How Political Correctness Has Turned Our Value System Upside Down

Imagine a woman in a skirt walking into a coffee shop to get a latte and being told the following by the shop owner:

"Do you realize that dressed like that, you are inviting yourself to be sexually assaulted? For example, if you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem, not the cats."

If you were that woman, how would you react? If you were a man standing next to her, would you say anything?

Before you answer these questions, let me ask you one other: Would the shop owner's race or religion affect your feelings on the matter? Would his views be more acceptable to you if he were a certain race or religion?

Call me whacky, but in my view of the world, there are some clearly defined rights and wrongs. And anyone making such a statement would be dead wrong.

Yet these very statements were made yesterday, not by a coffee shop owner but by the top Muslim cleric in Australia, Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly. I don't know what will come of this in Australia but I can guarantee you that if he said such things in Canada, not only would he get away with it, but anyone who condemned him, particularly if they were a right-leaning politician, would quickly get labelled as an insentive racist and bigot by the very same people who would condemn the very same words if spoken by that same politician.

And in a nutshell, that is where political correctness has taken us to in 2006. Ain't progress a wonderful thing?!

Update: Here's an editorial about this from a journalist Down Under.