Michel.Evanchik.Net

It is not polite to hurt people’s feelings. While it may be politically effective to denigrate a group of people, it is bad politics. Sadly, such scapegoating is often effective, as the surviving Tutsi of Rwanda can tell you. While “politic” and “polite” have different meanings, they share the same root: polis, which simply means “city” in Greek. Polite and politic are at their root about people living together collectively. It is often, and rightly, denounced that politics is not more polite.

In the late 1980’s, the term “politically correct” gained its current meaning and notoriety. Whether used pejoratively, or simply descriptively, it relates to speaking about people, especially to distinct groups of people, in non-denigrating terms. Some people like to “call a spade, a spade,” whatever the sensibilities of those listening, and consider it their constitutional right of free speech to do so. Some ignoramuses consider “spade” another form of “negro” and prefer “African-American”, thank you very much. To deprive the ignoramuses, even the Archie Bunkers among them, of their honestly held misconceptions would be too intellectually niggardly. Some offense is more sensible, but don’t expect Washington D.C.’s professional football team to be changing its name anytime soon.

Yet we are all, if we are not psychopaths, aware that some words might offend others. Even if no offense is intended, we generally try to avoid giving this offense. Airing our views publicly, in a protected forum, often makes us insensitive to the hurt feelings our speech may produce. My friend Todd Seavey has spoken on the subjects of feminism, child-raising, and dating provocatively online in a manner I would be shocked to see him speak in person-to-person.

A while back, I posted some a list of some funny websites. I left out two sites that crack me up. The first I left out because it might give untoward offense to Jewish friends. The second I left out as to not offend myself or my family, since my mother had just died of breast cancer.

Now let’s consider the link that might offend Jewish readers. While it intends to be serious, Nationist Socialist Magazine is such a strange hodge-podge of weird fringe politics, that like the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, I can’t help but be fascinated by it.

So why not share my amusement with others? I don’t share my amusement with others, except in appropriate circumstances, because for some Nazism is more than an abstraction, but a real danger that killed aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. My son goes to school at a local YMHA where some older members have concentration camp serial numbers still tattooed on their arms. While to me a picture of Hitler is a removed historical relic, to some it is as offensive as a framed picture of one of the murderers of my wife’s beloved uncle is to me.

If our nation is to be a stable polity, we must consider the ramifications of what we say. And those who take offense should likewise remember that the offense taken is rarely an offense deliberately given. As one whacked-out dope-fiend once put it, “Can’t we all just get along?”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 21:32 and is filed under Philosophy.