"You claim you don't understand [PC]"
No, it's just that have very large comprehension opportunities and challenges. j/k LOL That was my attempt at 90s PC. Thanks for trying to explain modern PC.

Well, you are welcome to draw your own conclusions. I've tried to explain to you the phenomenon known as political correctness. You claim you don't understand it, but the actuality is that you have created your own definition which significantly differs from the one others use. You want to just dismiss the cries of PC as a mis-categorization or misdirection. I'm not saying we shouldn't refute the real arguments. What I'm saying is that those in favor of PC don't care. They have their agenda and that is all they are interested in. They don't want to acknowledge the truth. They don't want to look at the facts. They don't want to look at the failed policies and the damage they cause. And that is precisely what makes them PC.

You say you'd rather have the 90's version of PC. It really wasn't any different, it just had fewer followers so it was easier to laugh at. It wasn't as pervasive in society and that was really the first generation who really started to get affected by the 1960's counter-culture. In the 90's, PC was just getting started. Now, a generation later it's mainstream and showing its true colors.

"labeling of certain policy decisions as PC is not merely just ad hominem"
I'm saying something very similar to that. I'm not saying anti-PC attacks the person (ad hominem). I'm saying anti-PC assigns a bogus argument (namely PC) to a large number of unrelated policy ideas.

Take the idea of banning guns. I'm strongly against it. I know some of the arguments in favor it. None of them relate to a desire to deny reality, and they certainly don't relate to a mode of denying reality that relates to media relations, education, foreign aid, spending, etc. We should refute the real anti-gun arguments. It's easier to say their actual argument is they are anti-reality and we are pro-reality. That's easy, but it's not true.

Thanks for being so patient in explaining your view of PC. I'll tell you a funny modern example of retro 90s-era PC. My wife asked my kid's teacher about fine-tip and fat magic markers. The teacher said we don't use the word "fat" anymore; we call them "bold-line" markers. LOL. It was not a joke either. She's a young Boomer, and we're Gen-X. I think Boomers invented this old-school PC, and Gen-X rolled our eyes when it was new in 1990. They probably think my wife and I are vertically challenged. It makes me want turn on some Pearl Jam. I miss the 90s-era PC, which was silly but at least I understood it.

So you characterize my argument as "well we can just call it anti-PC and refute the argument as an ad hominem fallacy?" That would only be true if no effort whatsoever was made to refute the actual argument. That is simply not the case, as I have given numerous examples showing exactly why labeling of certain policy decisions as PC is not merely just ad hominem, but is in fact an accurate categorization of a whole host of actions based around an ideological (and frankly pathological) avoidance of reality. The insidiousness of the cult of PC, however, does not lie merely in an avoidance of reality, but in the attempts to press others into believing in and subscribing to the same avoidance. This is one of the true problems currently infesting the Democratic Party - they have openly adopted Progressive principles with respect to race relations, media relations, education, foreign aid, trade, spending, housing, justice, and just about everything else. They are principles which are demonstrably fallacious, which is why the people here in the Gulch so despise the Democratic Party and anyone who chooses to affiliate with them.

"Why? Because they aren't interested in reality. "
We are back at my original understanding PC = generic straw man.
We could refute people's actual claims. In the straw man fallacy, we invent an easily-refuted straw man argument, refute it, and pretend we've refuted the actual claims. Anti-PC takes the fallacy to another level. We don't even need to invent a straw man. We just say the claims we disagree with rest on denying reality.

Your getting closer, but you're missing the whole "politically" in the politically correct. Your business example absolutely is a case of someone not willing to confront reality, but they weren't trying to push an agenda to gain power. They deceived themselves (and their investors), but their failure didn't really affect too much.

A better example of PC is the gun control debate. All the facts show clearly that "an armed society is a polite society" (Heinlein). Yet you still have many progressives like Hilllary Clinton calling for federally-mandated gun control. Why? Because they aren't interested in reality. They want power. And they know that they can't get the level of power they want without being able to control people.

