What do you think of this concerned students of history and life?

Question:

What do you think of this concerned students of history and life?

FrontPage Magazine: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of ??the violence that it does to people??s souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question.?? Can you talk about this a bit?

Theodore Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One??s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I didn't read that article and hope you are reporting it accurately, but wouldn't the creation of evil through political correctness depend on the degree of political correctness? To a certain extent, political correctness would be harmless if used as a function of not wanting to offend another of an opposite mind-set or orientation. But political correctness, as a form of manipulation or evasiveness, could give rise to truth becoming twisted and distorted if obvious facts were negated in the name of political correctness. It depends on the goal of the political use of this so-called "correctness". If truth is entirely over-ridden by the political correctness, I would agree its' offshoots of such action could become dangerous and annihilistic. I would agree with Dalrymple on that.