I don’t think wearing fur is any worse than eating meat.
my un-pc though is my answer to your question. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parasite
Nobody believes that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. What many people do believe is that many people are led to oppose Israel mostly because of anti-Semitism–and they’re quite right to believe that. The statement “it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel” is itself one of the most defensive and ridiculous tactics critics of Israel use to divert attention away from this fact. The fact that criticizing Israel does not make one anti-Semitic does not imply that criticism of Israel is never, seldom, or even usually motivated by factors other than anti-Semitism.
Regardless of whether or not they really believe it, it certainly often gets treated that way. Disapproval of the policies and behavior of Israel gets slammed with the anti-Semitic label all the time. It’s also usually construed as pro-Palestinian, pro-Muslim, or both.
By whom? Idiots making YouTube comments? Of course there are silly folks who will respond to calm criticism of Israel’s policies with accusations of bigotry, but yet again, there are also silly folks who will say that Israel wants to kill all of the Palestinians, that the Jews secretly caused the 9/11 attacks, and so forth.
Do relatively serious intellectuals–for example, the sort of people who might post on the SDMB–frequently shout “anti-Semitism!” in response to seemingly legitimate criticism of Israel? No, they don’t. Those supporters of Israel who take philosophical and political issues seriously–as I do–are generally quite aware of the distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. The notion that we do not is, as I said, usually born out of a desire to keep hidden the anti-Semitism at the root of some criticism of Israel.
Criticism of Israel usually does come from a pro-Palestinian and/or pro-Muslim standpoint, if not an explicitly Islamic standpoint. I haven’t met too many people who have many negative things to say about both the behaviors of Israel as a state and the behaviors of the Palestinians as a group and National Authority.
Yes they do, all the time. That’s a standard feature of threads that touch on anything Israel does.
I on the other hand know quite a few people who have the attitude of “a plague on both their houses”. Yet the usual response to such a position is flat out denial that it is possible; if you don’t like what one side is doing, you must be a partisan of the other.
Well, since we are basing our claims largely on our personal experiences with debates on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I can only say that my experience has been to the contrary. In my experience, supporters of Palestine say “it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel” even though their opponents to not believe otherwise, and very few people have an “a plague on both their houses” attitude. But maybe your experiences reflect general trends more than mine do.
The utterly circular reasoning in the paragraph above makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if we are talking about (and we are in this context) western, and specifically US critiques, of Israel’s behavior as a nation state.
Western political critiques of Israel are not primarily, or even secondarily because the critics are a pack of Jew haters (many are in fact Jews themselves), but mainly because there is the overwhelming perception that US-Israeli relations are characterized by a high level of bad faith on the part of the Israeli political establishment in negotiations surrounding the question of the occupied territories, and in a more general sense Israel’s claim to a special relationship with the US when it regularly abuses that trust in the most egregious ways with seemingly no shame or remorse at all.
This behavior, which is quite rational for a self interested, realpolitiking nation state that another nation would deal with at the typical arm’s length remove of mutual self interest, sits alongside the reality that Israel does in fact have a “special” historical and virtually personal relationship with the US, and squeezes that sentiment for the maximum political leverage possible in achieving it’s ends which are not always in sync with the best interests of the US.
Trying to push these western critiques into the realm of “Our critics aren’t all anti-Semites, but they are led to criticize us mostly by anti-Semites” is self serving nonsense. With respect to it’s US relationship Israel behaves a good deal of the time like an extremely manipulative and entitled “partner”. Israel wants the full freedom to operate as a nation-state looking after it’s self interest, and at the same time be free from criticism of it’s less reputable behavior. Toward that end it has, seemingly, no compunctions in employing it’s internal network of influence in the US to use the US like a finger puppet in achieving those goals.
In the long run this will not be a good thing for the US.
I consider myself pretty PC, but here are a couple that I find myself thinking on a bad day, to throw into the mix…
Nothing against religious people, but if you are going to dedicate your life to believing in ancient texts and stories with no evidence whatsoever, I don’t believe you are qualified to vote. If you are going to participate in the whole democratic process, you should be able to differentiate between real things, and things that don’t exist.
Not just the religious either. If you are voting because you think a candidate is particularly charismatic, then you probably shouldn’t either. This whole “you must use your vote, because people died to make sure you got one” idea doesn’t account for stupid people. If you don’t actually have an opinion, and you are only voting because someone told you you should, then you probably shouldn’t.
Also, if you want to save the earth from environmental meltdown, there is only one way. The human population needs to be drastically reduced. I’m not advocating rounding people up into death camps, but sooner or later, procreation will have to become a privilege, not a right.
This might be a doozy, but I tend to think that aspects of the Civil Rights movement, as it actually developed and evolved, probably weakened American civilization and had some very negative and perhaps avoidable repercussions in the black community especially. Not that it wasn’t the absolutely correct thing in principle, not that it it shouldn’t have been done, but the way it was done might not have been for the best.
