Ideas&Issues
4D
S U N D A Y , J A N U A R Y 5 , 2014
WWW.TUSCALOOSANEWS.COM
LARRY CLAYTON
THE PORT RAIL
OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS
Simple addition?
The origin of political correctness
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i ve n t h a t D uc k C om mander Phil Rober tson has become the target-ofthe - day of polit ically cor rect warriors, I thought it helpful to go back over how PC came into today ’s lex icon a nd pol it ica l wars. It came into use in the arcane ideological wars between socialists and hard -core communists 60 or 70 years ago. Socialists accused communists of being wedded to the “party line,” unwilling to flex a bit and think for themselves. What came out from communist central was thus “politically correct,” and socialists charged communists for their slav ish obedience to the party. T he term was adapted into mainstream A merican argot in the 1970s and 1980s to mean something different than some remote ideological debate among socialists and communists. T he communists were obviously inflexible dogmatists, the perfect politically correct ideologues, come hell or high water. From mid- 20th centur y onward, a number of new social a nd pol it ic a l agendas d rove through A merican life, including the rise of feminism (gender), the civil rights movement (race), sexual orientation (hom o s e x u a l i t y), i m m i g r a t i o n (more race), multiculturalism, affirmative action and others. Among those who claim to be PC, usually with a very liberal agenda, and those who fling the charge at them of being inf lexible dogmatists, usually from a conservative point of view, the goal is to gain the high ground, to demonstrate that your agenda or set of values or principles is correct. T he other guy is just spewing venom and ignorance. S o t he P C wa rs have g row n pretty divisive. L anguage of ten def ines the PC battles, and as the PC warriors strive to include all minorities and interest groups in their camp, the debates sometimes take ludicrous turns as one obser ver on t he I nter net com mented. “Someone shouted at me to day for making fun of Jews. He said it was politically incorrect. T hat was before he found out that I was Jewish, and making fun of ourselves is a part of Jewish culture.” In their effort to offend no one and be totally inclusive of minorities and those formerly outside the mainstream, PC ideologues have invented a new vocabulary. I extracted the following from the Wikipedia entry on political correctness as examples : ■ “Intellectually disabled” in place of mentally retarded. SEE CLAYTON | 6D
A federal judge last week struck down part of Utah's ban on polygamy — the state can no longer prosecute adult men and women who ‘cohabitate’ in numbers larger than the traditional pair. Critics suggested the ruling was a natural next step after the success of same-sex marriage campaigns and lawsuits in recent years. But Kody Brown, the fundamentalist Mormon ‘Sister Wives’ star whose case sparked the ruling, proclaimed it a victory for religious freedom. Is polygamy inevitable?
‘Religious liberty’ privilege for conservatives only
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hat’s sacred to one person is often profane to another. Obvious, yes, but it is a point often in need of deep reconsideration. Need proof? Here’s my sparring partner, Ben Boychuk, commenting two weeks ago on whether Hobby Lobby should be forced to abide by Obamacare mandates to provide birth JOEL control coverage to its employees: MATHIS “The First Amendment is supposed to be a bulwark against government encroachment on the free exercise of religion.” He’s (ahem) making a somewhat different argument this week. Yes, it is a bit hilarious to watch the same conservatives — who were just passionately advocating the inviolable importance of the First Amendment — suddenly remember other priorities. It helps you understand that when they say “religious liberty,” they often mean “Christian privilege,” and no, the two are not the same. SEE M ATHIS | 6D
Polygamy undermines spousal equality
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iberals favor a broad reading of the Bill of Rights — until they don’t. Does it matter that polygamy was illegal everywhere in America when the states ratified the First Amendment in 1789? Not at all, our liberal friends say. Our “living” Constitution all but requires Americans to accept that BEN standards evolve and truths are neBOYCHUK gotiable. Times change. So liberals agree religious liberty should be absolute — unless your beliefs collide with the prevailing progressive orthodoxy. In that case, kindly shut up and knuckle under. It’s the American way. That’s a far cry from the Founding Fathers’ view, which flatly rejected that just any claim to religious liberty was legitimate. The Aztecs, for example, believed human sacrifice was a religious duty. No one would accept murder as “free exercise of religion” — well, almost no one. We’re a big country. Somebody, somewhere might think human sacrifice is SEE BOYCHUK | 6D
Humanities are the key to understanding
