I agree with 48Highlander, it's censorship at it's most basic level. And it's most insidious level. It offends me that people waste oxygen worrying about what we call the big steel plate that covers the sewer access in the middle of the street. Or what we call the radio controlled airplane that takes pictures of the villains. Can I call them villains, or are they just differently moralled?
I'm not old by any stretch of the imagination but even I can remember a time in this country, where we were proud that people could spout the most hateful, despicable, vile crap. Not because we agreed with anything they said, but because their ability to say it, meant that we were a free people. IE:"I may not like what he has to say, but I will fight to the death his right to say it." It used to be that if you disagreed with someone, you either, exercised your right to free speech and offered debate, or simply stopped listening. It used to be the Right to Free Speech, not the Right to Not Hear Stuff You Don't Agree With. Lately it seems to me that the only debate that is offered, is that an idea offends. As if this is enough.
A democratic society should have it's values defined by that society, recorded by government, and enforced by the courts. Instead, it seems to me that we are having values defined by the fringes of society, and enforced by they courts in the name of human rights legislation.
Now I agree that "educators" should not be allowed to extole the virtues of National Socialism, or expound on the threat that the Jewish people offer to "Aryan civilisation" to young captive classroom audiences. But that is why we have curriculum's in our schools.
If you don't like what a politician has to say hold him or her to account at the ballot box. Anyone else, debate them, or ignore them, but don't infringe on their right air their viewpoint.
It seems that Political Correctness hacks are trying to shape society into some kind of homogeneous, oppressive, Orwellian Utopia, where conflict is unknown, because competing ideas and speech are not tolerated, as they might "offend". In a country as ethnically and culturally diverse as Canada, this is a pipe dream. Conflict is guaranteed. But this is good.
Societies that do not allow new debate over new and fresh, and maybe offensive ideas, will stagnate and rot.
We seem to have lost the ability to Agree to Disagree. To respect the opinions of others. And as a result a conformist mindset seems to have set in. We as a society can in no way benefit from this.
The only way to combat this, IMHO is to call it what it is, censorship.
I guess that's just my $0.02
Final Note: Just so that there is no misunderstanding, I DO NOT think that there are any virtues to National Socialism, or that the Jewish people offer any kind of threat to anyone.
. In a true google fashion, as best as I can tell the Americans started using the term uninhabited aerial vehicle as far back as 2001 and perhaps 1994. I'm quite sure that the Canadian government's penchant for political correctness did not influence the US. As to the term infanteer, it has been around at least since WWII and examples are listed for the infantry branches of several countries around the world. The members with and without members may or may not be actual fact, it's hard to google that quote. If the editorial was written to make us b**ch, it worked. :
