Over at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood website, I came across a couple of excellent articles by James Hudnall:
1. Why political correctness must die
and
2. How to kill political correctness in five easy steps
The money quotes are:
“Political Correctness is hated by just about anyone you meet. The only people driving it are leftists and government bureaucrats, who earn a living from it.”
“PC is something everyone seems to hate, yet it pervades our culture and lives. The only people who seem to like it are the ones who use it to impose their will on everyone else.”
“The good news is the public is against them and signs are there that they tide is already turning. If there’s one thing power fears it’s when the masses are against them. We’re already at that point...”
My personal experience tells me that James Hudnall is absolutely right. Many people I know who don’t have a conservative bone in their body absolutely hate political correctness. John-Tory-safe fiscal conservative issues like tax cuts leaves them cold (“they’re for the rich”), but their hatred for PC is visceral.
I would say that defeating PC can be a wedge issue, one that can pry many liberal voters away from the Liberal party, provided you can find a leader with enough gumption to say what is necessary. Mike Harris went a little ways down this road and was able to take half the seats in liberal Toronto in 1995 and a third of them in 1999. In contrast, socially liberal Ernie Eves and John Tory won a total of zip Toronto ridings.
However, you have to be prepared for the obvious counterattack - that by dismantling PC you are protecting the rights of racists, Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan to speak. The way to counter this is to forthright and say yes, free speech should be guaranteed to all Canadians – within the sensible bounds of British common law tradition (i.e. slander, libel, obscenity, and the promotion of crime aren’t protected). But political and religious speech is, or should be. In fact, the best thing to do is to bring these points up right away so that you flat-foot the opposition right off the bat.
As an aside, this is one of those issues where the red tories have it exactly backwards. They think economic conservatism is the part of conservatism that sells well and that messy social conservative issues are what holds us back (“Paul Martin – he’s fiscally conservative and socially liberal, just the way Canadians like it”). This may be true for the Globe and Mail editorial board and in downtown Toronto, but not in our small towns and ethnic communities. Why else do populists so often evoke socialist themes? And why else do they tend to be socially conservative?
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