Life After Death

experiments on the human embryo. One of these days, some politically correct seals will march on Downing Street with placards demanding laws to save the human race. Maybe we will see the illogicality and the paradox of the positions which we take.

Unmanning of Men Political correctness has demeaned women and unmanned men. We no longer value women as women, but as sexless persons. We define people by their sexuality, not by who they are, or what they are. It is politically incorrect to mention the role of a mother or a father. Men themselves are to be virtually eliminated - apart from the humiliating payment they might receive at a fertility clinic to provide their sperm. No-one seems to care that 800,000 children no longer have contact with their fathers and that men have no say when an an abortionist takes the life of their child. This increasingly gender-driven and negative view of the value of the human being is accompanied by the flaccid languauge of rights.

This language is shorn of personal responsibilities, duties or obligations. Political correctness believes in one thing above all else: that personal choice is paramount.

Everything has the same value; your choice for you is what is right for you. What is wrong with political correctness is that it does not look at the fundamental values of society. It is often just the best cause to catch your eye on the rack at the local health shop. It does not have a defining philosophy. Its adherents are frightened to exercise moral leadership for fear that the public will sit on them. It will be big into the latest, trendiest causes and will dress itself in the smartest and sharpest Italian suits - but where is the passion, where is the courage, where is the truth?

In Truth, the Ballad of Good Counsel, Chaucer gives advice upon which today's politicians might reflect: Act well thyself who can, Counsel others; And truth shall deliver, Thee no dread.

Put another way, it is not Political Correctness which is needed but an altogether different PC - Political Courage.

Political Courage The perfectly good original impulse of being opposed to racial hatred or homophobia leads to the absurd idea that it is good to remain silent about your own convictions if they are not held by the majority. Political correctness allows each group to define tolerance in its own terms and for itself. G. K. Chesterton said, "Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions". Having decided that the pursuit of truth is too difficult, tolerance of a plurality of truths becomes a more easily achievable target. Tolerance ends up taking the place of truth; but simply being inoffensive and privatising the pursuit of truth is not the stuff of which politics or life should be made. The Enlightenment conceived truth as sourceless, as existing 'out there', and accessible to the reasonable inquirer; but even