Peggy Noonan dispels all the politically correct posturing and moralizing cant with some simple wisdom.

Here is what has been said the past week or so that sparked argument: Bill Maher, on HBO, said a lot of lives would be saved if Vice President Cheney had died, and Ann Coulter, at a conservative political meeting, suggested John Edwards is a “faggot.”

She was trying to be funny and get a laugh. He was trying to startle and get applause.

What followed was the predictable kabuki in which politically active groups and individuals feigned dismay as opposed to what many of them really felt, which was grim delight. Conservatives said they were chilled by Mr. Maher’s comments, but I don’t think they were. They were delighted he revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern liberalism, which is hate.

Liberals amused themselves making believe they were chilled by Ms. Coulter’s remarks, but they were not. They were delighted she has revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern conservatism, which is hate.

The truth is many liberals were dismayed by Mr. Maher because he made them look bad, and many conservatives were mad at Ms. Coulter for the same reason…

One of the clearest statements ever about the implied limits of legitimate political discourse was made by the imprisoned Socrates in his first dialogue with Crito, when he said, “That’s not nice.” Actually, it was your grandmother who said “That’s not nice.” She’s the one who probably taught you the wince. It is her wisdom, encapsulated in those three simple words, that is missing from the current debate.

We tie ourselves in knots trying to explain why it is, or why it isn’t, always or occasionally, helpful or destructive to use various epithets, or give full voice to our resentments. But the simple wisdom of Grandma– “That’s not nice”–is a good guide. (I should say that when I was a kid, grandmas were older people who had common sense. They had observed something of people, had experienced life directly, not only through books or TV. Almost all of them had religious faith, and had absorbed the teachings of the Bible. Almost all of them sat quietly at the kitchen table, and even when I was a kid they were considered old fashioned. They were often ethnic and had accents. As a matter of fact, all of them were.)

I think that as America has grown more academic or aware of education, the wisdom of Grandma has been denigrated. Or ignored. Or stolen and dressed up as something else…

Part of the reason is that Grandma had more sway in the public sphere 50 years ago, which is to say common sense and a sense of decorum had more sway. Another part is that privately people felt they had more room to think or say whatever they wanted without being shamed or shunned. It let the steam out. We think of the 1950s as buttoned up, but in a way America had more give then. Men were understood not to be angels.

Our country now puts less of an emphasis on public decorum, courtliness, self-discipline, decency. America no longer says, “That’s not nice.” It doesn’t want to make value judgments on “good” and “bad.” We have come to rely on censorship to maintain decorum. We are very good at letting people know that if they say something we don’t like, we’ll shame them and shun them, even ruin them.

But censorship doesn’t make people improve themselves; it makes people want to rebel. It tells them to toe the line or pay a price. People who are urged in the right direction and taught in the right direction will usually try to discipline and improve themselves from within. But they do not enjoy censorship from without. They fight back. They are rude in order to show they are unbroken.

This is human. And Grandma would have understood this, too.

I think the atmosphere of political correctness is now experienced by normal people–not people who speak on TV, but normal people–as so oppressive, so demanding of constant self-policing, that when someone says something in public that is truly not nice, not nice at all, they can’t help but feel that they are witnessing a prison break.
As long as political correctness reigns, the more antic among us will try to break out with great streams of Tourette’s-like forbidden words and ideas.

We should forbid less and demand more. We should exert less pressure from without and encourage more discipline from within. We should ask people to be dignified, hope they’ll be generous, expect them to be fair. When they’re not, we should correct them. But we shouldn’t beat them to a pulp. Because that’s not nice.

Read the whole thing.

The town council of Herouxville, Quebec in response to Islamic immigration passed for public information a declaration of local social norms, which among other things declares:

French version

English translation

nous considérons comme hors norme.., tels le fait de tuer les femmes par lapidation sur la place publique ou en les faisant brûler vives, les brûler avec de l’acide, les exciser etc.

Their English translation was slightly bowdlerized (doubtless to spare the tender sensibilities of liberal Anglophone Canadians) thusly:

we consider that killing women in public beatings, or burning them alive are not part of our standards of life.

But what it really says is:

we regard as contrary to conventional behavior, such activities as killing women by public stonings or by burning them alive, or burning them with acid, circumsizing them, and so on.

The BBC reports that Canadian Muslims are insulted. Of course they are. How do you suppose residents of Quebec can possibly imagine that anyone would do such atrocious things?

The Australian reports: Addressing an audience of schoolchildren in Brisbane, Australia, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, suffused with indignation at the violence in the Middle East, confessed, “Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.”

John Lofton notes some of the ironies of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts sitting in judgement on Samuel Alito’s ethics and integrity:

Kennedy among other things:

— Was suspended from Harvard because of cheating when he was caught getting another student to take a Spanish test for him.

— Had his father get his Army duty changed to two years from the four years he signed up for. He ended up a guard at NATO headquarters in Paris rather than in Korea where a war was going on.

— Was turned down by Harvard Law School because of poor grades.

— Was arrested four times, while a student at the University of Virginia, for reckless driving, racing with a cop to avoid arrest and for operating a vehicle without a license.

MARY JO KOPECHNE might have been saved if help summoned immediately, according to underwater diver who retrieved her body— Killed a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, by driving her off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. Following this “accident,” which was, arguably, negligent homicide, Kennedy made 17 credit card phone calls. But it was not until the 18th phone call, nine hours after his car ran off this bridge, that Kennedy reported this “accident.” The frogman who retrieved the dead girl’s body said that he believed she might have been saved if help had been summoned immediately. Kennedy received a two-month suspended sentence, serving no time in jail.

The Guardian reports that a Florida Disney-owned hotel had booked some very non-family-friendly New Year’s activity, but failed to either warn ordinary guests, or keep the naughtiness out of sight.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Some teenage soccer players and their parents saw more sights than they wanted when they stayed at a hotel where about 200 swingers were having a New Year’s party.

Paul Camporini brought his wife, seventh-grade daughter and eighth-grade son from Safety Harbor and said he had to “delicately explain to my Catholic school children that swingers change partners during the evening.”

“My biggest gripe is that the hotel had two distinctly different groups under the same roof,” said Camporini, 49. “A soccer team and middle-aged swingers should not have been booked together.”

The families said the sexually adventurous partygoers sometimes flashed breasts and bare buttocks in front of the children as they sashayed through the hotel atrium. The parents described the dress at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-Airport in Orlando as “raunchy, despicable and worse than prostitutes.”

“The kids could see through the glass atrium into the ballroom where naked people were dancing. There were exposed breasts, thongs and see-through dresses on women who were not wearing any underwear.”

FitzJames Stephen would have predicted all this. The problem with tolerating private vice, it seems, is that its practioners all too frequently will be accorded the proverbial inch, and then proceed to take a mile. Granted liberty behind closed doors, they will invade the public space with celebrations of their life-style and displays of exhibitionism.