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s we look back on 2013, we cannot help but pause for reflection on the 50th anniversary year of historic moments of the civil rights movement and the role Birmingham played in them. For Alabama Humanities Foundation, the anniversary took on added meaning as we hosted the National Humanities Conference in Birmingham. More than 300 delegates from around the country, Puerto Rico and Guam made the trek to Alabama because Birmingham and the state are so closely identified with so many of GUIN those moments that ROBINSON changed a nation and a worldview. At our opening session in the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, delegates heard from a powerfully moving panel who gave firsthand accounts from their own perspectives of what happened during that tumultuous time in history. It was our opportunity to take these delegates from all corners of our country on a journey of understanding — to not just abhor what happened in the very church in which they were seated, but to understand how it did happen. And how we learned from it. One by one — former US Attorney Doug Jones, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Diane McWhorter, U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemmon and Judge Helen Shores Lee — told their story. And as I looked around the church, I could see the audience’s disbelief turn to anger then to grief and eventually to understanding. In an instant, it defined what the humanities are all about — understanding the world around us, no matter how complex, how strong the emotion. It doesn’t mean we accept or condone those terrible acts that came to symbolize the civil rights movement. It means we can finally grasp the meaning, the impact and how we go forward from here. What was particularly moving about this event was that the delegates from around the country, many of whom had never had a firsthand look at the civil rights movement — only what they had read or seen in vintage black and white footage — gained understanding of what those turbulent times meant and how they came to be. There is no stronger endorsement of just how powerful that moment of understanding is than the assessment of National Federation of Humanities Councils president Esther Mackintosh: “Everybody said they will never really look at that history in the same way again.” She is right. It is like a light shining into the darkness, showing us the path forward. And that is the humanities: Teaching and inspiring us by making us think, learn and understand.
Guin Robinson is director of Institutional Development at Jefferson State Community College and is incoming chair of Alabama Humanities Foundation. He chaired the National Humanities Conference planning committee in Birmingham. Email grobinson@jeffstateonline.com.
ECOVIEWS
Publisher’s ‘10 Best’ books are some of the most compelling W
h a t do t he l e a f y s e a A nimal Camoudragon, poison hemlock f lages” because and A mazon rainforest even if you picked have in common? Each is ranked one up, you would as No. 1 within a certain category: not think you were camouf lage, deadly plants and holding an animal. awesome ecosystems , respec This strange little tively. The rankings are given in marine fish, which a series of books that bear the l ives a long t he WHIT Scholastic logo and are published western and southby Rubicon Publishing. The three GIBBONS ern coasts of AusNo. 1 examples mentioned are in tralia, sur vives by books in the nature series. looking like a piece A leafy sea dragon qualifies for of drif ting seaweed. L ea f y sea the No. 1 slot in “ T he 10 Best dragons can reach lengths greater
than a foot but still look like flimsy pieces of f loating vegetation. According to the book, they have no natural predators. Not that they would make much of a meal even if another animal did eat them. One of their peculiar traits, which is also characteristic of their close relatives the sea horses, is that the males carr y the eggs until they hatch. Among the greatest threats to leafy sea dragons are pollution of marine waters and the illegal collection and removal of individuals as oddities for aquariums.
More familiar species in the top 10 best camouf lages are chameleons ( No. 10), snowshoe hares (No. 8), and zebras (No. 6). The cuttlefish, a relative of squids that most p eople a re not wel l ac quainted with, gets the No. 2 camouf lage ranking. Each account provides thorough explanations of why the particular camouflage is effective in its environment. In “ T he 10 Deadliest Plants,” poison hemlock qualifies as No. 1 because it can be fatal to humans who eat any par t of it. Cer tain
other plants might be listed as No. 1 by other organisms. For example, No. 9 in the list of deadliest plants, the strangler fig, a parasitic, tree-crushing vine, would be much more threatening to a big tree in the American tropics than would poison hemlock. Strangler figs have been the death of many tropical trees. Meanwhile, No. 7, the Venus flyt rap, might be considered the deadliest of plants to a housefly or ladybug beetle. But rather than SEE E COVIEWS | 6D