The “Golden Rule” vs. “Political Correctness”
By Don Valentine
Let’s expound on the “Golden-Rule” from the aggregate prism. No, this is not the version “He who has the Gold, rules.” The version I want you to reflect on is the utilitarian version. The “Golden Rule” = Treat People The Way You Want To Be Treated. You may recall first learning this rule in Sunday school as a child, or somewhere in your growth you came across it. It is common courtesy to treat another person the way you, yourself, would want to be treated.
That is the basic axiom of “Political Correctness”. Don’t say anything offensive to someone that you would object to being said in a parallel to yourself. Because you can say most anything you want under the 1st amendment (the Supreme Court has out lined a very few instances for social safety, i.e. yelling fire in a crowded theater) does not mean that a decent person would say them. For my ultra conservative “Alt-Right” or other rebellious sycophants, use the moral compass that if what you want to say will be hurtful to a person or group reconsider your words. The English language thesaurus offers a plethora of options to elucidate your view without being mean spirited.
The term “P.C” has become repugnant among a segment of our population. Everyone knows the basic ethos of the premise of Political Correctness, as I established above. The segment that finds this common courtesy so dis-gusting is because in their view the definition of “P.C” is different.
From their perspective, it means that after 300 years of saying whatever vile thought comes to their mind they now have to be confined by the good decorum of the majority. Trump is giving a vent to this pent up stress to find a fissure to let their contempt of good manners escape. If this minority of people, can operate in mainstream society with the same propriety and etiquette that the rest of us do then this conflict is moot. Follow the “Golden-Rule”.