In education, for example, it’s one thing to point out that “separate but equal” schools were a sham and a monstrous injustice; but it’s disingenuous to pretend that a century’s worth of subpar education levels could be undone overnight via rapid, forced school integration, and to pretend that the educational mission wouldn’t be set back among both blacks and whites as a result. But could it have been carried out any other way? I don’t know.
BTW, as far as defining “un-PC”, in this thread I notice some folks taking pride in unpopular views they adopt with gleeful defiance, and others who regretfully come to believe an unpopular view while wishing it wasn’t true. You can put me in the latter camp.
Bear in mind you are looking at this with the benefit of a 20-20 after the fact historical view. I don’t know that anyone today (especially not blacks) considers forced busing to have been a perfect solution, or even, in retrospect, a particularly desirable scenario. Forced busing for blacks was just as big a PITA as it was for whites.
Take the wayback machine to the mid 50’s to early 60’s. You want to bring the black kids up to speed. What’s your 60’s solution? It’s the 60’s. It’s the space age. Anything is possible. Limits have no meaning. You know white schools have lots more resources than black schools. What’s your space age solution skinny tie 60’s man?
-Religious organizations should pay taxes. Let them take deductions for charitable works/contributions, otherwise pay up. It’s not like there’s a church shortage or anything.
-Why should having children entitle anyone to tax deductions? If anything, NOT having children should qualify you for a tax deduction, but I’ll settle for no child-related deductions. I have no problem with my tax dollars that go to schools and other child related expenses for the common welfare, but after all those indirect costs that are subsidized, why should parents be entitled to even more direct benefits? Yes, children are expensive (that’s one reason I don’t want any) and they should probably be even more so. If someday in the future, not enough children are being born, then we can revisit providing tax incentives.
So we can put you guys back in camps again? Awesome! (how very un PC) 
When she was pregnant I mentioned to my wife a few times that she had a cute parasite growing inside her. She pointed out that it would continue to feed off us for at least 18 years. *That’s *why I married her!
The thing that makes the Arabic Islamic states dangerous isn’t Islam, it’s their tendency to blame others for their own shortcomings. Isreal and American are the Great Monsters which are keeping the Arab people DOWN man! Such a lie. If the Germans or Russians had won World War II most of the Middle East would be dirt poor, watching their oil being piped out of the country through barbed wire fences. The Arab states are rich because the Western states, while hungry to extract the oil, played by the rules when OPEC was formed and ponied up. The reason so many Arabs are dirt poor is that the oil wealth is concentrated at the top of Arab society, surprise, surprise. The Arabs should be going after their own governments, not Israel and the US. Look at those rich baboon princes they have in so many nations. They would be laughingstocks if they were poor.
And yes, Israel uses the US like a finger puppet and our leaders put up with it cause there is a very well developed Israeli influence in the US that our politicians are right to be afraid of. It would be very good for the US if that influence was broken, not so good for Israel.
The reason that we have all these desperately poor people emigrating from Central and South America is that their culture leads the people who run thing to not give the poor any kind of break at all. America has acted oppressively toward our Latin American neighbors on many occasions, but the root cause is the culture, not the US. Bright side is, we are getting an awful lot of hard-working, ambitious Latinos here, I expect great things of their educated kids.
Most of the notable differences between human population groups, over which our entire society incessantly frets, differences good, bad, and neutral–Asians being good at math, blacks being more prone to criminality, blacks being good athletes, Jews being good at managing money and having a predilection towards media, women being not as good at math/science than men but more emotionally driven and more nurturing, the general inability of any groups other than whites and Asians to build and sustain first-world societies–are due not to environment, as is currently taken as an article of faith, but to genetics, and thus can never be eliminated through any amount of social engineering. Sooner or later this will become the majority view and we will simply accept living in an unequal world.
This sums up my feelings exactly. Israel is one of the most Machiavellian nations on earth, shamelessly exploiting her sugar-daddy (the US) for all it’s worth, while treating like Palestinians pretty much like the US treated Native Americans in the 18th century: as a bunch of barely-human creatures who don’t have any rights that you need to worry about.
And just so you know, I’m not pro-Palestinian, and in fact I’m anti-Muslim on most issues.
For consideration, here’ one person’s version of the genesis of political correctness from the “Accuracy in Academia” site:
Yikes!
I just became pro-choice on Saturday. My belief, which may or may not be PC, is that if there’s debate over whether or not abortion is killing someone, you count it as murder until you can decisively say that it’s not.
But in the ER on Saturday, I saw a 34 year old woman who was, among other things, paralyzed from the waist down, blind, and had the mental capacity of a six-month old. Her condition was due to cerebral dysgenesis, a condition that can usually be detected in a sonogram in utero. It’s only a very slight exaggeration to say that this woman can’t see, move, or think. Situations like that can merit abortion.