Patriot Update

Being politically correct is an essential aspect of liberal orthodoxy.   According to liberals, Americans should be able to live their entire lives free from offense of any kind.  In fact, liberals have turned taking offense into an art form. To thin-skinned liberals, few things are more offensive than the supposed trauma of hurt feelings.  This is why left-leaning colleges and universities—which is to say most colleges and universities—have adopted speech codes as a way to enforce political correctness.   These codes are supposed to ensure that no one will ever suffer the insidious ignominy of hurt feelings—no one that is except Christians, conservatives, and middle-aged white males.  When it comes to people in these three groups, the rules of political correctness somehow do not apply.

Political correctness is usually ridiculous, often absurd, and sometimes frustrating, but did you know it can be fatal?  That’s right—fatal.  We all have our favorite examples of out-of-control political correctness.  One of mine is the time that administrators in a California high school sent five students home for wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, Mexico’s Independence Day.  This was an American high school and the kids were wearing American flag T-shirts, but politically correct administrators were concerned that students of Mexican heritage might be offended by the American flag.  It seems that the administrators were focused on the wrong problem.  In fact, one might reasonably ask why an American high school would be celebrating Cinco de Mayo in the first place, but then we are talking about California.  Oops! Is that a politically incorrect statement?

Political correctness is bad enough when it is just stupid, but what about when it becomes fatal?  This was the case in November 2009 when Army psychologist Nidal Malik Husan opened fire on a military base killing 13 people.  Army authorities knew about Husan’s violent anti-American rhetoric.  They were also aware of his ties to radical Muslim imams, but were afraid to take any action for fear of being accused of engaging in racial profiling.  In other words, the Army brass did not want to be politically incorrect.  This is how absurd and all-pervasive the left-wing concept of political correctness has become in America.  It is now better to let a terrorist slaughter 13 innocent Americans—one of whom was pregnant so make the number 14—than to risk hurting the terrorist’s feelings by questioning his inappropriate actions.  TSA can strip search helpless grandmothers in wheel chairs, but heaven forbid that anyone question a Muslim with a history of making violent threats against Americans.

Another example of political correctness being fatal can be found in what has come to be known as the “Blackhawk Down” incident.   This battle in the streets of Mogadishu in October 1993 involved American Army Rangers and Special Forces warriors pitted against an overwhelming number of guerilla fighters loyal to warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.  According to the ground force commander, Colonel Danny McKnight, the reason our troops were outnumbered and outgunned can be summarized in two words: political correctness.

President Clinton made the decision to send American troops into Mogadishu to capture Aidid, a despot and supporter of terrorism.  However, not wanting to appear overly militaristic to his leftwing supporters, President Clinton—a draft dodger during the Viet Nam War—made the decision to cut back on essential elements of the Army’s plan for carrying out the operation. This was a president who knew nothing about military operations, except how to protest them.  Nonetheless, he required the Army to reduce the size of its force by one whole Ranger company and would not allow the force to make use of an AC-130 gunship.  According to Colonel McKnight, having the additional company of Rangers and just one AC-130 gunship would have easily turned the tide of battle in favor of the Americans.  In fact, the Blackhawk helicopters that were shot down were used only because the Rangers did not have access to an AC-130 gunship, the most devastatingly effective weapon in America’s arsenal for the type of fighting that occurred in the streets of Mogadishu.

In both of these examples Americans died needlessly because of political correctness.  Consequently, next time a liberal insists on the use of politically correct double talk, tell him he is killing America.