...the pressing political need to browbeat people into denying the obvious...

My muddled brain cannot always see the stiches on the fastball so I do enjoy sitting next to those who can see it, and tell me what I was just hit with. Because his archives are so big, i might not ever find something that i thought was so juicy, so i put parts of it where i will find it. On my blog. Some tidbits...

He Who Says A, Must Say B, by Doulgas Wilson

Bear with me a moment. I would like to sketch the outlines of an argument showing how a denial of Calvinism will lead (over time) to the canons of political correctness. But before doing that, allow me to define both terms. By Calvinism I mean the doctrine of God's exhaustive sovereignty. By political correctness, I mean the pressing political need to browbeat people into denying the obvious.

As soon as Calvinism is denied, divine predestination is denied. And when predestination is denied, it soon occurs to the ranking civil authorities that the role of "predestinator" is vacant. The job of running everyone's life (as God had previously been thought to do) is now vacant. And so the State applies for the job (and not surprisingly, hires itself). The choice is simple -- either God is acknowledged as the one who predestines, or man will attempt to become the one who predestines....

Now we are not yet at this stage, although we are rapidly getting there. The rot of intellectual dishonesty that produces this is very much at the center of our current cultural consciousness. This is the mindset of the intolerista, and this is where political correctness comes in. PC thot is the attempt (frequently successful) to make people deny the Screamingly Obvious through sheer, brute intimidation. If you don't like what someone is saying, don't refute him. Don't engage him in debate. That would be too much like civilized discourse. What intoleristas do is shout people down, file bogus complaints, and tell the authorities that those people over there are "not zoned for disagreeing with me." Coercion is the standard method employed by the failed god. It is the signature of the failed god. And the more clear this becomes, the more necessary it is to resort to continued attempts at coercion.

Examples abound, but I will just use one. When did we have the national debate, after which debate we decided through our elected officials to put women in combat? Some people started to have that debate, but the next thing we knew, the armed services were running down the sidelines waving the egalitarian football over their heads. And then we were suddenly into this war, see, and now every politician alive -- left, right, and center, the ones with the flag lapel pins and the ones without them -- is on television extolling our brave men and women in uniform. You're not against that, are you? Go ahead, say something. I dare you....

The reason certain people get pounded is that they dare to raise "the problem of evil" in the presence of the reigning deity. They dare to point out what must be diligently ignored if the pretension of deity is to be maintained. And their problem is not that they are technically correct while the reigning authorities are technically incorrect. It is nothing so subtle. The problem is that the State is claiming to be able to make water flow uphill, and someone is brave enough (not smart enough, brave enough) to point out that it is doing no such thing.