Political correctness, so rampant in much of the democratic world today, involves painstaking efforts not to offend minorities, by compelling everyone to avoid using words or behaviour that may upset homosexuals, women, non-whites, the crippled, the mentally impaired, the fat, the ugly and so on.
Such correctness often backfires in strange ways. It has, for example, created a school for homosexuals-only in New York, and has a group of parents fighting against a white teaching black history in Cleveland.
But The Bahamas turns political correctness on its head. How else to explain ordinary Bahamians describing Haitians as animals and urging that the boats that bring them here be bombed, and politicians and clergymen saying much the same things in only slightly better language?
How else to explain the constant insults and epithets directed at the small band of expatriates who provide much of the economic impetus that supports our free-spending lifestyle?
How else to explain the satisfaction expressed at a number of levels when 600-odd poor people (not coincidentally Haitian) lose everything they own in a fire that, according to rumour, was of at least suspicious origin?
How else to explain the virulent abuse and scorn heaped upon those who differ with whatever small-minded political clique happens to be in power?
How else to explain the cyclical uproars over homosexuality and anything else that does not accord to the superficial norms dictated by fiercely conservative and grossly ostentatious religious leaders.
How else to explain that as marijuana laws are liberalised in many countries where drinking and driving are about as anti-PC as possible, in The Bahamas the total reverse is true.
We should heed the Roman statesman Cicero, who remarked that great nations are destroyed not by the barbarians without but by the civilized people within.
The logic is simple: there will always be barbarians outside the gates. It is up to us to have the character and strength of will to defend against them. In the parlance of the 21st century, do the right thing.
Editorial – The Nassau Guardian
