Politically correct, but not really right

It’s high time someone points out a chunk of double standard in regards to the buzz phrase “political correctness,” which is being increasingly bandied about in the conservative press.

I myself take issue with political correctness when it involves speaking and behaving in a fashionable manner, contrary to how a person believes to be genuinely correct, albeit short of spewing outright bigoted mean-spirited bile.

However, that also goes for appeasing political correctness on the conservative end of the political spectrum, including one the most severe eggshell walk-inducing topics of all — immediately after a deadly terrorist attack on a friendly target.

The best example of such was the horrific 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist bombing, following which then-new Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau quite daringly suggested to CBC’s Peter Mansbridge that civilized society must look beyond a violent person’s atrocious act and towards the offender’s motivation for doing so — and, yes, maybe even corrupted Western foreign policy — therefore possibly also enabling us to learn how to prevent future offences of the kind.

It seemed too obvious to Trudeau to simply spout the scripted response, perhaps described as: “We’ll give him a fair trial — then we’ll hang him.”

No other federal leader dared to say anything like this, not even Elizabeth May (from whom I’d expected more) nor Mulcair, who seemed to want to say what he truly believed was morally correct, but instead decided to not cross the line of the alternate “political correctness.”

Frank Sterle Jr.

White Rock, B.C.