[Clutch Munny]

There are at least two issues running in parallel here: whether speech codes and the like are reasonable or not; and whether it makes any sense whatever to call them "politically correct". Livius, it seems to me, is willing to engage the former but is primarily pissed about the latter.

If we just want to regard the phrase "politically correct" as a string of letters standing for the concept "stuff I think is stupid", it would be nice to have this universally made explicit.

But as long as we understand it to include the English word "politically" and the English word "correct" -- as long as we don't treat these like we treat the string 'cat' as it occurs in 'cattle' -- then anyone who blithely labels this or that politically correct owes some argument for the decision.

And anyone who uses the phrase to describe actions that are politically difficult, or foreseeably politically unpopular, needs his head examined and a free dictionary.

So far as I can see, the main point of using the expression seems to be the conjuration of some huge demographic of stupid liberals being pandered to.