Thursday, September 24, 2026

Anti-Political Correctness Vows

Today I found myself toying with the idea that there should be anti-political correctness vows in the same way there are baptism vows. I'm always impressed by the solemnity and poetry of the baptism vows, which are renewed at the Easter Vigil:

Do you reject Satan?

I do.

And all his works?

I do.

And all his empty promises?

I do.

Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

I do.

And so on. There are three more and they are considerably longer.

Vows concentrate the mind. I think anti-PC vows could go something like this:

Do you reject political correctness in all its forms?

I do.

Do you reject all identities based on grievance?

I do.

Do you reject the conflation of trivial and imaginary harms with serious harms?

I do.

Do you reject arbitrary changes in language in the name of sensitivity-- even if you have to go along with them in some circumstances?

I do.

Do you reject the concept that anybody has less right than anybody else to use a particular word or give an opinion on any subject whatsoever?

I do.

Do you reject the attribution of historical guilt to people for injustices that occurred before they were even born?

I do.

Do you reject weaponized false dichotomies, such as victim-oppressor and transformation-stasis?

I do.

Tell me if I missed anything obvious. (By "transformation-stasis", I mean the sort of rhetoric you're surely familiar with: the appeal to gradual and organic evolution in the past to justify complete transformation in the present.)

2 comments:

  1. I read an article last week where a man with (functional) autism was labelling a politician as 'able-ist' which had escaped me until reading the term there.

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    1. Neurodiversity seems to be very much the new thing. I don't doubt it exists, but some of the movements seem a bit over the top, to say the least.

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