Tale of Two Comedians

Do you remember Wanda Sykes, the alleged comedian, who during a performance in 2016 called then-President-elect Trump “racist, sexist” and “homophobic?” When audience members booed her “jokes” about the future President, she attacked them saying,

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Identitarian Movement in Europe

A response to the threat of Islamization and the loss of cultural identity is brewing among the young people of Europe.  The “identitarian movement” began in France in 2002.  Subtitles in the video above explain the viewpoint of the German youth who are increasingly concerned about losing their ethnic identities, because of far-left ideology with its suicidal political correctness.

Maya Angelou’s Words?

Beginning as early as 2001, according to my research, perhaps even before, this quote by writer/illustrator Joan Walsh Anglund began to be falsely attributed to Maya Angelou:

A bird doesn’t sing because he has an answer–he sings because he has a song.

Barack Obama himself famously and falsely attributed Ms. Anglund’s words to Maya Angelou.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

The above quote was posted on Maya Angelou’s facebook page without attribution on November 23, 2013. That same year, she was interviewed and she repeated the quote, without attribution, as if those were her own words. An op-ed in the New York Times was too cute by half to claim that this was not a case of plagiarism:

… it doesn’t seem that Ms. Angelou, who died last year, claimed the words as her own.

“It doesn’t seem?” Well, I beg to differ. Things are not always as some would wish them to seem to be.

The Spiral of Silence and Conversations about Race

In our last two posts we examined how political correctness can pressure individuals to self-censor their speech, whether in person or on the Internet, out of fear of ridicule, ostracism, or actual punishment by the enforcers of politically correct “right think”. This tendency to not speak out has been dubbed the spiral of silence. We looked at the cases of two police officers who lost their jobs, in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO, because of comments they had made.

After Ferguson, once again we’re hearing cries for a “conversation about race.” A truly productive conversation is not going to happen in the current atmosphere, in light of the spiral of silence. Why not? Because political correctness poisons the well. Any comment perceived to be politically incorrect, in this context, will immediately result in accusations of racism. How, then, can there be any real dialogue?

The Spiral of Silence and the Enforcers of Right Think

In our last post, we learned that researchers have found that people tend to self-censor their speech, both in person and on social media, if they believe that their opinions are unpopular or in the minority. Researchers call this phenomenon the spiral of silence. The tendency to self-censor is one that others, particularly progressives, use to political advantage, when they seek to punish or destroy those with whom they disagree. Depending upon how politically incorrect their points of view are perceived to be by others, speakers quickly learn to self-censor their speech lest they find themselves singled out, investigated, and punished by the enforcers of right think. Let’s look at some recent examples of this type of punishment that goes far beyond ridicule or ostracism.

The “Spiral of Silence”: Self-Censorship and Political Correctness

Despite that it’s commonly believed that the Internet facilitates free speech, a new study indicates that on social media people tend to not speak out if they believe that their views are unpopular or if they perceive that they may be negatively criticized for expressing their heart-felt opinions. The authors explain that it’s long been known that people self-censor in face-to-face interactions:

A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.”

Some social media creators and supporters have hoped that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter might produce different enough discussion venues that those with minority views might feel freer to express their opinions, thus broadening public discourse and adding new perspectives to everyday discussion of political issues.

Environmental Migrants and Fundamental Transformation

Nowadays, everything is political and everything is tainted with politics. Nothing much that happens these days is an accident or a coincidence.

A previous post explained how many fields of scientific study are being systematically corrupted by political correctness, which infects anthropology, paleontology, psychology, sociology, archaeology, history, meteorology and of course political science, among others. The issue of man-caused climate change is among the most obvious of examples where political correctness rears its ugly head. Why is this important to recognize?

Let’s speculate a little about how politically corrupted science can further efforts to “fundamentally transform” our free Republic.