Thursday, April 16, 2009

PCer Than Thou

I just posted this on Ezra Levant's blog:

Rebekah wrote: "I am in a debate with someone at the moment who says that freedom of speech is a civil right, and as such we have no right to judge other cultures or regimes that deny freedom of speech. Could I ask, how would you answer this?"

Oh, I love debating against leftists. It's so much fun to see their eyes pop out when their own Politically Correct slogans are used against them!

I would use two arguments. The first is: "I believe in freedom of speech because I believe in equality. If there is no freedom of speech, that means that some people can say what they want, and some views get expressed, but other people -- minorities and the oppressed -- and other views get suppressed. Don't you believe in equal rights for everyone in society?"

If the PC leftist actually admits that he thinks "respecting other cultures" is more important than equal rights, my other argument would be: "Okay, I won't argue against that position. Instead, I'll just say that according to your own statment it's fine for Americans or Canadians or other Europeans to suppress arguments for pacifism, atheism, homosexuality, feminism, or anything else because those are against the values of Eurocentric culture."

Of course if you happen to know the particular Politically Correct causes that he supports, you should use them as examples.

As far as I can see, the only argument against that would be for the leftist to claim that Islamofascist values are actually *better* than our cultural values. If he does, you can attack him for being "judgemental" and "inegalitarian" and also debate him on the merits of our values versus his.