In modern usage, political correctness is understood as language, policy, and measures whose purpose - in principle - is not to offend or adversely affect certain social groups. The term appeared sporadically in America at the beginning of the nineties, but then in an ironic form, because "píszí" was the subject of jokes at the time. According to some suggestions, the problem is precisely that the expression, which originally appeared in a humorous form, became deadly serious when the so-called into mainstream American public discourse, which is why the term itself was used as a pejorative term when the term first appeared, as such language or politics were generally considered exaggerated.
One of the important results of the ongoing discourse on political correctness was the work of the American philosopher-academic Allan Bloom (1930–1992), published in 1987, The Closing of the American Mind , since later it was often used in the debates about the book the concept.
Bloom's book can be considered a fundamental work in terms of understanding the issue, and it makes a remarkable attempt to shed light on the underlying causes and problems. For the first time, he scrutinizes the youth of American universities and presents the cultural narrowing of this social group in the 1960s. With mass culture, which he believed to be current and timely, which - gaining ground mainly in the fields of films and music - gradually replaced the material of classical education. The author believes that this loss of value is not merely an abstract problem, as its effects have penetrated deeply into the quality of the students' way of life, relationships, and morals through self-centeredness and a kind of compulsive egalitarianism. According to Bloom, the fault of today's liberal education leads to the sterile, spiritless social and sexual habits of modern students and to the fact that they are simply unable to shape their lives for themselves beyond such "worldly offers" as the oft-pronounced and constantly pursued success.
According to the American philosopher's approach, commercial pursuits and pursuits now represent a greater value than the sober search for truth, love, or the cultivated pursuit of honor and glory. And the idea of the freedom to choose one's identity is becoming more and more distorted, some modern currents are already prescribing new norms in love or sexuality, and the old-style perception and experience of relationships, so to speak, is becoming stale and out of date, and the old-fashioned approach offends "píszí" in more than one case, therefore, it provokes outrage among militantly determined adherents of political correctness.
Returning to Bloom's explanations: according to him, the change in the old, traditional America first started as the influence of Nietzsche in the American intellectual life. This first stimulated the disintegration of values and opened the way for the triumph of moral nihilism: in other words, started by the philosophical foreshadowing of the Nazi worldview that was supposed to be defeated in the war, the former enemy is still destroying the moral foundations of the traditional American spirit from within.
It seems that this type of moral nihilism has infiltrated the world of social sciences, including law. As you know, the New York Times, in its article published on January 2, 2016, claimed that a Hungarian prison guard used violence against a Syrian migrant woman. The media organ that has won the most Pulitzer Prizes, waded into the honor of a Central European country with this dropped half-sentence, without asking the other party. Of course, according to the information provided by the leaders of the penal system and the Hungarian government, this claim is completely impossible, if only because only adult men were detained by the immigration police in Hungary.
Although in principle the prison guard concerned and, as an indirect stakeholder, the Hungarian state could also file a defamation lawsuit in the American court with jurisdiction based on the seat of the newspaper published in New York, for groundless defamation, in order for the court to oblige the press product stating the untruth to apologize and pay compensation, it should be known , that if a press organization is accused of defamation, in the United States it is not enough for public actors to prove that the newspaper stated a falsehood (1964- New York Times v. Sullivan), without the journalist's provably intentional lie, there is no compensation. Thanks to the law named after itself, the New York Times has not lost a press lawsuit since 1964, according to Index, and has not settled out of court; this was revealed in a 2007 presentation by David McCraw, one of the leading legal advisors of the American daily newspaper, at the Central European University (CEU).
In an interview, American right-libertarian journalist Michael Walsh called political correctness "evil" and the death of humor, downright "fascism of the mind." As he put it: he really doesn't like opinions that start with: "of course I'm on the side of freedom of speech, BUT...". The words of the media critic are perhaps worth considering: "Political correctness wants only one side of the truth and that there should be no debate about it. However, there must be a competition between interpretations of reality so that people can learn about possible explanations. (…) Just like Islam, the left also wants submission, only the latter want to take your words away. But if your words are taken away, what are you left with?” (Michael Walsh: Political correctness is the fascism of the mind, mandiner.hu, January 14, 2015)
In this context, we look almost reverently at the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which usually makes unfavorable decisions regarding the Hungarian state, which stated in the Bulut v. Austria case that "the principle of equality of arms - as one of the elements of the broader concept of fair procedure - requires that it is reasonable for all parties it must be possible to ensure that it does not end up in a significantly worse position than its opponent.
However, it can almost be avoided if political correctness continues to poison judicial practice, then the above principle will soon become a legal historical curiosity, just like Seneca's previously unappealable proposition, according to which the basis of fair (democratic and constitutional) procedures is that vocem mittere in alteram partem , i.e. let the other party listen as well.
Dr. Zoltán Lomnici Jr.,
constitutional lawyer
Source: alaptorvenyblog.hu
Photo: thepublicdiscourse.com
