornography manufacturers and distributors.
-Attempt to contact a deadly, uncurable disease and blame "society" for its spread.
-Promote music with lyrics advocating murder and rape.
-Refuse to display American flags because they might offend foreigners.
-"Educate" college students in such a way that a significant portion do not see the Holocaust as evil. (no, I'm not kidding! Read the book and find out who, where, and how.)
-Punish a person who confronted some Arab students when they, speaking among themselves, lauded September 11th.
-Force a student to drop a class for making a factual statement that did not fit the professor's hate-America worldview.


More here



27 September, 2003

PC DESTROYS BLACK EDUCATION

Thomas Sowell on the reason for the disastrously low educational results of American blacks:

"American schools waste an incredible amount of time on fads, fun and propaganda for political correctness. Those students who come from homes with highly educated parents, or parents whose values stress education, get a lot of what they need outside of school, as well as making the most of what they get within the school.

It is those children who do not come from these kinds of homes whose futures are forfeited when class time is frittered away. Low-income black students are the biggest losers when educators fail to educate and when courts create so many legal obstacles to enforcing school discipline that a handful of classroom clowns or hoodlums can prevent everyone else from getting a decent education.

More money won't cure any of this."


PC EDUCATION FAILS GHETTO KIDS

Sowell says: "With all the abysmal results in ghetto schools in general, there are nevertheless particular schools serving low-income minority students with test results well above the national average. What is the difference? The biggest difference is that successful schools teach in ways that are directly the opposite from what is fashionable in the public schools in general. Successful schools spend their time on the three R's, they teach reading with phonics, they memorize multiplication tables, and -- above all -- they have discipline, so that a few disruptive students are not able to prevent all the others from being educated.



26 September, 2003

THEY TOLERATE EVERYTHING BUT CHRISTIANITY

In a public school in St. Louis, a teacher spotted the suspect, fourth-grader Raymond Raines, bowing his head in prayer before lunch. The teacher stormed to Raymond's table, ordered him to stop immediately and sent him to the principal's office. The principal informed the young malefactor that praying was not allowed in school. When Raymond was again caught praying before meals on three separate occasions, he was segregated from other students, ridiculed in front of his classmates, and finally sentenced to a week's detention.

More here



25 September, 2003

POLITICALLY CORRECT PERMISSION NEEDED FOR RESEARCH

NZ Pundit notes that University of Otago researchers will need to get permission from their local Maori tribe before they do ANY research:

"Otago University researchers will need to consult Ngai Tahu before undertaking research, after a decisive vote yesterday. A secret ballot by members of the university council was 12 to two in favour of the new policy after spirited debate. The policy, which was opposed by academic staff representatives, covers all research "likely to result in project research". Deputy vice-chancellor Ian Smith said the policy covered all research for which formal propositions were written and which were funded either internally or externally."

More here

As Evil Pundit comments: "This threatens to take science back to the days of Galileo, when religious authorities decided what sort of discoveries were allowable."


Perfectionism now seems to be politically incorrect. It is treated as a psychological disorder in need of treatment! Getting things right has apparently become a bad thing! One can see that perfectionism -- like almost anything else -- could be overdone but giving the perfectionist something useful to do would be the only treatment that I would see as needed. NASA could do with a few more perfectionists.

The link above seems a bit erratic so the title of the book concerned is: Perfectionism: theory, research, and treatment. by Gordon L. Flett & Paul L. Hewitt (Eds.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (2002).



24 September, 2003

PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THEY EAT? INCORRECT!

"In Seattle, there is a popular restaurant called the 5 Spot. Its signature dish is a huge, calorie-laden dessert called The Bulge. Access to it, however, is restricted to those patrons willing to sign a waiver agreeing not to sue the restaurant for making them fat.

Although obviously a marketing gimmick, the underlying issue is no joke. Greedy lawyers (pardon the redundancy) have been working steadily on a campaign to make restaurants and food manufacturers legally liable for the spread of obesity. Sadly, they are making progress.