Another example? Trying to use Title IX to tell schools they have to allow children to select their own gender. Children (and especially teens) have enough problems growing up and trying to learn while their bodies change - they don't need these kinds of distractions. But that isn't the real goal. The real goal is to destroy the traditional morality that studies continue to show leads to significantly higher probabilities of being productive and self-sufficient - two things the government doesn't want!

Really, if you hear a politician talking, you should almost immediately start hearing PC. Look for the agenda they are trying to push and examine whether or not the agenda leads to more or less freedom for the People. If it leads to more government and more regulations, it's PC nonsense.

"if one can get enough others to buy into a similar deception that it makes the deception morally acceptable."
So it starts with some fact someone doesn't like. Maybe the fact is that their business is making enough money to keep the lights on but will never be saleable and lead to the exit they had planned. Or maybe they have an incurable disease. Instead of responding to that reality, PC people select people who don't recognize the reality. Then that group refuses to be around people who say otherwise.

For example, my company once worked with a startup struggling to get rid of the bugs and commercialize a medical technology. They had early adopters volunteering to try it, understanding it in the alpha testing stage. I said, "You need to get feedback from the market. You're heading into the Valley of Death. Once we get all known bugs fixed, investors will lose patience before we can commercialize it." Their co-founder said not ever to say Valley of Death. I said I was happy to be proven wrong. I said my company had no equity in it, but we just wanted to see him get a favorable exit. He just insisted we never say aloud, even with only the cofounders present, any mention of a funding gap in getting the technology to market. They eventually ran out of funding, and I don't think they even sold the IP to another firm. I'm not sure if they got any salvage value of it. After they failed, I asked a former employee of theirs if the co-founders were just lying to their vendors and potential acquirerers or what the deal was. He said they wanted what they were saying to be true and they surrounded themselves with people who agreed. They forbade people around them from saying the truth. Your word for this is they were being PC.

Of course I've also seen examples where I thought people were deluding themselves and they succeeded. These people, though, weren't PC. They listened to criticism, even if they did not accept all of it. PC, by your definition, is when you insist people around you not even say aloud some idea. I stay way from PC. There are so many projects in the world, there's no time even to be involved with the tiniest fraction. There's no need to spend time working on projects with people who can't even discuss the thorny issues.

The only PC-like practice is I follow is I insist people not talk about problems that they have no recommended action for. The action might be stopping a project. That's fine. But if they're simply talking about how bad something is without a single action we can take, that's just kvetching.

This is the first time I've had an understanding of PC is and why it's even a word.

So I'll try to simplify:

Being PC means not only deceiving one's self by refusing to accept the way things actually are (in reality), but ascribing to the notion that somehow if one can get enough others to buy into a similar deception that it makes the deception morally acceptable.

PC is way more than human foibles. It is embracing a lie and promoting that lie in the hopes that others' adopting that lie will make one feel better about living a lie.

If that doesn't help, I'm sorry, but there's not much clearer way for me to put things.

"you refuse to see the Democrats for what they are"
I'm really lost. I thought we were talking about PC. What's that got to do with political parties? I don't read that many political articles, so it's like a I need a dummies guide to PC.

"Here are some examples of PC policies and how they specifically target blacks:"
I read the examples, but remember I don't know what PC means, so it's like me giving you a list of five Gelul policies that specifically target middle-aged geeks. You don't know what Gelul means or what why you should care which groups it targets.

"I've seen the homework"
Common Core does not dictate specific homework questions or even styles of questions. But this is off the topic. Sorry I started that. Regarding school problems, the only time I've ever been a party to a lawsuit was with my kids school, so I know something about this. :( My kids are now in the public school. It's working very well, but I've learned it can change on a dime. I have no illusions that it will keep working well.

"That there is bias in journalism is the result of Political Correctness."
Remember, I don't know what PC, so this has no meaning for me. I see bias as coming from human foibles, not a new ideology. Many of the media are corporate owned, so you they tend to know people who see things from that view. So we get a slight right-wing bias to mainstream news, not because think tanks masterminded an ideology adopted by journalists but just because of who owns them, who they tend to know in their networks, things they care about, etc.

"Most modern journalists are lazy. They are entertainers more than journalists."
Maybe you could get involved in journalism some way. The world needs people doing things right, so being excellent often pays. If you already do a blog or something like it I would read it.

