Overview

"""Political Correctness is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal.""Political correctness is the dominant ideology of the Western intellectual world. It is what the West has instead of a religion. It is a thing of the political Left in its origins and central constituency. Yet, in recent decades, it's been embraced by the mainstream political Right and Centre. Political correctness therefore represents the triumph of the Left. Nonetheless, it very obviously violates both common sense and logic and is destructive of all that is good, beautiful and true. So, at one and the same time, PC is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal. Political correctness obviously dominates its core territory of politics, public administration (the civil service), law, education and (especially!) the mass media. But PC also substantially shapes everything else: foreign policy, the military, policing, the economy, health services, and personal life: the mating game, friendships and even family life. This book explains how something so bizarre and wicked could become so ubiquitous and unremarkable."

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9780956395245

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Employing an aphoristic, almost Nietzschean, style of prose, Charlton issues a jeremiad against political correctness, which he identifies as a product of the left (whether socialists, communists, liberals, etc.) but as also currently infecting the center and the right, perpetuated by the mass media and an intellectual elite and representing a triumph of the left that threatens to unravel modernity itself. It's unfortunately not entirely clear just exactly what he means by political correctness. It is, at various times: a form of nihilism, a defense of pure pleasure-seeking, an irrational denial of reality (for example, of the assumed fact that the military is for men and care of young children is for women), or an attempt to privilege some groups over other groups, to cite a few examples. Previously unavailable in the US.

"Employing an aphoristic, almost Nietzschean, style of prose, Charlton issues a jeremiad against ""political correctness,"" which he identifies as a product of the left (whether socialists, communists, liberals, etc.) but as also currently infecting the center and the right, perpetuated by the mass media and an intellectual elite and representing a ""triumph of the left"" that threatens to unravel modernity itself. It's unfortunately not entirely clear just exactly what he means by ""political correctness."" It is, at various times: a form of nihilism, a defense of pure pleasure-seeking, an irrational denial of reality (for example, of the assumed fact that the military is for men and care of young children is for women), or an attempt to privilege some groups over other groups, to cite a few examples. Previously unavailable in the US.--ProtoView"

Employing an aphoristic, almost Nietzschean, style of prose, Charlton issues a jeremiad against political correctness, which he identifies as a product of the left (whether socialists, communists, liberals, etc.) but as also currently infecting the center and the right, perpetuated by the mass media and an intellectual elite and representing a triumph of the left that threatens to unravel modernity itself. It's unfortunately not entirely clear just exactly what he means by political correctness. It is, at various times: a form of nihilism, a defense of pure pleasure-seeking, an irrational denial of reality (for example, of the assumed fact that the military is for men and care of young children is for women), or an attempt to privilege some groups over other groups, to cite a few examples. Previously unavailable in the US.--ProtoView

Author Information

Bruce G Charlton is Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham and Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at Newcastle University.

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