Politically Correct Language and The "War on Terrorism"
By Paul J. Piccard, Professor of Political Science Emeritus
Florida State University
Paraphrasing an aphorism from a nineteenth century sermon by Hugh Price Hughes, what is ethically wrong cannot be politically correct.[1] Conversely, to be authentically correct politically requires correspondence with sound ethics. One might suppose, then, that political correctness would be sought after, as indeed it is by many sensitive people. But other people, some calling themselves "conservatives," ridicule and mock it, even flouting their desire to be politically incorrect, as Ralph Reed did.[2]
Both words and deeds-the talk and the walk-may be politically correct or incorrect depending on how they meet ethical standards. Politics does not allow any neutral ground in such matters. We must use some language; we must make decisions about actions; and whatever language we use or actions we take or fail to take, we change the world we live in for better if we are correct or worse if we are not.
In this essay we start our examination of political correctness with words-the talk. Next we shall consider some actions-the walk. We conclude with special attention to the issue of war and peace as that matter hung in the balance last October when Congress authorized a second Iraqi war.
The Talk
Before the term "politically correct" came into vogue or into disrepute, George Orwell said that all language is political. Here we shall examine some language that is overtly political-and some, perhaps more influential that is covertly political.
The problem of political correctness is as old as politics-that is to say, as old as human society for politics is the way groups make decisions. Serious authors and people engaged in casual conversation alike have always chosen words for their effect. When Pericles, speaking to and about the Athenians, said, "We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character. . . ,"[3] he was flattering the males in his audience and exhorting them to participate in the affairs of state. Likewise, when my fellow school boys and I used derogatory ethnic and religious slurs in the 1930s to refer to people who were not like us, we were unconsciously engaging in the politics of exclusion and strengthening our bonds with the dominant group.
We boys, and I suppose too many girls, had insulting names for Negroes (as was then the proper way to refer to them), Jews, Italians, Poles, Japanese, Chinese, and others. We knew that some of these derogatory names could not be used around adults, that others were alright to use at home, and that many were fighting words not to be used face-to-face with the outsiders if they were bigger than we were. We did not confront an ethical problem.
Today, however, the matter can be better understood as an ethical issue. My sense of the matter runs like this: ethical behavior is grounded in moral precepts. A basic moral precept is to treat others as we wish to be treated. This fundamental morality is recognized not only by Christians and others with religious faith, but also by those unbelievers who have a decent sense of right and wrong. What racial bigot, for example, would ever wish to be treated with the kind of contempt the bigots inflicted on others? Who among racial segregationists, for another example, would ever wish to be pigeon-holed with a group that was discriminated against, regarded as inferior, and untouchable? Which of my school mates would have welcomed being called by insulting names? Yes, to hurt other people by word or deed raises ethical issues.
Race is a political concept, not a biological classification. It exists primarily in our minds and we make of it as much or as little as we wish. Alexis de Tocquevile, in the nineteenth century, noted how large race loomed in America and what an intractable problem it was.[4] While considering ethics and politics we cannot ignore it. We require some acceptable labels. By the time I was in high school I had learned that the proper way to refer to the three races that were identified by teachers in those days was to call them Caucasian, Negro, and Oriental.
Early in the twentieth century the founders of the NAACP used "colored." In mid-century "Negro" was better. Later in the century "black" (as in "Black is beautiful") became a preferred term, and before the end of the century Justice Thurgood Marshall settled on "African American." One problem with that term, besides being a mouth full, is that it leaves us stammering when we want to refer to the black people of other nations. So I am still using "black" and mean no disrespect.
In addition to changing names for races, the history of political correctness has some other curious twists. While some conservatives complain about the PC police today, much of the public rhetoric is shaped by language that is politically correct for conservatives without ever being called politically correct. We can examine some of that language and then look for the transition that took place in order to bring us to today`s controversies. Then we can see that the PC wheel took one more turn when hijackers turned airplanes into murder weapons.
First, however, in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess my first foray into imposing political correctness on university students. I was a PC cop before any of us knew the term. In the 1950s and 1960s, at three Southern state universities, I met classes in American government and politics. I was at the University of Texas when racial integration of the student body reached the campus. From there I went to Tuscaloosa and left before Autherine Lucy enrolled and was chased away from the University of Alabama. When I arrived at Florida State University the only known blacks on campus were employed by the office of Buildings and Grounds.
