Titley, Gavan
(2008)
Backlash! Just in Case: ‘Political Correctness’, Immigration and the Rise of Preactionary Discourse in Irish Public Debate.
Irish Review, 38.
pp. 94-110.
ISSN 0790-7850
Abstract
In the shadow of the gulag
Someone had to speak out. On September 27th and 28th 2006, the Irish
Times prominently advertised the publication of an article by William
Reville on the 28th entitled 'How the culture of political correctness is
damaging academic freedom'. After an undisclosed period of no doubt
admirable restraint, Reville was motivated - through personal academic
embarrassment and in defence of science - to take a stand against the intolerant
orthodoxies and illiberal rigidities that have calcified universities
everywhere. Political correctness, or PC as he terms it, is an 'intolerant and
deeply dodgy' ideology characterised by 'very tolerant attitudes on issues
such as gender, race, sexuality and the environment', and based on an 'ethical
theory' of relativism. Relativism, he explains, holds that there is no such
thing as superior knowledge or 'higher standards in human choices', thus
' ... if a pre-modern jungle tribe believes that the moon is a luminous
lantern suspended by the gods above the tree-tops, relativism proposes that
this knowledge is just as valid as the scientific understanding that the moon
is a satellite of the earth that revolves around our planet'.
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