Liberal Or Conservative?

 

I also believe in social liberty, such as the right to smoke (democrats are the ones who take this away) the right to bear arms (conservative). I also believe in gay rights and legalizing drugs, which one place where I differ from conservatives, but those are not my highest priority issues.

 

In my opinions, liberals want to restrict our freedoms in order to increase social equality. Conservatives also want to limit our freedoms, but it's not so blatant or severe. At leaast that's my view.

 

 

Political correctness is a phantom invented by a largely conservative media establishment to justify the perpetuation of old bigotries. The PC police don't exist, but maybe people are just a little more sensitive about racism, sexism and homophobia these days. Call me a humourless, freedom hating old git if you like, but I don't see this as a bad thing. In the UK press virtually every story about Political Correctness Gone Mad has proved to be completely fictitious, from London primary schools banning Baa Baa Black Sheep (they didn't) to Winterval replacing Christmas so as not to offend Muslims (It was a business initiative in the mid 90s, nothing to do with PC) to schoolchildren singing Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep so as to be PC (they were learning different colours, including black). Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G and Borat, did not intend his creations to be anti PC, but rather to expose the inherent bigotries and hypocrisies that are all too prevalent in contemporary Western societies. Read this quote from the man himself:

Regarding his portrayal as the anti-Semitic Borat, Baron Cohen says the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry," rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself.^[23] "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice," Baron Cohen explains. ^[4] Addressing the same topic in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, Cohen says "...and I think that's quite an interesting thing with Borat, which is people really let down their guard with him because they're in a room with somebody who seems to have these outrageous opinions. They sometimes feel much more relaxed about letting their own outrageous, politically incorrect, prejudiced opinions come out."^[24] Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in that genocide. "When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic."^[4] Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song "In My Country There is Problem", he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."^[4]

(Wikipedia, my italics)

 

If you think that Borat is a blow against  PC you have missed the point, and indeed the joke.

 

In that vein of thought I HATE the "PC police". I'm sick and tired of everyone bending over backwards so that they don't "offend" anyone. Sure, we have the basics I believe are neccessary to follow: like don't be racist or don't make insults out of sexual orientation, but the problem lies beyond that. People are getting afraid to speak their minds as to not offend, yet virtually anything one says, does, or makes has the potential of "offending" someone in this world.

 

In all seriousness, political satires like Borat help to fight this by saying what they want and being "offensive" in order to get their points across and expose real problems like ignorance in America (and parts of the rest of the world as well).