In those days many young white males felt an obligation to defend the Southern way of life and Southern traditions. They knew, however, that they could not use the "N-word" in class. Neither could some of them bring themselves to use Martin Luther King`s word, Negro. They would grudgingly say "nigrah" and I would respond with something like, "Come on, Mr. E___, you can speak more clearly than that." I also required the students to capitalize the proper noun, Negro, although some of them thought the capital letter lent too much dignity to the race. I shall leave to others the verdict on whether or not I violated the students` academic freedom or personal integrity. At the time, I thought mine was the way to initiate them into the community of American, not just Southern, college graduates.
With that confession out of the way, let us return to some politically correct language from before the concept was given its name. Most of my examples here served conservative interests. During the 1930s, "business men" ran corporations; "bosses" headed labor unions.[5] In both cases the offices were staffed by "girls" who did not have to be paid as much as women. Labor union organizers were "agitators." Political party conventions elected "chairmen." Even the New Deal developed programs to help "free enterprise" which, since Alexander Hamilton, has always depended on government rather than facing the risks of a truly free market.
After World War II, "China" moved its government to Taiwan and kept its seat at the UN while "Red China," excluded from the UN, ruled the mainland. During the 1960s many of my students had a favorable view of "right-to-work laws" although they opposed compulsory open shop legislation, not worrying at all that the two are identical. A rose by another name has a different fragrance in politics. During the 1970s the "domino theory" dominated public discussion of American foreign policy in Southeast Asia although no dominos were to be found there. During the Reagan presidency we learned that "freedom fighters" were on our side; "terrorists" were not.
Throughout American history most of our governments, national and state, have had a "death penalty." Since death is a sensitive issue, we often prefer to refer to "capital punishment" or "execution." But even "death penalty" is a euphemism for killing prisoners. It is sometimes "carried out" (like a bucket of slops?) without considering the messy details of a premeditated killing of people who, at the time of their death, are helpless. We would rather "execute" these convicts than kill them, but kill them we do. The politically preferred terms help us to support the policy without fully engaging its substance.
Death at the hands of government agents in vastly different circumstances may be the killing of "innocent civilians," an atrocity committed by our enemies, or merely "collateral damage" that is excusable. The Oklahoma City bomber, a military veteran, shrugged off the murder of children in day care as collateral damage.
Another kind of expression that conservatives find politically correct is calling giant agricultural corporations "farmers"-or even better when possible, "family farms." Farms are not only entitled to subsidies but, according to some advocates, they should be exempt from "death taxes" (otherwise known as inheritance taxes, depending on your politics). Then we may ignore the miniscule role played by family farms in the debate over subsidies and taxes.
For conservatives, the politically correct term for the driving force in business is the "profit motive." That sounds better than the obviously judgmental and pejorative "greed" that others see in corrupt accounting, insider trading, favoritism, kick backs, ruthless price cutting, and illegal combinations in restraint of trade. Whether motivated by the profit motive or greed, conservatives are winning the "class war" by assuring us that referring to class warfare is politically incorrect.
Almost nothing in the conservative lexicon is more politically correct than "the law of supply and demand." We are told smugly that we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. That is true because it was never enacted. It is based on a set of false assumptions: that buyers and sellers are in the same market, that they all have full information, and that no player on either side is big enough to have a significant impact. We cannot reason from error to truth. Thus the law of supply and demand is in some respects like the law of gravity. It might work as advertised in a vacuum but we do not live in a vacuum.
Closely related to the law of supply and demand is a mystic term preferred by conservatives. This is the "unseen" or "invisible hand" that guides both producers and consumers in the market place to insure good results for the whole community. Ironically, this mysterious force was first identified by a Scottish professor, Adam Smith. Many conservatives are not so comfortable with the strange ideas of today`s American professors, finding them too impractical and theoretical.
Some businesses and doctors advocate "tort reform." That is their politically correct way of seeking limited liability for the accidental property damage, injuries, and deaths they cause. When they are forced into court the plaintiffs` attorneys are "greedy trial lawyers." I do not know who represents the defendants-perhaps counsel sharing the profit motive.
"Separation of church and state" has become a politically correct idea in the United States although the phrase does not appear in our Constitution.[6] Conservatives have nevertheless sought to breach the so-called "wall of separation" by intermingling government and "faith based" organizations. Whether or not the appellate courts will accept this verbal distinction remains to be decided.
