From The Middle

Political Correctness and the Requiem for Common Sense

It is now time to hold a funeral for Common Sense in America.  Others have written their obituaries.  Here I would like to offer some real life examples and ask, Where Did Common Sense Go? Personally, I believe that the cause of death for Common Sense is lawyers – the fear of getting sued, liability, and the liberal push for “Political Correctness” has caused people to abandon their Common Sense.  I also agree with Dirk the Butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry IV when he says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (of course I do not mean this literally).

Please feel free to post your own examples of a lack of Common Sense.

1. During a school athletic event a 13 year old girl runs into a goal post resulting in a black eye, 2 broken teeth and she is knocked unconscious.  What does the school do?  They take her to the nurse’s office and call her parents, one of whom is on her way to work, the other is in the midst of serving a search warrant.  They refused to call an ambulance until a parent was there!
2. The following is the 2007 winning entry from an annual contest at
   Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a
   contemporary term.  This year’s term was Political Correctness. The winner wrote,
   “Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional,
   illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream
   media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible
   to pick up a turd by the clean end.”.

3.   Miriam Webster Dictionary definition: politically correct

Function: adjective. Date: 1936: conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.

4        A six year old first grader was so excited about becoming a cub scout he wanted to take a camping tool that served as knife, fork, and spoon (all in one), so he could use it for his lunch. He faced 45 days in reform school!

5        A little girl’s grandmother sent her with a birthday cake to school and included a knife with which to cut it. The teacher used the knife first, then reported it, and the girl was expelled from school for an entire year.

6        Eighty year old perfectly normal looking women have been searched at airports, as has a ninety year old man who could barely walk with a cane (interestingly, they didn’t take his cane away from him).  But, searching middle-eastern looking males between 20 and 40 is “profiling”.  Of course it’s profiling – that’s how you find the bad guys!

7        We send our military men and women off to the Middle East to be maimed and killed by terrorists while protecting our interests in this vital oil region. But we fret over drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, because it might disturb the caribou.

8         Many supporters of Illegal Immigration are demanding that those who entered our country illegally now be called “undocumented immigrants”.

9        My father’s parents were Irish.  My mother’s parents were Irish and German.  Does this make me an Irish-German American (or, to be absolutely correct, an Irish, Irish, Irish German-American)?  Or am I the latest term, an AEO (American of European Origin)?  Or am I just an American?

10    Working for a major police department, I understand that there are times when a person’s skin color or ethnicity do matter.  If I just took a call that a child has been shot, the first question I ask is, “”Is the subject who did this Black, White, Hispanic, Asian or Native?”  I then go on to ask the subject’s age, height, weight, facial hair, and clothing description.  Anyone who has a problem with this, well, as Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”