How political correctness makes us poor

WE lose our precious heritage when activists succeed in pushing their agendas to make us forget our past.

Make no mistake — political correctness is now rife in schools and universities, the public service, politics, the media, especially the ABC and the Fairfax press, the workplace — and even in the home and when talking to family and friends.

Political correctness involves the cultural left stifling debate and imposing groupthink across a range of issues, including feminism, gender and sexuality, the environment, multiculturalism, refugees, Islamic fundamentalism, indigenous affairs and the significance of Western civilisation and Judeo-Christianity.

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Much like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, where totalitarian regimes maintain power by denying freedom of speech, today’s PC thought police also ensure compliance by controlling language and punishing those who disagree.

PC is making us poor... Dr Kevin Donnelly.

Politically correct manuals employed by big businesses, local councils and universities replace gender-specific titles like Mr and Mrs, husband and wife, boy and girl and pronouns like he and she with gender-free descriptions like partner, zie or they.

Even worse, Marxist-inspired gender and sexuality programs like Safe Schools and Respectful Relationships teach students that they can self-identify as whatever gender they desire and that there is nothing preferable or beneficial about the love between a man and a woman.

Even though 98 per cent of Australians identify as men or women, those who favour the natural order of things are condemned as heteronormative, transphobic and guilty of non-binary discrimination.

Instead of objectively evaluating whether immigration and multiculturalism are beneficial, those who question such policies are attacked as racist and xenophobic, and those warning about Islamic fundamentalism are silenced by being described as Islamophobic.

And it’s not only language — such is the dominance of the PC movement, those who refuse to be silenced and who question the prevailing cultural left orthodoxy face fines, the threat of imprisonment or being sacked.

Cartoonist Bill Leak was attacked as racist and threatened with legal action under 18C.

Examples include the Australian cartoonist Bill Leak for daring to depict an Aboriginal father who so neglected his son he could not remember his name. For revealing the truth of neglect suffered by indigenous children in remote communities, Leak was attacked as racist and threatened with legal action under 18C.

Earlier this year Peter Ridd, a marine scientist at James Cook University, lost his job for daring to question the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef, and last year Margaret Court was vilified for daring to oppose same-sex marriage.

As noted by the English conservative politician Michael Gove, the ­reality is that the political correctness movement, while presenting itself as impartial and reasonable, is motivated by radical theories including neo-Marxism, feminism, gender and queer theory, postmodernism and ­deconstructionism.

Whereas old-style Marxists focused on economics and wanted to bring about the socialist utopia by overthrowing capitalism, this rainbow alliance of theories engages in the culture wars by taking the long march through the institutions such as the family, church, media and schools and universities.

The Australian National University’s refusal to establish a Western Civilisation Centre funded by a bequest left by the philanthropist Paul Ramsay further demonstrates how successful the PC movement has been.

Peter Ridd lost his job for questioning the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef.

While the ANU’s decision to reject the Ramsay millions is justified as defending academic autonomy and freedom, the reality is that the university’s decision highlights the cultural left’s control of tertiary education.

In rejecting the proposed centre, the ANU’s student association ­president Eleanor Kay argues: “Western civilisation is often used as a rhetorical tool to continue the racist prioritisation of Western history over other cultures.”

The university’s Tertiary Education Union branch president Matthew King also attacked the proposed Ramsay Centre for promoting a “radically conservative program” that is guilty of pushing the “alleged ­superiority of Western culture and civilisation”.

And one only needs to read the Centre for Independent Studies’ recent report, Millennials And Socialism: Australian Youth Are Lurching To The Left, to realise how successful the cultural left has been in indoctrinating Australia’s youth.

Even though socialism under dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh is responsible for killing millions through starvation, torture and imprisonment, 58 per cent of those interviewed expressed a favourable view.

Worse still, 59 per cent of millennials believe that capitalism has failed and that governments and not private enterprise and initiative are needed to bring about a more productive economy and higher standards of living.

What the politically correct activists ignore is that, for all its faults, Western civilisation, as detailed in Steven Pinker’s recent book Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism And Progress, is responsible for an unparalleled era of freedom and prosperity across the globe. Pinker traces how Western science, reason and the impact of historical events like the enlightenment and the industrial revolution have led to a reduction in infant mortality, improved health and longevity, greater liberty and freedom and less inequality and oppression.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of How Political Correctness Is Destroying Australia
(Wilkinson Press).