Conservatives talk about "our tax money" being spent on programs they do not like. Those programs are run by "bureaucrats." What conservatives see as politically correct programs are funded by "revenues" and administered by "public servants." Conservatives do not want to "throw money" at the schools or poverty programs but they are happy to "appropriate funds" for national defense and other good programs.
At times, conservatives find "freedom" and "states rights" politically correct. They invoke those popular terms selectively. Freedom has no meaning until we specify freedom for whom to do what. Southern slave owners fought the War Between the States partly for freedom-freedom to own slaves. Nearly a century later conservatives suffered a loss of freedom when labor unions were favored by the Wagner Act. The freedom lovers` response was the Taft-Hartley Act depriving labor unions of some freedoms. At the state level some freedom lovers advocate criminalizing unnatural sex acts rather than defending freedom in the bedroom. Freedom is very much in the eye of the beholder, but it is such a politically correct term that it may be invoked as camouflage by conservatives.
States rights are a similar situational matter. Conservatives have invoked states rights to segregate schools by race, regulate labor unions, legalize child labor, outlaw miscegenation, defend the poll tax, deny the concept of "one man, one vote," exploit natural resources, and more. In other situations conservatives are the first in line to seek federal aid in the face of a natural disaster or serious financial difficulties for a major corporation such as Chrysler or the airlines. They do not trust the states to deal with assisted suicide or medicinal marijuana. They call on the federal government to regulate or prohibit abortions. They ask the Feds not to give full faith and credit to state law recognizing same sex couples.
Almost a century ago Theodore Roosevelt explained states rights in what conservatives regard as a most politically incorrect fashion. Conservatives have managed to smother his words ever since. In 1910, speaking in Denver, he explained:
I have been genuinely amused . . . at having arguments presented to me on behalf of certain rich men from New York . . . as to why . . . Rocky Mountain states should manage their own water power sites. Now, many of these men may be good citizens according to their lights, but naturally enough their special interest obscures their sense of the public need; and as their object is to escape an efficient control, exercised in the interest of all the people of the country, they clamor to be put under the state instead of under the nation. If we are foolish enough to grant their requests, we shall have ourselves to blame when we wake up to find that we have permitted another privilege to entrench itself and another portion of what should be kept for the public good to be turned over to individuals for purposes of private enrichment. . . .
Remember also that many of the men who protest loudly against effective national action would be the first to turn around and protest against state action, if such action in its turn became effective and would then unhesitatingly invoke the law to show that the state had no constitutional power to act. . . . Long experience has shown that it is by no means impossible . . . to get one set of judicial decisions which render it difficult for the nation to act, and another set which render it impossible for the state to act. . . .
If there is one thing which is more unwise than another, it is the creation . . . of a neutral ground in which neither the state nor the nation has power, and which can serve as a place of refuge for the lawless man, and especially for the lawless man of great wealth, who can hire the best legal talent to advise him how to keep his abiding place equally distant from the uncertain frontiers of both state and national power.[7]
Like states rights, much of what has been politically correct (without being called that) has served conservatives well. What, then, happened to make them turn on the concept? As actions speak louder than words we may find the answer among actions.
The Walk
What a society deems politically correct is a function of social norms and government action. No society ever claims to be imposing incorrect standards of speech and action. In biblical times, monarchy, gerontocracy, and slavery were politically correct. Democratic elections were not.
In medieval times serfdom was politically correct. In the eighteenth century "laissez-faire" was a liberal response to the prevailing politically correct mercantilism. When in 1919 my mother married my father, a foreigner, she lost her American citizenship although she was descended from an American soldier in the Revolutionary War. American women were not allowed to vote in national elections until the next year. A federal wage and hour law and collective bargaining became politically correct in the 1930s. At the same time child labor became politically incorrect. In 1944 the Supreme Court of the United States found the forced relocation of Americans with Japanese ancestors politically correct,[8] a shameful decision now acknowledged to have been politically incorrect. Although enfranchised by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1870, various forms of discrimination against potential black voters remained politically correct in parts of the country as late as the 1960s. Today, however, courting the black vote is politically correct throughout the country.
The times change and so does political correctness. Each generation of American conservatives until now has yielded to liberal reforms. Three recent attempts by liberals to redefine political correctness finally pushed many conservatives too far and they struck back with the ridicule and hostility we noted at the outset of this essay. Affirmative action on behalf of women and racial minorities, equal pay for equal work, and equality for gays seem to be the culprits that that lead conservatives to add "politically correct" to our vocabulary and to give it a bad reputation. Having to use polite language in public may have irked some conservatives but their protests were muted until the ground swell of public opinion in support of more equality became law.
