When Pauline Hanson burst onto the Australian political scene she was portrayed as a ‘dangerous’ individual. The idea was that there would be blood in the streets, racial warfare between blacks, whites and Asians, and all the rest. She was a dangerous person all right, but not for these reasons. She was dangerous because she was challenging the nice comfortable belief system of educated, white, middle class Australians, who since the sixties had life all figured out; who had the world tied up in a nice tidy ideological package which they dipped into whenever they wished to inject some meaning into their empty little lives. The meaning consists of holding a ‘totalistic’ world view. A totalistic belief system, or ideology, provides one with all the answers and necessarily collapses if it fails on one point. It proceeds from one simple, essential idea, which is constantly reinforced by reference to a particular class of causes which especially lend themselves to this objective. The basic idea is that everything is a function of intellectual argumentation - a rationalization process. Nothing will be allowed to get past which contradicts this fundamental principle, or to put it another way, the facts should never be allowed get in the way of a good ideology. The novel nature of this style of thinking in the latter half of the Twentieth Century is its main attraction. (This is both its strength and its weakness.) So, for example, evidence that black people underperform white people in IQ tests will be immediately dismissed, because if whites are inherently smarter than blacks, and people are just born this way, it renders futile all attempts to bring about racial equality via political activism and ‘rational solutions’. A defeat here is a defeat for feminism, homo rights, Marxism, socialism, multiculturalism, Aboriginal reconciliation, and so on, because the same system of thought underlies all these issues. The same applies for any other negation of the rationalization process - turning intractable issues of human existence into intellectually solvable problems. Issues like male female inequality, or abhorrence of homosexuality, are not really in themselves actually ‘problems’, which is not to deny that these things might give rise to other problems.

We now even interpret physical disability out of existence via the ‘paralympics’. Now the essence of PC and ‘human rights’ ideology is that all human beings are to be treated equally. Disabled people are no longer to be thought of as in any way inferior to anyone else. Such people are now to be regarded as ‘physically challenged’. Normal people are now simply ‘enabled’. If a person with two legs can do things a wheel-chair person can’t do, that’s all to the good, but to say such a person is ‘better’ is definitely out, as this confronts us with a reality which we can’t otherwise change. A problem however arises with the concept of the paralympics. How one compares the athletic ability of a person with one leg with a person with one arm, I do not pretend to know. But putting disabled people into a position of competitiveness with each other puts us right back into the competition mode we were trying to avoid in the first place as between the ‘physically challenged’ and the ‘physically enabled’. The result: reality wins out once again to subvert efforts to bring about so-called ‘equality’.

Political correctness is the fundamentalism of the Left. Naturally left-wingers counter this by asserting that you can have a political correctness of the Right as well. This is a fallacious argument. Political correctness is about fundamentally changing the world through the power of political ideas. Right-wingers don’t think in these terms. Thatcher’s economic policies were never aimed at bringing about Utopia. Neither were the racialist policies of Hitler. Nor are any other typically ‘right-wing’ principles which are actually never really ideological. On the issue of capital punishment and criminal justice, left-wingers will take a liberal bleeding heart stand in favour of the criminal. Rampant crime rates will be met with the claim that most crime is property crime, and if we just had an equitable social system (which they can bring about through the application of socialist principles!) then crime will disappear and people will go back to being their good old innocent selves again.

It will be objected that the draconian right-wing view is just as much an example of political correctness as the liberal view. But this is not so. The right-wing view of harsh penalties, and ideas of deterrence, are not about ridding the world of crime and bringing about Utopia. It is simply a specific response to specific criminal activity which one believes will lessen the incidence of crime. There is no grand vision of a glorious transformed future for the human race in any of this. On the other hand the left-wing view will seek to explain crime in socio-economic terms whereby the basic argument is that people are basically good and only need the right social conditions to unleash this essential human goodness. This is airy-fairy, cloud cuckoo land stuff, but there are really crucial differences between the philosophical world views of the Left and the Right evident here. There is no political correctness of the Right which rests on the assertion that if we can just engineer a different socio-economic system all human problems will disappear. The Right-wing view is anathema to the Left and deadly to the cause of left-wing political correctness because it forecloses loopy intellectual theorizing. Once the criminal has been executed that is the end of the matter, whereas the Left wants to endlessly cogitate about the perfectibility of human nature if we engage in enough political activism.

