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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

There are right wing versions of political correctness.

Try saying that immigrants aren't a problem at a Republican rally. Or saying that women have a right to choose. Or that homosexuals should be able to marry.

Then watch how quickly right wingers jumps down your throat for not being politically correct.

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Gonna have to disagree with you here. Some "right wingers" might, but not all. There's an awful lot of gradient on the right side of the spectrum (just as there is on the left).

Immigrants aren't the problem for most "right wingers." Illegal immigrants are.

Women having the right to choose is only a problem if you expect a woman's right to choose to extend to extinguishing the life of a fetus at any stage of pregnancy. Many "right wingers" are liberal on this up to a point (say the first trimester).

Many "right wingers" (probably not extreme right wing, but still) are socially quite liberal and support gay marriage.

So... I disagree with all your points. But I can see that this election, especially, has polarized people to the extreme. Rather than seeing the gradient on either side, everyone is seeing every person who votes for Trump as an evil person; and likewise, every person who votes for Clinton as corrupt.

In order to move forward we need to come to terms with this gradient in our individual values again. We need to realize that there are fiscally conservative Democrats, and socially liberal Republicans. When we can do that then we can get back to compromising to mutually beneficial outcomes.

And if we cannot do that then we, as a country, are in deep s--t no matter who is running the country.

That's a good point, and I was wrong to paint all right wingers with the same brush. They are in fact quite varied, as you point out.

My larger point still stands, however. I still maintain that you'd get in trouble saying the kinds of things I said at a Republican rally because of political correctness that many (though not all) right wingers adhere to.

Even if those particular examples weren't the best, there are plenty more where those came from. Try saying you don't support the military. Try saying that burning the American flag is a form of free speech. Try saying that Clinton is a better candidate than Trump, and so on.

Okay, I'll grant your extended argument here. But I'll counter by saying that the same reasoning applies to Democrat rallies. This particular election there was violence and intolerance of opposing views at rallies for both parties. I recall Obama (in one of his best moments, in my opinion) cooling people off when they were getting heated with some lone old guy who was a Trump supporter. That was admirable. We need more of that.

But yes, the truth is that saying the reverse of most of your statements would get you in a lot of hot water at a Democrat rally. You see that right? If you went to a Democrat rally and said Trump was a better candidate than Hillary? That's not gonna fly. Or if you said that corporations should be allowed to contribute financially to political parties?

My main argument, I suppose, still stands. There's just an awful lot of intolerance going around these days. A truck load of it. We need to all own our individual intolerances and biases and still respect each other. We don't have to agree, but perhaps we could start with at least agreeing to hear each other out. Then we could discover where we're all coming from and why we want what we want, and how we can perhaps collaborate on building something mutually acceptable together.

Yes, I definitely see that there is something like "political correctness" on the Democratic or liberal side. But my point is merely that it's not limited to the Democrats or liberals, as right wing media would have everyone believe. The right wing (in general, though maybe not to a man) are just as guilty of it.

In broader terms, there's always the party line, no matter what party you're part of -- and saying things against the party line will get you in trouble with the true believers (or those that would paint themselves as such). That goes equally for most Republicans and Democrats, most liberal and conservatives, communists and fascists, etc.

To maintain that "political correctness" is just a liberal or Democratic phenomenon is simply disingenuous.

The main problem with having graduated opinions is that you can only express them with one shade of candidate: it's either the Republican or the Democrat candidate. You can not nuance your view of them, and so, shortcuts are taken, since by voting for one or the other, you endorse them, whether you fully or only partially agree with them. If the political system allowed for a more nuanced voting (Such as grading candidates for example), then people wouldn't have this dual view of the other party's supporters.

That's totally not true. The WSJ, one of the leading conservative papers/voices, is very pro-immigration. Senators like McCain and Rubio almost got an immigration bill though Obama. There are pro-choice republican senators (Collins, Murkowski). And there are some that support gay marriage, include Rob Portman, and the reviled Dick Cheney. These are minority opinions, but the discussion is allowed.

An important part of Clinton's campaign strategy and that of the Democrat establishment in general is to try and discredit and marginalise Republicans like Rubio. We know this from documents obtained by Wikileaks that talk about tactics like bringing into question Rubio's Republican credentials and support amongst Latinos while building up Trump and other joke candidates as credible opponents. We all know how well that turned out.

And how is the WSJ's pro-immigration stance seen in the Republican party as a whole? Do pro-choice Republicans actually speak out and get much of a hearing on their pro-choice views at major Republican rallies? If so, what kind of reception do they get?

Or how climate change is borne out by the facts, or how blacks were enslaved for hundreds of years by whites, or the crusades happened, on and on and on.

Everyone has their own little safe-space and their own desire to stifle others speech (voter suppression?). Just some hard statements follow from fact and some do not.

>how blacks were enslaved for hundreds of years by whites

You have no idea what you are talking about if you think this point is disputed by any majority of Republicans.

It's like saying, "'People should contribute to society' triggers all liberals."

It's a fact that makes people uncomfortable. Similar to facts like "women on average have less muscle mass than men." And I think you'd agree that people from the right would jump on someone who disputed the muscle mass fact as "out-of-control political correctness."

There are facts and there are non-facts. That women have less muscle mass on average is a fact. "Mexico sends their rapists" is not a fact.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Which...is not a fact. That's my point.

> or the crusades happened

The ones who got morally wronged by the crusades are actually the Christian nations of the East Roman Empire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople_(1204)

What is your vision of the wrongness of the crusades? It's certainly not that the religion which had spread itself with the wars across the outer lands of the East Roman Empire on the promises of 72 virgins for its fighters and the war until the whole world submits to their rules (the name of the religion means "the submission") was morally right.

the "Franks" lost the crusades which is ironic.

I think the difference is that if you say those things at a Republican rally you know what you're getting into. The thing that I think is really off-putting about a certain brand of political correctness (which include the post by puranjay) is when well-meaning people with no ill-intention are chastised as ignorant at best, bigots at worst. For example the post by puranjay, what exactly does he want? It's not reasonable to expect everyone to know everything about every other culture. It's just going to make people resentful.

> Then watch how quickly right wingers jumps down your throat for not being politically correct.

I heard a great phrase on This American Life last week: Patriotically Correct. The Trumpian inverse of politically correct.

You are confusing shared ideology with PC. The point of PC is that it's bipartisan (or "hegemon", in a vocabulary we should rediscover). Every group will have its taboos and shared beliefs, that's not PC.

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