Civility

Oh, give me a home

Where the buffalo roam

And the deer and the antelope play.

Where seldom is heard

A discouraging word...

For the would-be cowboy, civility is an essential part of his Utopia. But notice that he says, "Where seldom is heard," NOT, "Where never is heard." The would-be cowboy is both practical and wise. He realizes, you see, that even in Utopia, a discouraging word creeps in now and then. In fact, that occasional discouraging word is essential to his dream. It keeps him both alert and humble. It offers him an opportunity to improve himself or his surroundings.

Most of the people I know desire, or even demand civility in their relationships. Most of these same people detest 'political correctness.'

The reason is simple: when a person demands political correctness, he is making a fetish of civility. In case you didn't know, a fetish is an absurd extreme compulsion.

The same people who want to shield their children from any and all adverse consequences to their choices want to protect themselves and their children from even the slightest hint of a discouraging word. They think they can change a man's ideas, his feelings, and even the facts of history by permanently erasing and replacing any word that they deem to be even mildly discouraging. Just take your history book and delete the paragraphs about slavery or delete the pages about the holocaust. Then, they never happened. Ain't life grand?

So, they change the words to Old Man River (with Oscar Hammerstein's permission) and the words to Stephen Collins Foster's songs (without his permission). Or they leave out the words by doing an instrumental performance.

These people would have all of us walking on eggshells for the rest of our lives, in constant fear that an improper word may offend their ultra-delicate sensibilities.

When I was young, we were taught to say,

Sticks and stones

Maybreak my bones

But words will never hurt me.

Sure, people have said things to me that offended me, perhaps even hurt me deeply. But I recited the rhyme to myself, discarded the comments that were untrue or unfair, and thought about those that had a grain of truth. Then I went on, either undaunted by the uncivil remark, or perhaps changing something that was not so good. Sometimes a discouraging word tells me more about the person who said it than about myself. That too is useful, becuase it helps me to decide how to deal with that person in the future.

I certainly agree that there is a difference between discouraging words and 'fighting words.' The latter certainly are not part of civility. And some folks also transgress the seldom constraint, and pummel us with excessive use of poor taste. These transgressions need not be tolerated. But I also recognize that a person may make a mistake, not intending to be discouraging, or at least not so extremely discouraging. And for him a gentle correction may be appropriate. As with so many things, the boundaries of civility are a little fuzzy.

That's why I detest the political correctness fetishists. Their constant whining and their endless "correction" of minutiae both irritates and disgusts me. A pox on them!