By George Leef
Saturday, February 25, 2023
In this AIER
article, Professor Don Boudreaux reflects on the childish characteristics
of the people who insist that they are “woke.”
One example he gives is the way they are so obsessed with
“bad” language. Boudreaux writes:
Ever-vigilant against the use of
naughty words, the woke are just as immature as were my prissy grade-school
classmates. And the woke are also just as ignorant of the meaning of words – as
was revealed several years ago when an aide to then-DC-Mayor Anthony Williams
was forced to resign after being accused of uttering a racial smear when he
used the word “niggardly” in a conversation about funding.
Actually, the woke are worse than
even my most hyper-sensitive schoolmates. Unlike my schoolmates, who I don’t
recall ever consciously manufacturing pretenses to be offended by language, the
woke are master craftsmen – sorry, master craftspeople – of such pretenses. For
evidence look no further than the recent tweet from the AP’s Stylebook that “We
recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the
poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated.’”
To Boudreaux’s examples, I’d add the inability to
contemplate unintended secondary consequences of actions. All they think about
is the present — what Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One” thinking.
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