It’s sweeping the nation. It makes lawyers millions of dollars, while allowing people to wallow in a morass of self-pity and dependency.

So what IS this phenomenon? Political correctness, or “PC-ness”. The intentions of PC-ness were to create equality; a noble if somewhat futile attempt to take out a whole slew of “-isms” (racism, sexism, etc.) with one fell swoop.

The mindset behind PC-ness? Ignore differences. Pretend they aren’t there. PC-ness adopts the out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach when it comes to “-isms” issues.

What does need to be done is the polar opposite of what PC-ness does. Differences, be they racial, gender, religious, etc. need to be acknowledged and accepted, not ignored and discredited.

We need to not only openly recognize and confront difference itself, but problems that arise from difference. PC doesn’t.

We need to remember that equality does not equal sameness. Equality means basic human rights for all individuals, regardless of any specific traits that that person may have. Equality doesn’t try to change people: it is happy to accept them the way they are. Sameness is removing all individual traits from a person so there’s no need for equality. Political correctness promotes sameness, not equality.