In June, the Public Health Advocacy Institute in Boston held a conference on legal approaches to the obesity epidemic. More than 100 lawyers and "consumer advocates" (i.e., left-wing busybodies) heard from prominent veterans of tobacco lawsuits on how to duplicate their success. The goal of the attendees is to make themselves multimillionaires while pretending that their motive is a high-minded concern for public health. It would be laughable if it hadn't already worked so well with the tobacco companies, which not coincidentally, also own many food operations.

Unfortunately, the tobacco companies seem to have learned nothing from their experience with anti-smoking zealots and are actually opening the door to lawsuits against their food divisions. They don't seem to understand that their enemies are not driven by genuine concerns about health or even by greed, but by ideology."

More here


NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY!

PC seems not to have caught on in Malaysia

PASSENGERS want to be served by "young, demure and pretty stewardesses" a top Malaysian Airlines official said in defence of the grounding of female cabin crew aged over 40, a report said today.

The national flag carrier had no intention of discriminating against women as alleged by the employees' union, corporate services senior general manager Mohammadon Abdullah was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times. But, he added: "Let's face reality. Customers prefer to be served by young, demure and pretty stewardesses, especially Asian ladies."



23 September, 2003

PC DESTROYS AMERICAN EDUCATION

"The deterioration of public school education is most prominently observed in social studies, where, as education scholar Chester E. Finn, Jr. observes, "the lunatics have taken over the asylum."

The attitudes of elite educationists have reduced education to ideology, and a venomous ideology it is: America's contribution to humanity is an odious conspiracy of dead white males. The pedagogues worry that attentiveness to the details of democracy might cause children to discover that the ideology is false, that democracy actually is the best way mankind has found to organize a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

J. Martin Rochester, a professor of social studies at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, in an essay in the book "Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong," turns up the heat on those responsible for dumbing down education and collapsing discipline. "Co-operative learning" is the euphemism for reducing learning to something only the least among us can master, something like making it up to a crippled child by breaking the legs of everyone else. "Co-operative learning" draws on the free labor of smarter students to bring up low achievers, which reduces average learning abilities for everybody. "Constructivism," the theory that children can "construct" their own meaning from personal experience, is pushed on youngsters who can't construct a proper sentence.

"Multiple intelligences theory" searches for "the specific genius" within each child, equating the skill of slam-dunking a basketball, for example, with the ability to perform open-heart surgery. The reliance on fun-filled, action-packed, visual media over fact-filled textbooks and lectures treats whole classes as though suffering attention deficit disorder.

Textbooks, such as they are, make matters worse. They not only give the visual equal space with the words, but lack authority and we pretend that uninformed students can think critically, with informed judgments, when they have no stored knowledge.

One textbook directives instructs teachers: "We must stop exhorting students to be 'good citizens' according to our own unquestioned view of good and help them instead to ask 'good questions' about their own values and those of others. Controversies, rather than fixed knowledge and values, will play a central role in the structure of social studies education."

This is an education theory from Alice in Wonderland: "Verdict first, trial later." How can students create "controversy" when they haven't learned what to criticize?"

More here



22 September, 2003

THE DELIBERATELY DEAFENED BABY

This is a fairly old story now but I am linking to it because it is yet another illustration of how PC can be very destructive (destruction is, in my view, a major motive behind PC. Intelligent people promote PC so it is unlikely that they keep achieving things that they do not want),

I am sure that the politically correct but unrealistic notion that deaf people are in no way inferior to those who can hear may help reconcile some deaf people to their lot but it would appear that this unrealistic notion has come to be believed as gospel truth in much of the deaf community. It is no longer seen as just a polite fiction. So the deaf do NOT see themselves as disadvantaged in any way.

Logically then, they sometimes resist the kindly efforts of others to help their children escape deafness. If there is nothing wrong with being deaf, why try to change it? So deaf people have on occasions resisted attempts to give their children cochlear implants -- which are now fairly good at giving deaf people some useful hearing and helping them to live near-normal lives.

But the story I have linked to above shows how far this nonsense has gone -- a deaf mother deliberately sought a deaf father for her child and celebrated when the baby did in fact turn out to be deaf!

So PC is bring into the world needlessly deaf children. Need I say more about how disgusting PC lies are?


Wicked Thoughts has a very incorrect joke.



