SheaNC-I don’t necessarily think that your two concepts are mutually exclusive. We CAN have both universal values (common sense) and individual preferences (free choice) at the same time. We just have to recognize the difference and not legislate the preferences.

Second Hand- I agree and disagree. I don’t think I have to be tolerant of murderers OR their ideas, but I should be tolerant of atheists AND their ideas.

The point of PC is not that it spares people’s feelings as much as it obfuscates the realities of the issue in an effort to draw away attention. This is what is unacceptable to me. And yes, education is always the key.

The idea of common sense is one that opens a debate between the simple but opposite beliefs that 1) there is a comon thread of values-based logic that connects us all; vs. 2) individual values are too subjective to allow such a thing as common sense.

I believe that both these can be applied (no, really, I can make sense of this), but one develops into the other from the bottom up. That is, there are fundamental values (food, shelter, and the like), but the peoples’ complexity creates deviations and dramatic differences, so that one person’s commons sense becomes another’s absurdity.

Maybe I am too pessimistic (that’s what I’ve been told). I still hold out hope for humanity, and the rest of the planet’s occupants.

Thanks, I appreciate your interest.
Of course, you are right that changes like the kind I advocate will take many years to occur before the problems of our past can be corrected. But what I think you might be missing is the idea that I am not intending these messages to be embraced by just a small portion of the disaffected. My greatest hope is that anyone (left, right, or whatever) who reads these posts would find the underlying premise valuable enough to be worthy of more immediate action. Wishful thinking I know, but until you show a possible method of rapid change you do remain in the quagmire.

kg