THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

WHAT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OUTLAWS IS PLAIN ENGLISH | 2005-04-23

Norman Mineta, Bush's Secretary of Transportation, has officially announced that the fact that a person is an Arab Muslim does not mean that he is more likely to be terrorist than a grandmother from Minneapolis.

The NAACP is in court saying that the fact that a person is a non-English-speaking Mexican crossing the Rio Grande is no more reason to think that he is an illegal immigrant than that same grandmother from Minneapolis.

No one believes any of this. In fact, the NAACP was deeply embarrassed when polls showed that a higher percentage of black people believed an Arab Muslim was more likely to be a terrorist than a grandmother from Minneapolis than white people did.

Whites are more used to telling pollsters what they want to hear. Blacks have not been terrorized into that yet.

If a conservative wants to be respectable he is never allowed to say to a liberal what Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter, "There you go again." To be respectable a conservative must treat each new repetition of the same old silliness as the result of thought and honesty.

No one is allowed to laugh at a funeral. No one is allowed to laugh at Political Correctness.