21 September, 2003

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS FREES A CROOK

"A Latino man caught with 2 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of his car may go free today, after a judge found that the State Police troopers who arrested him had routinely searched more cars driven by minority motorists than whites. Worcester Superior Court Judge John S. McCann threw out the evidence of the cocaine and the man's admission he planned to sell it. Legal observers called it extremely rare for a judge to exclude evidence in a criminal case solely because of a statistical pattern suggesting racial bias."

More here


THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY UNDER ATTACK

"The European Parliament has issued a new report on "fundamental rights," which demands an end to the centuries-old ban on the entry of women to Mt. Athos, the ancient monastic community in northern Greece. The EU report, released by French EU Deputy Fode Sylla, also called on Greece to lift criminal penalties for women caught entering the monastic zone. The EU report said the restriction is a violation of the international conventions on gender equality, non-discrimination and the "free movement of persons."

And who is it hurting to have an ancient monastic community to continue on its self-denying way? Like most PC, this attack is primarily meant to hurt people. It helps no-one. More here. Link via Valete Fratres.



20 September, 2003

Prejudice! Bias! Homophobic hate-crime! "Researchers at the University of California San Francisco questioned equal numbers of lesbians and heterosexuals and found that lesbians were fatter than straight women."


PC DESTROYS CHILDREN'S LIVES

Despite increases in economic well-being and important reductions in crime and teen pregnancy, one out of every four teenagers is at "serious risk" of not achieving productive adulthood. Twenty percent of American youth have seriously thought about suicide in the past year. U.S. children, as a group, are reporting more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s. One out of three teens is sexually active. Almost half of teens have used an illegal drug.

Weaker parenting, the absence of strong moral and spiritual connections, and the decline of marriage are prominent causes. But in addition, these hard scientists, psychologists, clinicians and social scientists point out, adults need to get serious about the question of gender:

"The need to attach social significance and meaning to gender appears to be a human universal," they conclude, and one that "deeply influences well-being." Yet adults still stuck in the '70s sex role battles have for the most part declined to take on the responsibility of helping our children develop a powerful pro-social meaning for masculinity and femininity.

The result was supposed to be a feminist paradise of androgyny. But because some sex differences are hard-wired, and because the need to figure out what it means to be a man or a woman (and not just a human being) appears similarly intractable, the result of our society's indifference to the deep meanings of sexuality is social chaos -- the kind of social chaos that can occur only when adults abandon adult responsibilities and leave children to create social meanings on their own

More here



19 September, 2003

FEMINIZING MEN IS CORRECT

Miranda Devine says that attacks on the male identity in a post-feminist world have eroded men's sense of self-worth. Excerpts:

For instance, what is the average man to make of ads for hair-removal treatments in which a woman recoils from the embrace of a hairy-chested man in the before shot and, in the after shot, when he is hairless, she can't keep her hands off him?

Then there was the recent launch of two men's fashion magazines, Men's Style and the new GQ, along with the Herald's Good Living fashion magazine for men last week. All were jam-packed with cosmetic and toiletry ads and featured male models who looked positively girlish, hairless, hollow-cheeked, full-lipped, with a wispy long-haired languidness that used to be the province of the younger sister in a Jane Austen novel. The new masculine metrosexual ideal seems to be imposing the same tyranny of lookism on men which women have long endured.

Along with the changing roles of men in a post-feminist world, comes a new condition identified by British psychotherapists as the "Atlas syndrome", in which men crack under the strain of juggling a new role as superdad and perfect husband with the traditional role as breadwinner.

If advertising and popular culture is a reflection of reality, then ads which depict men as incompetent flakes are cause for concern. There is the ad showing a bumbling man bamboozled by a bra. There are the Baileys ads with men as the butt of the joke, incapable of doing laundry without shrinking it. The overall effect is of female empowerment at the expense of men.

"There are some very negative images of men at the present time," Terry Melvin, manager of the counselling service Men's Line Australia, said yesterday. "They are indicators of some important cultural shifts happening around men and masculinity."

As men have been encouraged to become more active fathers, conflict arises with women who may feel men are encroaching on their realm. "There is a challenge for women to let go of some of their control as homemakers and mothers. There is a grinding of the two templates of the man's and woman's world, each wanting to redefine who they are," says Melvin.

