In a long and interesting posting, Burt Hatlen drops this incidental
comment: "I believe that the term "political correctness"  has been
developed by the American Right as a way to discredit any voices that
are seeking to call attention to economic and social injustice."

Is Burt so indiscriminately leftist that he cannot imagine that there are
responsible people who, far from being minions or dupes of the
American Right, see the need to criticize the excesses of the Left
as well as the Right?  But perhaps Burt can see no wrong in the Left?
Robespierre never happened?  To stay American in my references, does
Burt prefer to exclude the violent excesses of recent demonstrations
by nice, clean-cut kids at the WTO and Republican Conventions from the
spectrum of the American Left?  Happily, Burt has not forgotten that
the extremes of Left and Right meet in Fascism, but he has unfortunately
bought into the extreme-left smear about PC being an invention of the
American Right.  The term PC, like the term Fascism, as Burt well knows,
is meaningful only when clearly defined, not when applied as a catch-all
term of opprobrium.  As has already been pointed out on this List, there
are some excellent books that give philosophically precise and useful
definitions of the term Political Correctness.  In any case, "economic
and social justice" is best served by making precise distinctions,
as Pound once said in passing.

==Dan P


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