I'm starting to think PC just means bad stuff. It's kind of like the word crap. Many things people describe as PC policies, I'd consider crap policies.

After I said "to protect man from force (including
fraud) and violence", I meant to add, "and to pun-
ish same."

And don't defend yourself with "I'm going to tell Dad". I made that mistake, only once.

Agreed. +1 My point was just to emphasize how those of the "politically correct" crowd abuse public education.

Very sorry about your mom's polio. Terrible illness.

As to education, public education should simply
be abolished. Government is force. Its justification
is to protect man from force (including fraud) and
violence. Whatever has nothing to do with these
functions is not a legitimate government function. Also, education (especially the educa-
tion of children) teaches thought processes, and
that is something the government should defin-
itely NOT be in charge of. Because it ultimately
must lead to government thought control. I don't
think that it is reformable from within. It should
simply be taken away from government, and
privatized.

When I was about 5, and one of my brothers was
about 3, we moved from the woods in Roanoke
County to Augusta County, because my father had
gotten a job in Waynesboro, (Va.) We lived on a
blacktop road, and my brother started leaving home and going down the blacktop. In one case
(I didn't see this, I just heard about it), our father
went down and switched him home; that is, he
followed him, switching his legs. I still wouldn't
let a child of mine that little go on a blacktop
road alone. I think I would give him a spanking.
Better a temporary pain on the buttocks than
permanent death.

It sounds like a lot of things that are going on now-
adays. And I think OSHA could be implicated in
it, too.

Thanks for the reply. And why would that be necessary for what I wrote? Now if I were mentally doing a syllogism or some complicated sorites, I would have to to get at the truth.
What type of geek are you? Might be useful in the future for deciding what to reply to your posts. Check your premises on that geeky life style.

CG, you're either cute and naive, or you refuse to see the Democrats for what they are: deceiving liars. Now I'll accept the argument that twenty years ago there may have still been some Democrats who had honest but differing opinions about things, but nowadays, the Democratic Party doesn't allow those to get elected. There are nothing but Progressives/Socialists left.

I'll be blunt: YES - if you subscribe to PC, you are a racist. Are there others who aren't necessarily PC who also are racist? Perhaps, but they aren't forming political parties. Here are some examples of PC policies and how they specifically target blacks:
1. Abortion. Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) wanted to exterminate blacks. She talked to the KKK about how to get blacks to have abortions and paid black ministers to okay abortions to their congregations. The vast majority of PP facilities are in predominantly black neighborhoods. And Hillary Clinton has openly praised Margaret Sanger.
2. Minimum wage hikes. The group most affected by minimum wage hikes are blacks and youth (especially black youth) who can no longer find jobs. And because they can't find anything productive to do, they join gangs and get involved in illegal activities and wind up in jail.
3. Rent controls. These create slum districts which are disproportionately populated by blacks. Even Barack Obama in his book admitted that these were the modern-day equivalent of plantations.
4. Unions. Believe it or not, but unions were created when white-owned road construction companies were getting underbid by black-owned companies so they passed a law a hundred years ago mandating minimum wage standards for road construction crews. The entire intent of Davis-Bacon (which is still on the books, BTW) was to remove price competition by black-owned construction companies.
5. Welfare. This one has probably done more to contribute to the disintegration of the black family than anything else. Welfare pays single mothers, enabling the men to avoid their obligations as fathers. And the single largest factor in predicting future incarceration is growing up without a father, of which 2/3 of current US black households do. Blacks point to racial profiling and police brutality, but their real problem is not having fathers in the home.

And all of these policies are pushed by Democrats, not the least of which are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

"I see none of these problems with Common Core. I'm not qualified to evaluate its merits"

I am. I have children in high school, middle school and grade school and I've seen the homework - even in a Red State. It isn't teaching any more. It's babysitting and obfuscation. People wonder why our math and science scores plummet and why we have to import engineers and scientists. If you had to base your math experience off Common Core, you'd give up math too! I have several friends who home school. They can get done in about three months in math what takes a middle- or grade-schooler nine months to learn in public schools. There is something very wrong with that.