He says research into "gender role strain" has identified the internal psychological conflict experienced by men "when the reality of who they are hits up against the image of what a man is, the optimal masculinity".


A PC INQUISITION

Chris Brand writes:

"My supporter and colleague, Assistant Professor Harrison Kane (Department of Psychology, University of Western Carolina), went on trial in Florida for "racism" and frightening the horses in Putnam county schools when he had worked there for a year as a teacher after getting his doctorate and before taking up his present position. A day-long hearing heard evidence that Harry was linked to me and thus to Hitler, Mussolini and paedophilia; and that special prayer meetings had been held in Florida schools to protect children from such baleful influences. Harry was told that, once a verdict on whether to revoke his licence to teach was arrived at by the great administrators of Florida, he would be entitled to a transcript of his inquisition if he coughed up $600.

Harry and I (together with Denis Constales, University of Ghent) had published a chapter about intelligence in the 2003 Festschrift for Arthur Jensen, The Scientific Study of General Intelligence."



18 September, 2003

HOW TO BREAK PC

Dennis Prager has an idea how:

Here is a seemingly small project that any American who works at almost any company can initiate. If successful, it will send shockwaves through the country: Rename your company's "holiday" party a Christmas party.

Nothing is quite as symbolic of the narcissism at the heart of contemporary "progressive" policies than the belief that because there are non-Christian employees at a company, its Christmas party may not be called one. Who do 5 percent of the employees think they are that they feel empowered to demand that the other 95 percent not celebrate their party with the name that they want? And what kind of mindset denies a company the right to celebrate a national holiday? "Ah, but we want to be inclusive," the professional sensitivity staff will reply. But, dear sensitivity trainer, how is inviting me, a Jew who does not celebrate Christmas, to the company's Christmas party not inclusive? Isn't inviting me by definition inclusive? And if it isn't, perhaps to be really inclusive, given that I keep kosher, you'll have to refrain from serving shellfish or pork products. And you better not serve tea or any other caffeinated products because of the Mormons at your company.

In fact, to be really inclusive, you better drop the word "holiday." One company employee told me that a fellow worker, a Jehovah's Witness, had mentioned that because he is forbidden from celebrating holidays, he could attend the holiday party only if the company dropped the word "holiday." So maybe the sensitivity crowd should just call it "a party"?

But even that might not be inclusive enough. What about those who are forbidden to party (e.g., certain fundamentalists and Jews who are in mourning)? For their sakes, let's not even call it a party.

Of course PC is not remotely about being considerate of minorities, really. It is about messing up the enjoyments and happiness of the majority. If you realize that, all their seemingly nonsensical actions make sense. Leftists are such miserable sods that they want to make other people as miserable as they themselves are. All the survey data show that conservatives are the happy ones.


POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DESTROYS BRITISH EDUCATION

When the Labour government came to power in Britain it did all the politically correct things with British schools -- totally removing most powers of discipline in the process. The result: The UK school system has now become such a sink of aggressive behaviour among the pupils that nobody is willing to teach in some schools. So in desperation they now have totally unqualified people "teaching":

"The shortage of good teachers in the core subjects is still one of the biggest problems in British education, especially in greater London. Twenty-nine per cent of GCSE physics teachers do not have an A-level in the subject. At my previous school in a London suburb, which was not considered tough, a maths teacher from Romania who barely spoke English was employed. She quit after two days. A-level biology students had no teacher for the three months prior to their exams. The English department advertised for two terms without receiving one suitable applicant."

17 September, 2003

THE SISTERS REALLY HATE ONE-ANOTHER

The old "sisterhood" gospel of the feminists claiming that women are kind and caring and supportive towards one-another -- unlike those horrible competitive men -- was always a joke to anyone who has ever seen feminine bitchiness in action but, increasingly now, more realistic femninist writers are beginning to blow the whistle on that politically correct myth. They show that female competition is in fact ferocious but is just more subtly and nastily expressed. I reproduce below a short extract to that effect from Anything she can do I can do better by Rachael Oakes-Ash, published by Random House.

