In the spirit of speaking out, I believe in political correctness. There. I said it. Do you know why I believe in political correctness? Because I call it, for the most part, manners and being polite to other people. Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe my mother taught me well. I always thought that being respectful about someone else’s politics or religion was the polite thing to do. In fact, as I grew up, I didn’t know the political affiliations of most of my classmates or neighbors. Sometimes, I knew their religion only because I knew who I went to Sunday School with and who I didn’t. No one really talked about it.
Over the last five years or so, political correctness has been a hot topic. The consensus among the public seems to be, at least during the last Presidential election, that political correctness was not a good thing. Who am I to say? But, I think the lack of it has caused chaos in our society. Lack of political correctness pits neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Why not just go vote or go to the church of your choice without making a big deal about it? Keep your business to yourself?
Dropping political correctness from the vernacular and from our behavior has had an effect on our society and, I say, a detrimental effect. As I run around out in the world these days, I feel like people are studying one another, trying to figure out these very personal things about each other. I further feel like that if you don’t pass muster, if you aren’t the correct political or religious persuasion according to their standards, then they aren’t interested in your friendship. Meet the galvanizing of America! Meet the red people and the blue people! Can this possibly be a good thing? I don’t think so.
I have many friends who have different political and religious beliefs than I do. We have lots that we talk about that is not associated with politics or religion. Don’t you? Are those two topics suddenly the only two that Americans can speak intelligently about? What happened to music, literature, relationships, and everything else that is going on in our world?
I refuse to surround myself with people who think just like I do. How boring would the world be if we all thought alike. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone pushing their beliefs down my throat. That brings us back where we started. To manners. And political correctness.
Does this mean that we can’t discuss these hot button issues? Of course not! We need to discuss them, particularly when we are electing the government of our country. We need to discuss them in the proper forums. If the government tries to ram its beliefs down our collective throat, then the people of the U.S. are going to rise up and protest as we should in order to protect our rights as a nation. The government needs to remember that not all the people support their particular point of view and the government is representative of all the people, not just half of them.
