At a friend’s baby’s first birthday (can you believe it?) last week, I saw an Irish friend, who recently returned from a visit to the Emerald Isle. I puffed out my cheeks and chirped that it seemed he had brought some potatoes back with him. He laughed and said he had put away a few while he was there.
Another friend sitting next to me was aghast and berated me for making such a remark about someone’s appearance. I protested that he was a friend and wouldn’t take offence, to which he laughingly agreed.
Earlier in the month, I had been castigated by one of my daughters for calling a nephew chubby.
Should we not say what we think ? And why do others feel they need to spring to defend, calling out possible offence?
Much of the current erosion of western values has arisen from the failure to speak out for fear of treading on some sensitivity or other and causing offence.
- So when a few people promote the right of people to choose their own gender and pronoun and demand that the rest of society follow suit, much of society followed suit, without demur.
- When a few students muzzled the Oxford Union, professors obliged.
- When mobs toppled or defaced statues of historical figures, little action was taken.
- When immigrants heckled soldiers’ funerals, little was done.
- When immigrant priests urged defiance and eradication of Jews and supported jihad, governments demurred….
- When foreigners started flooding borders and consuming benefits funded by citizens’ taxes, governments tip toed and hesitated.
Yet, I shouldn’t tell someone he is looking fat!
Resentment festers and if unresolved can erupt. The recent violence n the UK seems to me a clear demonstration of resentment. It is going to take a lot of undoing, because the damage is a cultural wound and those cannot be fixed by decree. Once you have let people in the gate, it is very difficult to get them out and the process involves bloody mauling.
So defy sensitivity and correctness and speak out or you will forever have to hold your tongue.
It is not just a right, it is a duty.
sillysocksonfriday 