Mark Zuckerberg Versus Forest Gump

The world doesn't need more smart people. The world needs more good people. Go to your local McDonald's. A mentally-slow person at the counter will usually try to encourage you with a smile, devoting all the neurons he has to doing a good job, while teenage geniuses "working" in the back pick zits and complain about life.

Political correctness says, "Don't call people retarded." Such rules don't even approach the heart of the matter. Truth is, when we see a mentally-slow person, someone should shout, "Look, there's a retard!" and half of us should run to get his autograph while the other half lay down palm branches for him to walk on. We're not good enough to act like that. So, political correctness says, "Keep thinking you're better than someone else, but use nice words."

I'm an opponent of political correctness, because it substitutes nicety for morality. The effort to encourage sensitive language (defined by context) has some value. Testosterone-laden gorillas like myself do need cleaning up and civilizing from time to time, lest our raucous behavior in the wrong place wound unnecessarily. However, the political correctness I despise is the obsession to fix language while ignoring bigger issues. This extreme seems to say, "Forget about the kids starving in the street, but for decency's sake close the blinds." This sensitivity is more about protecting us from ugly realities than helping those suffering with such realities.

Mark Twain's voice has long cried out against oppression, but now lesser men purge the harsh word "nigger" from his work. This word occurs twice in my book. In some places I write about, people have to undergo desensitivity training just to survive their brutal existence. From the outside looking in, western society appears to seek an artificial paradise, like those who partied in Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of Red Death as plague raged outside the gates. Sometimes hypersensitivity isn't very sensitive. You see, the handicapped and downtrodden of this world deserve compassion - not just a more elegant description.