"Second-wave feminists would have us believe that all women were created equal. Little room was available for difference of opinion in their day and women spoke in one voice only. Competition between women was swept under the carpet and not discussed, like the previously forbidden topics of menstruation or masturbation.

Women are reticent to talk of their competitive feelings for fear of appearing aggressive, ambitious or self-centred, as if the three were mutually exclusive. It's the way in which competition manifests between women that can cause the destruction of female relationships. Women have yet to realise that they can have conflict with each other without losing their friendship and they have yet to discover how to do that successfully without guilt, without silence and without gossiping behind each other's backs. Women who swear this competition does not exist because it is unladylike or unsisterly or too confronting are giving women, as a whole, the silent treatment. Without discussion young girls will continue to compare and despair, hating their bodies, starving themselves, cutting themselves, earning less, hating more.

The code of silence around female competition needs to be lifted and to do so women need to explore what it is we are competing for. Envy needs to be transformed into empathy ... competition needs to be seen as a human quality, not just a masculine one of which to be proud only if you are born with testosterone flowing through your veins."

PC WIPES OUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Wow! It seems that illegal immigration into the USA will soon be no more -- because no matter how you got there all immigrants will soon be classified as legal -- and even allowed to vote! Pretty amazing. More here



16 September, 2003

BOYS AS SECOND-CLASS CHILDREN

This is really horrible: Apparently it is now politically correct to hold back boys from starting school until they are a year older than they legally need to be -- because boys are more "immature" than girls! Only by a feminist defintion of "immaturity", I would think. Being good at running and jumping etc. is obviously not "mature"! If you have the stomach for it there is more here.


Interested Participant has a fun "explanation" of political correctness.



15 September, 2003

POLITICALLY CORRECT LINGUISTS

An excellent article here. Some excerpts:

THE PERSECUTION OF SCHOLARS for gender bias, on even the flimsiest evidence, has long been a fact of life in academe. Should one professor write, "Mary entered the kitchen," another boils over with feminist indignation, convenes a panel to investigate, and soon the whole campus is sucked into a tedious speakathon on the evils of sexism...

Along these lines, in 1992, the Linguist Society of America began urging scholars to use androgynous names when writing example sentences. The aim, set in the Linguist Society of America Guideline for Nonsexist Usage, was to get linguists to forgo stereotypes and to "avoid peopling . . . sentences with just one sex"...

Sometimes the efforts to ward off stereotypes become just nonsensical, as when the authors complain that men appear too often with cars and that they are always the ones fixing them. "No females fix cars in any of the ten textbooks, while 53 males do so." According to the Department of Labor, this is not only true of language textbooks: Less than two percent of automobile mechanics are women...

WRITING IN THE Spring 2003 issue of Language, Paul Postal of New York University questions every possible rationale for the LSA's policy ... Postal attacks the LSA policy for its exclusive focus on one type of offense. "There are many possible sources of offense, for example, those involving personal hygiene or dress habits (both potentially relevant to LSA meetings). Military organization and children's summer camps have codes about such matters. Should the LSA develop recommended lists of soaps and suggestions about how often to use them? Should shorts be banned or ties and brassieres required?"...

Almost as troubling to Postal is the threat to free speech represented by the guidelines on nonsexist language. He compares the policy to the law under which former French general Paul Aussaresses was prosecuted for "trying to justify war." The law and its supporters, writes Postal, are "incapable of distinguishing the content of views from the right to express them." But here's the good professor's jaw-breaking punch: "Underlying that incapacity is a dogmatic, total assurance of knowing exactly what things other people should be allowed to say. I believe the same impulse underlies the LSA guideline." ...

During the '90s, intellectual life on college campuses suffered profound harm from the advances of grievance-committee scholarship. Students who should have been arguing the relative merits of great literature and philosophy got caught up in late-night bull sessions about whether to call their female classmates womyn. Such victim-status politics has given scholarship a bad name and detracted from the higher pursuits that are supposed to the mission of higher education


POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ENTRENCHES POVERTY

One can see why the poorer countries of the word are poor. Once again they have shot themselves in the foot. The recent WTO conference was their best hope of getting access for their products to the West but the conference appears to have foundered on the intransigence of third world leaders. The main reason why the conference failed was apparently that third-world leaders were more worried that freer trade might benefit the dreaded "multinationals" and the like than they were about the higher incomes that free trade would give to their farmers etc. And they would rather let their people starve than give them GM food too. Political correctness has a lot to answer for.

