a) real and pervasive (like I said, and as Anthony Browne and Sean Gabb would I expect agree), but something that is good and that you support.

or

b) Something that is an invention of the tabloid press making up stories about Baa Baa Green Sheep and therefore something that, when people bring it up as an issue, they should be dismissed rather than engaged with.

please?

You can’t have it both ways!

Do you know which US political party actually abolished slavery through incredibly violent intervention? Do you know which one opposed abolition and even afterwards, tried to pass laws to prevent ex-slaves from owning their own weapons? Do you know which party still has an ex-KKK member in the senate? The history isn’t quite as clear cut as you think.

As I linked above, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1031651 explains how the free market works to improve cohesion. But of course, it is also a moral duty on each of us as individuals, and something that I take as a personal responsibility. You can’t palm off an issue as nuanced as prejudice to a state entity and expect it to change people’s minds for you. It takes individual social responsibility to defeat prejudice.

What you call “eradication of discrimination” is what people on the Right call “political correctness”. It’s the same damn thing.

I’m not sure what your point is. Is the eradication of discrimination a bad thing? As for the free market resolving it.. that’s pretty funny given the American free market was doing fine during slavery and has done fantastically over the last 300 years, during most of which slavery was legal. Markets are never free anyway, so I’m not sure if this theory stands up.

that political correctness is real and pervasive

This assumes “political correctness” in itself is bad. It isn’t. Words like “nigger” and “paki” are no longer forms of polite conversation thanks to PC, and society is better for it.

Lastly:
I would rather use the free market and free expression to challenge prejudiced views

How would this work? Even in a free market people don’t necessarily make logical decisions (or those in their best interests) free from emotions and other considerations. In almost every major drive to end discrimination, its the law that has changed social ideas rather than the other way round. The Democrats even lost the South thanks to passing civil rights legislation and still haven’t fully recovered. How would your precious free market have resolved that dilemma?

What you call “eradication of discrimination” is what people on the Right call “political correctness”. It’s the same damn thing.

“The very observation you’ve made is surely an admission that political correctness is real and pervasive, otherwise the “advances” you talk about wouldn’t have happened?”

Erm, no-o-o(!)

John is saying that it takes an elected parliament, discussion, debate, scrutiny and parliamentary vote to help eradicate the kind of discrimination which *some* blinkered people too often slip into if left to their own devices.

Which is why John is right to loathe Libertarianism. It is a self indulgent stain in the crucible of debate. Libertarianism is the most feeble tool in effecting much needed change in society.

I wonder anyone with an ouce of intelligence gives it any thought whatsoever.

The very observation you’ve made is surely an admission that political correctness is real and pervasive, otherwise the “advances” you talk about wouldn’t have happened?

If true – though I’m not sure it is – that reflects a very pessimistic view of human nature.

In addition, scholarship that demonstrates how the free market punishes irrational discriminatory behaviour has been around for quite a while: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=94436

Where libertarians can certainly agree with the liberal left, is that we should attempt to prevent the law and the state from discriminating between individuals on grounds of identity. When it comes to the realm of individual judgements and decisions, however, we believe that humans, when given the freedom, will eventually choose to do the right thing and are more likely to reach that point if they don’t have an annoying political class telling them what to do all the time and deliberately curtaining their autonomy.

I agree. Why do you think that is?

A friend of mine was writing an article for the Greater London Arts magazine and suggested that perhaps the inclusion of a cartoon strip would lighten it up a bit. They said they couldn’t possibly have a cartoon without black people in it. OK, he said, have a cartoon with black people in it. They were horrified. Print caricature drawings of black people? That would be racist! You could almost hear the Daily Mail journalist sharpening her pencil.”

John O’Farrell (‘Things Can Only Get Better’, pg106)

What the Right see as political correctness, is things that stop them from being boorish assholes. And the Right love being assholes.

So he was prosecuted for making homophobic comments in front of a police officer. Sounds like a PC story to me!”

And Walter Wolfgang was detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The coppers must really have thought he was a terrorist. Sounds like a terrorism story to me.

The student was arrested for the only thing the copper could think of. I doubt this is a genuine PC Gone Mad story.

But even if it is, it’s one over-zealous fool. That’s what the very few genuine PC Gone Mad stories all boil down to. One idiot somewhere getting above themselves and normally being very swiftly overruled. Political Correctness doesn’t have this stranglehold on the country like everyone thinks it does. The highest paid newspaper commentator is Richard bloody Littlejohn, the Sun is the best selling daily newspaper in the country (and possibly the English speaking world) and to call someone PC is usually considered an insult.

@john b: At least you accept that the incidents under discussion in the Richard Barnbrook thread really happened. In the police horse case, the student was taken to court for making “homophobic comments”, not for wasting police time or something like that, so there was a dimension of political correctness.

WRT the hairdresser, there’s 2 sides to the discrimination argument. Not everyone agrees that the state should interfere in the decision to employ or not to employ of a private business (see post #8).

So he was prosecuted for making homophobic comments in front of a police officer. Sounds like a PC story to me!

– John O’Farrell

Nick: you should read Five Chinese Crackers, who has an excellent archive of tabloid urban mythology.

It depends whether you think that never-ending, monomaniacal raving adds up to more than “some complaints”.

Do you still consider these to be “made up or regurgitated endlessly without source”? If so, how can you justify this?

This guy has written a book hasn’t he which outlines his views.

What exactly do you expect your briefing to contain?

This “truth is somewhere in the middle” point isn’t good enough. MOST of these stories are made up or regurgitated endlessly without source. Its become like a game of chinese whispers by a bunch of kids in an industry that prides itself as the best in the world. And Anthony Browne is not only a cheerleader for this rubbish, but now an advisor to a serious political office. It beggars belief.