It Needs To Be Said

The Reality Check ^ | October 2, 2003 | Edward L. Daley

[Lando Lincoln]

Anyone who knows me understands that I abhor political correctness. It isn't hard for most people to figure out why I feel this way once they understand what political correctness is really all about. I'm sure that most people know already, but I'll spell it out anyway, just to be on the safe side. In essence, it amounts to the attempts by politicians, special interest groups and the popular media (among others) to convince the general public that myths are reality, either out of some misguided concept of "fairness" or for the sake of a small group of people gaining power over others at any cost. Take, for instance, the assertion that the criminal profiling of individuals on the basis of race is bigoted and wrong. Some of the less enlightened among us actually believe this to be true, but common sense tells the rest of us that ignoring any commonality among certain types of wrong-doers is dangerously irrational.

You're not a racist because you are able to see that people of one race are more likely to do certain types of things than people of other races, just as noticing that men are usually bigger and more muscular than women doesn't make you a sexist. Tell me, are you a racist because you understand that black people tend to be better at certain sports than people of other races, or that Asians tend to do better in school? And if you actually were a racist, would the facts I just mentioned be any less true because you recognized them? Of course not. You might well be a racist, but facts are facts, no matter who is able to identify them. Chances are you're not a racist though, and if recognizing the sort of facts I have described were to help you save people's lives, it would only makes sense for you to strive to be as aware of them as possible.

But still we're told that "racial profiling" is a hate crime by those people who, for whatever reason, have decided that offending people, even people who are perpetually offended by almost everything they don't believe or understand, is intolerable. Somehow, we now have a RIGHT in this country to not be offended. Well ya know what? I'm offended by people who think I have a right not to be offended. The difference between myself and them is I'm not taking my case to federal court! I understand that sometimes I'm going to be offended, and that trying to force other people to stop offending me is not only futile, but under the right circumstances, it might actually get innocent people killed. Attempting to prohibit the people charged with protecting us, from utilizing all the tools necessary to achieve their objectives simply because I, or someone else, might get offended in the process, is one such circumstance.

Criminal profiling, which includes racial profiling, is but one of the many tools used by law enforcement to protect us, and it's actually considered more of an art form by it's practitioners. The art of profiling has been developed over many years by law enforcement experts to assist them in narrowing the field of potential perpetrators of varying types of offenses, and their techniques have proven to be quite effective in doing just that. Think about it... if it's true that the vast majority of, let's say, serial killers are white men between the ages of 25 and 45, recognizing that fact does not make the profiler a bigot. It simply makes him aware of the reality of the situation. It's not his job to explain to everyone else why that happens to be the case, even if he may understand why himself, and the fact that certain individuals might draw the most asinine of conclusions from such information is irrelevant. His primary concern is with catching the bad guy, and keeping a keener eye on middle-aged, white men than other types of people helps him to do his job in a typical serial killing case.

Certainly no one would expect a profiler to rely entirely on that one general truth, to the exclusion of all other possibilities or evidence to the contrary, but to ignore that such a commonality exists from the start, out of fear that someone might wrongly read into the process something that isn't really there, would be the epitome of incompetence on his part. He would be allowing the misconceptions of other people to influence his actions, at the expense of his own effectiveness and credibility, and to the detriment of all future victims.

Yet that is exactly what our federal government insists we do where cases of international terrorism are concerned, make no mistake about it, and the leaders of our two most powerful and influential political parties are primarily to blame for this outrage. Their unwillingness to allow Middle Eastern men to be more highly scrutinized than other people by law enforcement personnel at airports and other obvious terrorist targets is an affront to logic. Their failure to demonstrate to the people of this country any real urgency or seriousness in this regard exhibits either gross ineptness on their part, or a willful disregard of their sworn oaths to, above all, PROTECT the American citizenry.

I and many tens of millions of my fellow Americans so indict them, but not because we wish to undertake some partisan witch hunt in the future, or seek some monetary gain in a court of law for any wrongs done us. Our collective appreciation of the gravity of this situation crosses all party lines. Our claim is not founded upon greed or hubris, and our resolve shall not be weakened by the empty words of the foolish, the ignorant or the power-obsessed. We indict our government on this score because we expect our elected representatives to, at the very least, place the general welfare of their nation above themselves and their petty, egocentric interests. We indict them because they are deserving of indictment; every last one of them who has chosen to let us sink into the morass of political correctness so deeply that we can scarcely breath without the stench of it offending our senses.

I feel I can speak for so many of my fellow citizens regarding this problem because I speak TOO so many of them about it. I hear the dismay in their voices when the topic of political correctness is addressed, not only as it applies to our national security, but as it applies to every facet of our lives. I am hard pressed to find the words to reassure them that all will work out for the best, because I am as aware of the decay of common sense permeating the highest offices of our government as they are. We have grown sickened by it's pervasiveness, disillusioned by the processes which allow it to metastasize and disheartened by the men and women who avoid their responsibility to right our ship's course.

I speak for the people in this country who see what I see, because somebody has to; because the hour is growing late and nobody's lighting a candle to fend off the looming darkness. I lash out with contempt, not because I'm hateful, but because I'm as desperately concerned by the decline of our culture as nearly everyone else I meet these days. Political correctness is destroying our way of life, and whether it is advanced through greed, cowardice or ignorance, it still advances, and we are further diminished by it with each passing day.

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Edward L. Daley is owner of the The Daley Times Post - http://users.adelphia.net/~thofab/index2.htm

[scan58]

Good article. Yes, it needs to be said...hope the right people are listening.

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[sweetliberty]

Very good article! Worth circulating.