It is always painfully apparent that the left-wing ‘causes’ the politically correct champion seem a good deal more important than the human beings on whose behalf they are pursued. This is because the politically correct want the world to proceed on the basis of an intellectually rational system - to give them something to do! The world does not really work this way, but the PC crowd pretend it does, for their own edification. One thinks back to the Vietnam War era where the prospect of the Vietnamese people falling under communist rule was considered to be basically just a big joke by the protest generation. The reality of this evil is contrasted with the facile acceptation of political theory. The ‘really important issue’ - which anti-war protesters shared with their communist friends - was the illusion that you can fundamentally improve human existence through political action. This included putting an end to mankind's propensity towards warfare. Naturally by the time of the Soviet war in Afghanistan this supposed ‘abhorrence of war’ conveniently went out the window because the nation prosecuting this particular war possessed the same ideological foundations as the left-wing activists. Another example of this occurred when France tested nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. This was met with hysterical protests in western nations. At exactly the same time the Chinese were testing nuclear weapons in central Asia. Were there any protests directed at the Chinese? Of course not. Why? Well it was all about public relations and image. The protesters knew that they could protest against the actions of a western democracy. Their faces would be all over the front pages of French and other newspapers in the western world. On the other hand, they could protest from now until the cows come home against China and there would be no reportage in Chinese newspapers, and even more to the point, no prospect of any change in that country's policies. So much for the ‘brave idealism’ of a ‘principled stand against nuclear weapons testing’! The object is to be seen to be an effective activist for social change - it doesn’t really matter about the issue - as long as you are out there being seen to be politically active. That in itself is the object of the exercise. Nuclear tests were just a pretext for acting out your ideological fantasies.

Back in the 50’s musician Artie Shaw was labeled a communist sympathizer for attending a ‘peace conference’ organized by communists. Shaw bleated that he would have attended a Republican Party peace conference if they had organized one. His accusers were right though. It was only communists who would be silly enough to think that holding a conference is going to bring about peace. The philosophical foundations of one view is the same as the other. The Republicans would have had enough sense to realize the pointlessness of the exercise, so one’s suspect ideological leanings are betrayed in such a case.

Where once this world view is seen not to work, or where the base motives of the political activists are laid bare, the game is up.

The one essential idea of PC ideology is that intellectual argumentation and resultant political activism can change human nature. All the fundamental issues of human existence are turned into a function of intellectual theory - specifically, scenarios of adversarial political conflict between supposed victim groups and supposed oppressor groups. The socially conscious play the role of heroic crusaders for justice. Sure, there are, and have always been, people out there who really do oppress other people. But when it comes to political correctness ideology the issue is, can you change this situation through the application of social consciousness raising, or some kind of educative social philosophy, appealing to people’s better nature on the level of intellectual theory? If you cannot put together some kind of social philosophy which can educate society out of this condition, or if you have a social theory which cannot accommodate society’s inability to overcome such injustices in a systematic way, then your theory and your claims to superior social consciousness are groundless. This is exactly how one would characterize the failure of Marxism/Communism. The was an ideology which was unable to come to grips with the real problem, which is human nature, and one which insisted that there were supposed scientific principles by which a society could be run which would overcome inequities and injustices (‘scientific socialism’). The consistent failure of left-wing ideology and political activism is the proof that here is a system of belief which serves only the personal needs of its adherents for intellectual gratification.

Take homosexual liberation. The socially progressive will say that in the western world homosexuality is now ‘accepted’. The reality is that homosexuality is merely tolerated. In tributes to the departed former premier Don Dunstan, his sexual preferences figured prominently as a subtext. Yet the words ‘homosexual’ or ‘bisexual’ were almost without exception tactfully avoided. Was this because of the lingering shame attached to homosexuality? Homo rights advocates continually characterise homosexual self-loathing as something which directly stems from discrimination by wider society. The truth is that all people have an in-built disgust of homosexuality. Homosexuals know what they are doing is wrong, but rejection by society serves as a convenient way to avoid this uncomfortable fact.

Any number of people will claim to ‘accept’ homosexuality, but if their own eighteen year old son bounces into the room and says "Hey, dad I’m gay!" the overwhelming majority of parents will be horrified, and immediately think that they have failed as parents. Does anyone seriously think that after thirty odd years of strident activism on behalf of homo rights anything has fundamentally changed; that schoolkids are not going to treat homos like the scum of the earth, any less than they have ever done in the past? [Bashed & bashed again / Kenton Miller The Age 21 June 2000] Political consciousness raising has not changed this state of affairs, and never will. It is only a matter of time before homos crawl back into whatever sewer it was they originally climbed out of. For those who equate ‘gay-liberation’ with human progress, it might be worth recalling that the homosexual licentiousness of ancient Rome preceded so-called ‘Victorian morality’ by two thousand years. So much for the inevitable victory of ‘progressive thinking’!