The whole matter of political correctness, as we have seen, takes many twists and turns. Much of what I have noted may be seen and construed differently. One curiosity in current politically correct language illustrates the complexity of the problem. Earlier I contrasted business men and labor bosses, as conservatives called them. Today, however, the good guys are "entrepreneurs."
Perhaps this change to a gender free term was made in deference to the women`s movement, but we may wonder why this one term has proved acceptable to conservatives while most other gender free language continues to rub some of them the wrong way. Perhaps business men themselves earned such bad reputations that another term was substituted-a new label for the old package. Another possibility is that "entrepreneur" has a certain academic dignity. It appears to be a technical or scientific term and so fits nicely with the vocabulary of prestigious economists. It seems to shift the focus from people who manage (or mismanage) businesses to a sort of essential institutional entity, almost as mysterious as the invisible hand that guides them.
One other gender free term serves conservatives and liberals alike. When we are dismayed by "children killing children" that is what we say, bestowing a sort of equality on girls. The politics of this problem might shift if we focused on it as the behavior of boys.
Despite the contempt some conservatives heap on political correctness, they have accepted some politically correct terms. We turn now to their greatest triumph with politically correct language.
The "War on Terrorism"
When this essay was written, the second Iraqi war was still restrained. Aerial warfare was slowly escalating, American efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein, if any, were covert, and Congress had just authorized the President to use military force against Iraq (but not against Korea as the President`s first request for a blank check might have done). This examination of politically correct language has not dealt with the substance of a war against Iraq or our wisdom in waging it. Here we have not considered the variety of theological, ideological, and geopolitical arguments about just and unjust wars nor have we examined the case for Christian pacifism. We are looking only at the year-old "war on terrorism" and political correctness. The question here is not about whether the war is ethical,[9] but whether we would understand it very differently if we had found a different politically correct vocabulary for it.
War itself has a strange grip on us. The "war" between the sexes is fought by people profoundly attracted to each other. It is certainly not a war. The metaphor of football players fighting in the trenches is a travesty. The great grandfathers of the young athletes might have fought in the trenches, their grandfathers might have been, as I was, in a foxhole in Germany, but they are playing a game-just a game. They are entertaining spectators and attracting a TV audience for commercials to sell beer and fast cars.
Poor President Johnson`s "War on Poverty" never enlisted the nation and seems to have been won by the very wealthiest people in the country, cheered on by a middle class desperately afraid of the lower and under classes. The "war on drugs" has fared somewhat better and has taken many prisoners. By carefully attacking only certain drugs-not the more popular ones, alcohol and nicotine, which are promoted by legitimate commercial interests-the war on drugs continues slightly below the horizon most of the time.
The "war on terrorism" has spawned a whole vocabulary of politically correct terms of which "war on terrorism" is the most insidious and effective. I use it here only reluctantly. Other popular terms are 9/11, ground zero, weapons of mass destruction, united we stand, one nation under God, and axis of evil. With these hair-trigger words we hardly have to think at all about the politics and substance of our foreign and military policies.
Within hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers an academic from Johns Hopkins University was given a national radio audience to voice his hysteria at the sight unfolding on our television sets. The sight itself was sufficient to traumatize large numbers of people but the rhetoric from Johns Hopkins practically ended serious or analytical thought. It was very quickly adopted by the White House. We were told that the plane crashes were not a criminal act but an act of war. They were worse than the Oklahoma City bombing but still criminal. Murder on a large scale is criminal. We have never regarded killing vast numbers of people, including those innocent civilians we keep hearing about, as murder when done by the U.S. Air Force. When private individuals do it, they are criminals. Calling them criminals instead of terrorists would have made a difference and would have given them less status.
Even people who have not been personally terrorized-people who are still flying in airplanes and living routine lives-have accepted the notion that we are engaged in a mighty struggle against terrorists. Nobody has a good word to say about terrorists. They cannot be freedom fighters.
We were also told by the excited voice from Johns Hopkins that the destruction of the Twin Towers was an act of war, but it was not. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen`s remark to Dan Quayle, "I knew war and this was no war." If we had called it sabotage we could have pursued the saboteurs by juridical means rather than by our brutal assault on Afghanistan. We might then have generated less hatred for the United States and fewer recruits for the campaign of murder and destruction still directed against us. Our President was right in September, 2001, when he said that this would be a long fight. Perhaps it will make the "Cold War" seem a short and tranquil interlude.