UPDATE There is more here on why the third world desperately needed the WTO negotiations to succeed.



14 September, 2003

POLITICALLY CORRECT BUT NOT SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT

Genetic breakthrough undercuts androgeny dogma "For the past three decades, radical feminist acolytes have bowed before the goddess of androgeny. Androgeny is the belief that all sex roles are 'socially constructed.' Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a tutu. .... Gloria Steinem is well-known for her quip, 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.' But the discovery that men and women are cut from a different biological cloth strikes at the very root of all the androgeny nonsense."


MAKING VICIOUS THUGS POLITICALLY CORRECT

The BBC definition of "militants": "Four Afghan aid workers have been killed after their car was ambushed by militants, the aid agency they were working for says. The Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (Dacaar) said the workers were travelling through Ghazni Province, south-west of Kabul, on Tuesday when an armed gang stopped the car. The aid workers were asked to get out of the vehicle. Four were shot dead, while a fifth escaped with injuries."



13 September, 2003

AMERICAN INDIAN RACISM IS CORRECT

Political correctness is breaking the hearts of thousands of little girls -- and their daddies are having a hard time explaining why multicultural hypersensitivity is more important than their daughters' innocent fun.

Beginning this month, the YMCA's Indian Princesses organization will cease to exist. The group was inspired by Harold Keltner, a St. Louis YMCA director, who teamed up with a Canadian Ojibway Indian in 1926 to create a unique outdoors club for dads and children. Joe Friday, Keltner's good friend, fishing partner and hunting guide, spoke to YMCA members in Missouri about American Indian culture and the importance of the father's character-shaping role.

Invigorated by his discussions with Friday, Keltner created the "Y-Guides" programs incorporating Native American lore, traditions, ceremonies and regalia...

A few years ago, however, a tiny faction of militants from the radical American Indian Movement (AIM) targeted the YMCA's Indian Guides/Princesses as "racist." Only Indians should be allowed to dress as Indians and replicate Indian traditions, AIM argued. "What we were saying is, 'we understand where you're coming from, we understand that you want to honor the Indian, but you're not doing that,'" complained David Narcomey, North Florida director of AIM. "You're causing psychological damage to our children".

Alas, the national YMCA ignored the pleas of parents and children and instead succumbed to pressure from perpetually offended AIM protesters -- some of whom even threatened to sue a YMCA chapter to prevent them from using Indian names and themes.

This classic example of P.C. bowdlerism is not the end of the world, to be sure. But the death of the Indian Princesses illustrates the fraudulent nature of zealous multiculturalism, which preaches unequivocal inclusiveness while enforcing selfish insularity.

More here.



Eureka! I knew that the saying: "The children of the light love the light and the children of the darkness love the darkness" was Biblical. It is a summary of what Jesus said at John 3: 19-20. Thanks to Randall Verbrugge for pointing it out. I would still like to know where the summary comes from, though -- Spurgeon? Wesley? Booth? Judge Rutherford? Oliver Cromwell?



12 September, 2003

A POLITICALLY CORRECT POLICE APPOINTMENT UNRAVELS

Driver has an interesting update about the police chief of the Australian State of Victoria -- a very large, self-acknowledged lesbian named Christine Nixon. Although it was of course denied, there is not much doubt that her appointment by the Leftist Victorian government was political -- intended to curry favour with women and gays. And she showed her own politics by promptly instituting affirmative action to favour female police officers. But everyone assured us at the time that Christine had every qualification to make a good police chief. A couple of years down the track the story looks a bit different.



11 September, 2003

DEEDS OF DARKNESS

There is something of a horror-story here about the Fascist methods employed by just one American university to enforce political correctness.

Amazing how publicity is the only thing that causes these totalitarians to pull their horns in. They thumb their noses at the law. But as the old Christian saying goes: "The children of the light love the light and the children of the darkness love the darkness". The evildoers can only thrive in the dark. The light shrivels them up.