I have often thought that one of the fundamental attractions of the homosexual life-style is precisely the fact that it is a perversion. I suspect that most homosexuals want to be outsiders to accepted rules of morality. The idea of homosexuality being acceptable and respectable probably runs completely counter to the way most homosexuals want to be perceived. Being perverts is what makes homosexuality so attractive to these individuals. So homo liberation is misconceived right at the outset. This provides an interesting, if paradoxical, counterpoint to the argument I am putting forward. The ideological totalism I refer to, relates to the idea of ‘reversism’ discussed previously. The goal is to place yourself as far away as possible from conventional thinking and values. It is all just an adversarial attitude of mind. This is what defines the left-liberalism of the politically correct. Left liberals - their affinity for homosexuals is symbolic of the fact that they are queers of the mind - entertain the most outlandish philosophical perversions, and this is the very attraction of this style of ‘thinking’ (which is to say, programmed ideologizing. They like to believe they think more deeply about things than other people. But all they ever think about is their ideology, not the wider world!). They will engage in perverted thinking to make homosexuality acceptable, but the object of the exercise is to be as outlandish as possible in one’s views to prove one’s credentials as a really innovative, radical thinker. The one essential idea behind all this, the principle article of faith, is that in my desire to be intellectually and morally superior, I am going play the role of a social justice activist, and I am going to interpret social issues in whatever way will serve to make that proposition true. This is the self-indulgent, we can have it all, subjectivism of the baby-boom generation.

I have always thought that I will be ultimately vindicated by reference to the eternal validity of the laws and commandments of the Judeo-Christian God triumphing over such abominations as homosexuality and abortion. Now, my belief in the final victory of Judeo-Christian morality takes second place to the conviction that real vindication will lie in the inevitable recognition that political correctness - especially feminist ideology - is, when all is said and done, simply an insult to the human mind.

When someone like Pauline Hanson comes on the scene with straight-forward commonsense observations of the world, she is challenging what amounts to a secular, pseudo-religious belief system. I have described this as a ‘comfortable’ belief system. Does this do justice to left liberal beliefs which are, above all, supposed to be all about challenging conventional thinking and conservatism with daring new political insights? It is when we realize that the end product of this nonsense is a systematic process of reducing complex issues to the level of simplistic moralizing. Any evil, anything about the world you don’t like, you reduce to a nice cozy little intellectually digestible ‘political’ proposition and bingo!, you achieve the ultimate goal - freedom from the reality of this evil.

THE CLERISY: A SECULAR PRIESTHOOD FOR THE NEW INQUISITION
or, Why I won’t debate with a left-winger: ‘Heads I win, tails you lose!’

The politically correct really believe they are intellectually superior. Since their world view is philosophically correct, if you contradict them you can only be one of two things - either obstinately evil or just plain stupid. The idea that their world view may be incorrect is simply not an issue. If you are in the stupid category then an attempt will be made to enlighten you. Special effort will be taken to slowly and carefully explain the truth to you. All this justifies an attitude of open ended arrogance.

The constant refrain of left-wingers in debates about ‘social justice’ issues is that the other side is simply ‘uninformed’. A PC advocate will deal with any disagreement by declaring that the other side obviously ‘lacks intellectual rigour’ [letter CT 5/4 re. Mandle] It sounds like any argument you disagree with lacks intellectual rigour. Back in the sixties the idea was that ‘I am anti-war; you disagree with me, therefore you must be pro-war’. As if the greatest conundrums of human existence could be reduced simply to so much intellectual debate. ‘Here, let me explain the truth to you. I will go really slowly so that even you can understand!’ This moralizing claptrap continues today unabated, for the personal edification of a smarmy bunch of cultural elitists. Their political correctness really consists of a code language (this is why we have politically correct language) to identify themselves as such. People open their mouths and certain sounds come out which are inherently meaningless ‘Aboriginal reconciliation’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ rhetoric. The expressions themselves are vacuous, but they serve to mark people out as members of a special class of ‘caring and concerned individuals’. It is all just a game which consists of seeking out and confronting those who will not roll over to PC propaganda and maneuvering such people into a situation of intellectual debate so that you can establish your credentials as a progressive thinker in some spurious adversarial/debate scenario of your own devising. This ‘personalisation’ process (‘the personal is political, man!’) is the ultimate goal of left-wing political so-called ‘progressives’. They seek an adversarial relationship - a hate relationship - with those they portray as right-wing, reactionary, red-neck, racist, homophobic, sexists. It is all just like a person throwing a hand grenade into a warehouse full of fireworks. You just point the finger at someone and accuse them of being a ‘racist’ or whatever, and then just sit back and watch the pyrotechnics. It is all so easy. They will blithely accuse their victims of being narrow minded bigots, whereas it is their own brand of narrow minded bigotry which should be in the spotlight. Naturally, they are particularly concerned with so-called ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate groups’. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! This represents the ultimate fruits of their reversism - these jackbooted fascists of the mind. Their perversity knows no bounds! The level of hatred one experiences at the hands of these types is almost beyond belief! I have certainly never witnessed racial hatred that even remotely compares with this level of spite. It was not until I attended meetings of Pauline Hanson’s political party and saw the violent actions of protesters directed at people just quietly going about the business of attending a political meeting that I fully began to understand how ‘good’ Germans could throw Jews into the gas chambers. On one occasion a man in his 70’s was beaten to a pulp by a group of ‘really caring, socially conscious’ thugs. The reaction of one left-winger I know seemed to be something along the lines that this man was really beaten up a bit too much. It was sort of all right to beat him up seeing as he was a Pauline Hanson supporter, but the demonstrators had gone just a little too far!