"It sounds like a disjointed list of bad practices."

Yes, they are all bad practices, but they aren't isolated or happenstance. They are intentional and part of a broader initiative to control and indoctrinate the youth. It's much easier to control the uneducated.

"I see the bias in Journalism..."

Don't try to over-analyze. That there is bias in journalism is the result of Political Correctness.

"Journalists are just people, with the normal foibles of being human."

They start out as that, yes, but then they ascribe to PC and they adopt their foibles rather than seek to be objective. They know they are biased and they consciously choose to editorialize when they should be reporting.

"It's easier to condemn corporate bias than it is to produce pristine facts-only journalism."

Precisely. Most modern journalists are lazy. They are entertainers more than journalists.

I recall when the oldest of my little brothers approached our mother with some bratty crying fit.
Mother said, "Oh, you want something to cry about?"
She gave him three sharp pops on the rear and he ran off screaming, "Whaaaa!"
Mom continued to do whatever she was doing as if nothing had happened.
I made a mental note to self like "Do not go up to Mom crying unless to can show you need a band-aid or have a bruise."

As Ayn Rand said, "Check your premises."

I went on a "walkabout" when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I crossed the "street that should never be crossed, alone" and wandered about 1/2 mile from my house (in Spokane, WA).
When a nice police officer pulled up to me and asked me if I was lost, I told him no. I got into his car and directed him right back to my house.
My mother was ecstatic to get me back home...until the officer left. That's when I (and my behind) learned that the "Leave It To Beaver" show was fantasy.

Anyone remember "The Little Rascals" or a funny-page entry "Why Mothers Get Gray"?

What would you call jumping from a single case to the general without checking on the reality of the situation where vaccines did not exist and still do not exist? Maybe mistaken would have been a better word, sorry about that.
Take smallpox vaccine which did the most to wipe out smallpox. It had five or so deaths from the vaccine a year in the US. The cost benefit ratio, in the USA, continuing to vaccinate until the chance of getting smallpox from the vaccination became noticable with respect to infection possibility and then vaccination was limited to those going to countries where smallpox was still endemic.
And had there been polio vaccine my mother would not have been crippled for the last 15 years of her short 33 year life.
Like Abaco, I am a man of math and science and other interesting things, so let him do his own replies, I am certain that he is capable.

"Every generation has seems to get more and more protected until you find a kid standing alone looking puzzled because someone forgot to tell him what he's supposed to be doing." (emphasis mine)
That kid has grown up and is now a young adult struggling with "adulting". They actually have a verb for operating without hoving parents.

I still don't get the racism one. PC people, in your model, are racist. I assume non-PC people are often racist too. So PC and non-PC are often the same on this issue. Or is PC just another word for racist, and non-PC

I understand the religion one, but I am PC (by your definition) about religion. I believe humans overrule gods. I call this humanist, but I can accept other words for it. This one makes sense to me.

I don't know if it relates to PC, but it absolutely blows my mind the extent people go to to politicize an education standard. I see none of these problems with Common Core. I'm not qualified to evaluate its merits, but the politicization of it is amazing. But that's getting off the topic. Assuming those bad educational practices were happening somewhere, why does one word/philosophy tie them together? It sounds like a disjointed list of bad practices.

I see the bias in Journalism, but I don't see it as new, needing a word, or driven by an overarching philosophy. Many media outlets are corporately owned, so they're often going to reflect the interests of managers of corporations and their customers (including gov't). I guess we could call them "elites", although I resist that b/c it implies there a clear group of people who are bad imposing this problem on the good guys. Journalists are just people, with the normal foibles of being human. They probably try to report just the facts. It's easier to condemn corporate bias than it is to produce pristine facts-only journalism. I have come to accept that it's produced by humans who need to write a story or need to sell ad space to companies, and I'm just mindful that no one outlet will give me the whole picture.

Other people have patiently tried to explain it to me. I get the concepts of racism, humanism, crappy education, and bias in journalism. I don't see how they're tied together. I do understand the definition from the 90s where people say "growth opportunities" instead of "failings". When people use it in this new sense, it goes right over my head.