(By the way: Does anyone know the source of that saying? I always thought it was St. Paul but it is not in my concordance and Google does not know it either! 1 Thess. 5:5 seems to be the nearest to it in the Bible).



10 September, 2003

INCORRECT BARBIE

The feminists will love this one:

Saudi Arabia's religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the "Jewish" toy - already banned in the kingdom - were offensive to Islam


ST. GEORGE IS VERY INCORRECT

Gareth Young writes: Following is an article that appeared in my home town paper, Kenilworth, Warwickshire:

Rugby Town Council has banned the flag of St George at its town hall _ in case it is seen as racist.

Rugby Borough Council members vetoed a move to fly the flag every day amid fears it could be linked with the British National Party. Councillors were happy to fly the Union Jack on significant dates and the English standard _ a red cross on a white background _ on St George's Day. But some felt flying the flag all the time could send out "wrong messages".

Alan Webb, leader of the Warwickshire council's Labour group, said the authority was following Government protocol. He added: "It's inappropriate to fly flags apart from on flag days, otherwise you devalue them."

But councillors were accused of "missing the point" yesterday. Sir Robin Williams of the Campaign for an Independent Britain called it "political correctness gone mad." He said: "Immigrants are proud to be here."

The Campaign for Racial Equality advised against the banning of any flag. A Royal British Legion spokesman added: "It will certainly upset a good many members of the community."

Angry Tory councillor David Wright was disgusted that the proposal had been rejected by 27 votes to 16. He vowed to lodge another motion urging the council to reconsider. He said: "This has nothing to do with race. We are in the centre of England and wanted to restore a bit of pride." Mr Wright said he had yet to meet a single member of the public of any race who opposed the defeated plans.

9 September, 2003

PC CITIZENSHIP

Being a bureaucratic product, the literature that prospective new American cirizens are given to introduce them to the history of their new country these days is of course very politically correct and full of Leftist oversimplifications. It has got so bad that it has even been satirized on "The Simpsons".

When Apu, the Indian immigrant manager of the "Quik-E Mart" goes for his test, this is what transpires:

Examiner: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?

Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--

Examiner: Wait, wait... just say "slavery".

Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

Source



8 September, 2003

ACADEMIC ABILITY IS INCORRECT

The logical outcome of "all men are equal": "A LOTTERY-style system could soon decide which students get into university. Applicants .. would be selected using a random number generator. The [U.K.] Government plan is aimed at creating equal opportunities for applicants from all backgrounds. It is being considered by a working party of education experts set up by Education Secretary Charles Clarke to review university admissions and establish an Office for Fair Access."



7 September, 2003

THE INCORRECT BARDOT

Famous French sexpot of the 60s, Brigitte Bardot, is now well known for her total political incorrectness and her connections with the prominent French anti-immigration politician Jean Marie Le Pen. Her latest book, however, has atttracted a flood of congratulatory letters from ordinary French people:

"In "A Cry in the Silence," Bardot praises Le Pen, saying he has been faithful to his ideas "against all odds." The book was read and reread by a small army of lawyers before publication. Bardot does not mince words in it: "We are reduced to take a politically correct pride in intermingling our genes. . . . It is a great shame." She also bashes women in politics, gays who assert their rights, unemployed people who are "handsomely kept by taxpayers" and schoolteachers going to work "not shaven, with greasy hair, dirty shirts, disgusting jeans and muddy sneakers." "

So how do our free-speech-hating Leftists respond to her book? Easy-peasy: BAN it, of course!

"Some commentators and journalists have called for a boycott of "A Cry in the Silence," which proceeded to sell hundreds of thousands of copies within a few weeks."



6 September, 2003

There is a really good article here that gives the lie to the feminist "sisterhood" myth. It shows that females just compete with one another in subtler and nastier ways.


ONE FOR THE CHRISTIANS

(Author unknown)

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding the attacks on Sept. 11). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school ... the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don't want any bad publicity, and we surely don't want to be sued (there's a big difference between disciplining, touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.). And we said OK.

Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won't even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.

Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said OK.

Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn't matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.

Then someone said let's print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK.