Left-wingers are just a bunch of smart-arses purporting to combat the evils of the world but in reality just giving perfectly decent people a really hard time, while hypocritically doing nothing concrete to improve the state of humanity. This includes just about anyone these days who wants to be up themselves - especially media types, High Court judges, and ex-Liberal prime ministers from the 70’s with extensive farming interests in western Victoria. The issue is obscured by those who, deliberately or otherwise, persist in equating this 'cultural elite' with the social elite. (The man who picks up my garbage can be, and likely is, a member of the cultural elite though he is not among the rich and powerful.)

While it is supposed to be all about what is going on in the real world - women’s equality, homo rights, ‘peace’ activism, and all the rest, it is really just so much rhetoric designed simply to establish one’s status as a particularly socially conscious individual. We are talking about membership of an exclusive club - a cultural elite. The PC rhetoric is just the magic words one uses to gain entry to the club. The overarching reality is that these people do not have to take any particular responsibility for their beliefs. Back in the sixties one was accused of being a hypocrite if one did not live up to the demands of a religious system of belief such as the New Testament. The people making these accusations of the liberal left possessed a set of ‘convictions’ which did not really require them to do anything in particular in order to express these ‘beliefs’. Even opposing the ‘draaaft’ (they were very anti-American!) exposed one to little, if any, danger of retribution. They did not have to put themselves out in their personal lives to become a member of the exclusive club of the socially conscious. The ‘kindergarten revolutionaries’ have become the ‘armchair revolutionaries’. Just trot out the correct formulaic ideological dogmas and bingo, one has fundamentally changed the world. How is this? This comes about by seeing all issues as being a function simply of intellectual argumentation. Once you have articulated the correct ideological language and political ‘arguments’ you bring the issue under intellectual control, and for these people that is all that is necessary. The problem is that the big ticket items of interest to the PC set are not essentially things of political argumentation. It is the pretense that they are which makes their style of thinking so attractive to them, even though the world never obliges by changing in the way it is supposed to. It nevertheless facilitates a lot of phony, simplistic moralizing as an issue is put in starkly black and white moral terms. This is curious, since the left-liberals believe they are overcoming simple-minded conservative conceptions. The idea is that back in the bad old days society possessed all kinds of unfounded ideas about right and wrong; good and bad. The difference is that one has engaged in a huge amount of fake intellectualizing to prove one is a really ‘cool’ person.

Throughout the era of political correctness in the western world the rule has been that conservative political forces have had the upper hand in terms of elected governments. The big influential success stories politically, at least on this level, have been the Thatchers and the Reagans and so on. Of course the Left has had its periods of dominance as well, but the striking thing is that the tendency is always for these left-wing governments to be either essentially quite conservative from the start or to necessarily curb any radical tendencies they might have during their period in power. Clinton backs down over ‘gays’ in the military; Hawke and Keating promote aggressive capitalism; Tony Blair’s Labour government is openly Thatcherite in economic policy. A truly left-wing government like that of Whitlam & Co. soon collapses in a screaming heap if it persists with radical policies. Even the conservative parties which experiment with trendy policies come unstuck. In Canada the conservatives, in a fit of ‘progressivism’, ran with a woman Prime Minister (Kim Campbell). She was a disaster. In the subsequent general election, this major political party lost all but one or two seats, a thing hitherto unheard of in the politics of an advanced western nation. They won’t experiment with another token woman prime minister again any time soon! In all of this one asks where are the huge steps forward on all the big-time political issues championed by the liberal-left? They are never able to implement their ideological goals. This doesn’t inhibit the requisite posturing among the cocktail party set. This is the only environment where such opinions carry any weight.

THE MORAL UNIVERSE