There’s No Right Not to be Offended

There’s nothing wrong with being offended by an argument but everything wrong with asserting a “right” not to be so offended. When this notional right is combined with the suggestion that the offending writer be punished or blackballed or, as seems to be possible these days, reported to the police we find ourselves in a place in which freedom of speech is honoured as an abstract, even hypothetical, concept but severely circumscribed in reality.

That’s one consequence of the modern mania for asserting victimhood. If political correctness – surely as redundant a term these days as multiculturalism – means anything it asks that we honour the spirit of the good book’s invocation to do unto others as we would have done unto us. It does not mean protecting some groups from criticism or shielding them from hurly-burly of the public square. Too often, however, it’s viewed as a way of combatting “privilege” by awarding greater privileges to one group based on their minority or supposed underdog status.