And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they're entitled to free speech.

Then the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it's just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace. Are you laughing?



5 September, 2003

A POLITICALLY CORRECT DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"Let us look at the Declaration [of Independence] and examine just how it would fare today in our sanitized, politically correct, please do not dare say anything which can possibly ever be construed in any way to even come close to offending anyone world.

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men....." Hold it! Men? You can not say men this is obviously sexist and exclusive. Have to change that line immediately. How about instead of men we say all men, women, children, blondes, red heads, brunettes, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, left-handed persons of color, right-handed persons of color, and so on and so on until we include every possible group of people imaginable.

OK, now back to the Declaration. "... are created equal...." CUT! Created? Certainly can never ever say created because that implies there is a creator and that is just another word for God and Jefferson better stop pushing his Christianity down our throats. So instead of are created equal let us just say are equal. OK better, now back to re-writing the Declaration. ".... are equal, that they are endowed by their Creator ..." Hold it! Didn't we just cover this? Creator is equal to God, and if Jefferson continues to push his intolerant religion then the ACLU will sue him and save us all. Let us say instead "are endowed by their own personal creator, or no creator at all if they are atheist or agnostic." Better!

More here



4 September, 2003

"ABUSIVE" TEACHERS

A rare victory for sanity over PC in the Australian State of New South Wales. They might even make it safe for men to become teachers again eventually

"Trivial and vexatious claims of child abuse against teachers - including shouting at students or comforting them - will be largely eliminated by legal changes before State Parliament. An estimated 2000 teachers have been reported for "child abuse" since 1999, when the Commission for Children and Young People Act began operating. Investigations have included allegations of teachers glaring in an intimidatory manner, restraining violent students or hugging distressed children. The Premier, Bob Carr, who flagged changes in July to "strengthen the authority" of teachers to manage and discipline students, said yesterday that the term "child abuse" would be removed from two laws and replaced with "reportable conduct"."



3 September, 2003

THE NEWS MUST NOT OFFEND MUSLIMS

Cal Thomas says: "For some time in the Americas we have been aware of television shows that run their scripts by liberal interest groups to make sure they are not offended. That is the main reason homosexuals are always portrayed in a positive light on TV.

Now there's word from Britain that the television industry there is so caught up in political correctness that it is doing the same thing.

According to Rod Liddle, the former editor of radio 4's "Today" program, the political correctness has gone beyond entertainment to infect news. Liddle says before the Iraq war, BBC journalists were summoned to a meeting to discuss how they could cover the conflict without offending Muslims.

Liddle says, "When we are forced into making these blithe and comfortable platitudinous asides we do everybody a disservice." In a desire to avoid inflaming religious antagonism, Liddle said, "we massage the truth in order to kid ourselves, and the audience, that that's really the case."

He's right, of course, but don't expect things to change."



2 September, 2003

PC IMMIGRATION BLINDNESS

"Five years ago, we did a two-page spread on how Project USA's Craig Nelson was brave enough to take on America's seriously damaged immigration policies. (We are immigrants ourselves and were therefore not the least bit afraid of being blackballed as "anti-immigrant.") The responses were hysterical. Formerly loyal readers called for boycotts. They annoyed our advertisers with silly rhetoric and called us racists. Needless to say, we were shocked. Like Toby Young in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People or Peter Brimelow in Alien Nation, we were new immigrants who couldn't understand why Americans were so determined to favor PC posturing over simple facts. Immigration is out of hand, and it's only going to get worse..

.... the difference between liberals (equality first, truth last) and conservatives (truth first, everything else second)."

More here



1 September, 2003

$100,000 for falling out of bed

Some things defy comment! The government did not even fight the claim!

A PRISONER who injured himself in a fall from his bunk bed has won more than $100,000 compensation from taxpayers. Craig Ballard, jailed for a vicious assault on a woman, successfully sued the State of New South Wales [Australia] after he fell out of the bunk in his cell at Grafton Correctional Centre. He suffered a serious head injury and blamed the Corrective Services Department for negligence, claiming the bunk was not bolted down properly. The Crown decided not to fight the case - believed the first of its kind - and now taxpayers will foot the bill.

More here.