Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon As the Cold War faltered and ended, the civilised world breathed a sigh of cautious relief. At incredible expense in lives and hope, rampant socialism had been put back in its box. Before that it had been Hitler, just as expensive to crate and pack away. And so the list goes on.
With the Berlin wall crumbling, some looked with apprehension at the Middle East, imagining hordes of fundamental Muslims trembling in the starting gates. Perhaps communist China was polishing ideas about expansion. Somewhere, someone was going to move in, take up position on the shelf of global lunacy.
They were looking in the wrong direction. The new human scourge had already germinated, first in the minds of obsequious academics more than likely North American ones metastasising to an attendant media, swigged up by feminists, liberals, prodigal do-gooders from every walk of life. It was called political correctness (PC), started as an attempt to expunge so-called gender specific phraseology from the language, but spread from there like a bushfire. PCs cardinal purpose now is to lay waste what remains of independent human communication and endeavour. To bind shackles on thought, wit and joy. No religion has ever tried to limit individual human expression and hope like PC has. The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on this lot.
Whole theses have been written on the PC scourge. It is their latest horror campaign that begs urgent exposure.
Its something called The Sorry Game and its as nauseating as it sounds. Recent skirmishes have been the celebration in Australia of a Sorry Day. White Australians were invited to express remorse at what they had been doing to the Aborigines all these years.
Never mind tears of regret, its practical apology that takes even more curious forms. Aboriginal communities across Australia receive routine grants from the government. They have been given large tracts of land, bought from white farmers and handed over to traditional owners.
The result is a numbing dependency. No need to work, just live on handouts. There has to be a reason for the alcoholism and the idleness. The Sorry Game is biting back in Australia with rural white opinion slipping into bitter racism.
The Sorry Game has now reached our shores and the local PC brigade are firing up. Articles of chaste lubricity appear here and there, enjoining South African whites to start apologising to the black South Africans.
There is much reflection on how such mass apology will help heal the psychological humiliation and degradation of apartheid.
Of course it will. If you believe that humiliating and degrading yourself is the way to do it. Mind you, show me the PC apologist who doesnt enjoy a bit of self- flagellation. I just wish theyd keep their sado-penitence to themselves. If it makes them feel theyre doing something, however far down the line, well and good. PC has already distorted much of English. Now theyre giving a brand new meaning to ASAP: As Sorry As Possible?
Anyway, where do we start? My own blood came to South Africa in 1900. Must my expressions of apology be backdated only that far?
Or am I be expected to take the blame for what all the Van der Stels and Retiefs did to the natives. And what about the Khoi, who were driven out of their traditional lands by African colonialism in the form of marauding Xhosas? Must Nelson Mandela apologise to their descendants?
Not that the original indigenes have much to feel proud about. Remember that Portuguese ship which, in the 1450s, stopped off at the Cape to replenish water supplies? The crew were fallen on by dagga- maddened strandlopers who all but wiped them out. For two centuries after that, Portuguese sailors had to give the Cape a wide berth.
Then there are the practical considerations of saying sorry on a grand scale. Exactly how are we whites going to do all this apologising?
Sorry stickers we can get at the Pick n Pay checkout counters? Something to display on the back window of the car? Perhaps little Sorry ribbons we can wear on our chests,What about a Sorry scratch card competition?
There can be few ways more encouraging genuine remorse for past sins than when theres a chance of a free weekend for two at the Lost City.
As an English commentator observed: The act of contrition may be admirable ; its political consequences are deplorable. In other words what the PC Sorry Game champions seem to forget is that when you piss in a mans pocket its only his leg that gets wet.