Rambling On the Incorrectness of Political Correctness in the USA

The speaker argues that the term "political correctness" is misleading and should be replaced with "ethical correctness." They emphasize that discussions about ethics should not be conflated with politics. The speaker suggests that there should be a code of conduct based on societal standards, and unethical behavior can be responded to with humiliation if civil explanations have failed. They also mention that online behavior can be particularly problematic due to anonymity. The speaker distinguishes between mocking someone for harmless opinions and mocking someone for unethical behavior. They stress the importance of debating ethical issues based on evidence and scientific understanding, rather than political biases. Overall, the speaker advocates for a focus on ethics rather than politics when discussing correct behavior. It's not political correctness, that's a dumb term, you know, the left has never been really good at naming their views or any given, like, particular stance and the right has taken advantage of that because, not that they're better at it, but they're good at twisting the way that the left names things in a way to make it seem easier to target. It's strawmanning, basically. We should never have accepted the term political correctness because it's not political correctness, it's ethical correctness. Political correctness, it's like an oxymoron. Politics, they're not correct or incorrect. Okay, they can be, but you can have a discussion of politics without there being a correct or incorrect viewpoint. It can come down to opinion, it often does. But in our country, it's unfortunately the case that ethics have become entangled with politics to the degree that ethical discussions have become political discussions. We need to all just stop using phrases that are obviously unpopular, that are easy targets to rouse support against them from the center or from the right. And one easy one would be political correctness. No one likes that term. Not even people on the left like that term. Because it's not political. We're talking about ethics. We're talking about just, like, people, we live in a society, right? That means we live around other people. There should be a code of conduct of behavior that falls within some unofficial range of behavior that's acceptable. Not legal versus illegal. I'm not arguing ever that it should be illegal. What I am arguing for, if we can come to an agreement on what our standards are for ethics, and people are acting outside of that standard, if you think it would lead to physical violence, then don't engage. Assuming that physical violence is not a likely threat, then it's perfectly reasonable to respond to someone's unethical behavior with humiliation. If you've already tried to explain it to them in a more civil way, or if they've come out right from the start making it very clear they have no interest in being ethical, then you can go right to the humiliation part. If you have a platform of any kind, or even if you don't, and you make a statement in public that is not correct, that is meaning not ethical by our society's standards of ethics, then you shouldn't be shocked if someone kind of gets in your face a little bit, depending on exactly how disrespectful you're being. I mean, the real life scenarios are so uncommon. Most of the time, you're probably going to be seeing this kind of behavior online, because people feel emboldened by the fact that no one knows who they are, no one even knows their real name, they can say whatever the hell they want, and, you know, there won't be consequences. But there will be. There can be, anyway. Not likely for them, but, yeah, they can hurt people. So, um, yeah, they're fair game to be mocked. There's an appropriate time and place for mockery, and that's the appropriate time and place. It's when people are being jerks. It's not okay to mock people for things that they cannot control, things that, you know, they have no control over, or even like their, you know, like, harmless opinions, their taste in music, taste in movies, whatever. Those kinds of things. Mocking someone for those kinds of things is bullying. You're just being a bully. But mocking someone for being a bully, or otherwise unethical, acting unethical, is, um, yeah, it's not, that's not being a bully. That's defending somebody. That's pointing out, it's actually kind of creating a teaching moment for anyone who might be observing, including the person who's being the jerk. Maybe they just didn't, you know, put it together. I don't know. First, make sure it's understood that what is being discussed is not political correctness. It's ethical correctness. We're talking about ethics. We are not talking about politics. We're talking about what is the more ethical way to behave. What is a more appropriate conduct of behavior for our society, given what we know today. Given the evidence, given the obvious harms that can result from certain forms of behavior, there are clear positions that are being debated that are more ethical than others. And there are some, you know, positions being debated that are clearly the less ethical ones, because they are more likely to lead to harm and suffering experienced by members of our society. And I think that makes them the less ethical viewpoint, the ergo, the less correct one. Your opinion can even be highly immoral, but those debates don't happen as often because they know right from wrong. Like Ted Bundy, for example. He hid. I mean, he didn't do it openly. He did it in secret. And then he hid the bodies. He buried them. He knew it was wrong. He wasn't announcing it to people. He was trying to hide it. So there was some confusion about whether or not he knew it was right or wrong. He just didn't care. That's an extreme form of psychopathy. But I don't think it's, you know, so there's not so much morality, you know, moral discussion happening. You can argue that some of these ethical issues are moral issues as well. And I would, in some cases, I would be in agreement, depending on the argument, depending on the issue. And often it can be a scientific argument. A lot of these political correctness discussions come down to just scientific misunderstandings that they just don't understand the science. They don't understand that there is scientific evidence that there are peer-reviewed journals and, you know, multiple studies and reviews of studies and reviews of reviews of studies, you know, the position that they're arguing against. So sometimes it's just a scientific discussion. The more important point is it's not political correctness. It's either ethical correctness, moral correctness, or scientific correctness, or all of the above, or some combination therein. But it's not political.