The very dramatic TV images were easily portrayed as a catastrophe. They could be seen in a different light, still serious but not catastrophic. We routinely kill more people on our roads in less than five weeks than the number who were murdered in New York and Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. Each of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan killed vastly greater numbers but the results were not catastrophic. Within a very few years Japan was better off than it had been before. We could honestly mourn the dead and injured and be deeply sympathetic for the bereaved and suffering families even if we put the event in a different perspective than the one that gripped the nation so quickly and so effectively.
The popular "One Nation Under God" is an arrogant and self-serving slogan. It reminds me of the belt buckles German soldiers wore proclaiming "God With Us." A very sophisticated theology must be required to ascertain God`s preferences in public policy generally and in warfare particularly. I am not sure that God has been on our side in all our wars, including the Civil War.
"United We Stand" is another unfortunate slogan. We may be united in wanting what is best for our country, but a vibrant free democracy is not characterized by such a quick toeing of the line as we experienced in the fall of 2001. For about a year we had no significant alternative policies to consider and thus no way to test the policy adopted by our government in such haste. Only as the so-called war on terror metamorphosed into planning an attack on Iraq did we begin to hear some murmurs of dissent in the mainline media, and even then only tentatively. A loyal opposition is vital to a democratic government. We have not had one.
Starting with the suicide bombing of our Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 some of our Presidents have found that calling suicide bombers cowards is politically correct. I cannot fathom the mentality of suicide bombers, but I understand that heroic soldiers have routinely volunteered for missions that are virtually suicidal. The suicide victim who smothers a grenade to protect his comrades is honored. When a middle-aged man with the world`s best protection calls young men cowards he does not contribute to an understanding of our problems. Some of these young men may be fanatic or crazy; but "cowards"? Calling them cowards is politically correct language for a grade school playground. We might, instead, see these men in the light of the observation by Jesus that "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."[10] Imagine that being politically correct in today`s climate.
George Orwell had good reason to note that language is political. We have seen that political rhetoric, whether correct or incorrect, has an impact on human relations, economic policy, and military and foreign policy. We have seen something Orwellian about the double-speak of the hawks, who persuaded Congress to authorize war in order to preserve the peace and to authorize unilateral action in order to bring the United Nations on board. We have seen the irony of a nation united in "patriotism" but divided along all our usual fault lines.
In 2000 George W. Bush campaigned against "nation building." Isolationists then told us that we could not be the "world`s police." Today, our President seeks "regime change" in order to dictate to other nations their form of government. Thus political correctness now girds this "peace loving nation" for endless war. We could use a new breed of PC cops.
[1] Originally, "What is morally wrong can never be politically right." Quoted by Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Phoenix Books; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), 114.
[2] Ralph Reed, Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics (1997).
[3] Thycydides, Book I, ch. 22, translated by Benjamin Jowett (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) quotation and citation from Albert R. Chandler, The Clash of Political Ideals: A Source Book on Democracy and the Totalitarian State (3rd ed.; N.Y.: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957) 3.
[4] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. (For example: Phillips Bradley, ed.; N.Y. Random House, 1945). See especially vol. 2, 270.
[5] As recently as last March, the Associated Press reported that "the leftist Workers Party candidate" a "former union boss" won a plurality of the votes in the Brazilian election. Tallahassee Democrat (Oct. 7, 2002), 3.
[6] See, Paul J. Piccard, Mary Piccard Vance, and Ann Piccard, "Church and State: Once More Unto the Breach," Christian Ethics Today, 8 (April, 2002), 20.
[7] From a "Speech at Denver before the Colorado Live Stock Association," August 29, 1910. Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism (New York: The Outlook Co., 1910), 61-65.
[8] Korematsu v. United States, 323 US 214. Many of the "relocated" people were incarcerated at Camp Manzanar where tourists now are greeted by a plaque that concludes, "May the injustice and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again." From Robert F.Cushman with Susan P. Koniak, Leading Constitutional Decisions (18th ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall., 1992), 395. Some recent treatment of American Muslims suggests that this lesson from World War II may not have been well learned.
[9] See John M. Swomley, "Ethics of the War on Terrorism,"Christian Ethics Today, 8 (October, 2002), 6.
[10] John 15:13.
