To the point: life is not a pony farm
Balanced and unemotional (another one of those “unwords”)—that’s how all public statements are expected to be. Whether politicians, journalists, managers, civil servants, or social workers (note the gender!)—everyone must conform to political correctness. Woe betide anyone who ever utters a clear, direct word.
Woe betide when a person with an immigrant background suddenly becomes a foreigner and a young person with little education becomes an uneducated lad. Then the howls of the political correctness adepts can be heard.
When Frank A. Meyer castigates the excesses of Islam, there is immediately a criminal complaint. The fundamentalists (is it even allowed to say that anymore?) feel "massively denigrated" by statements in his column "In the name of freedom". The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) has therefore filed a criminal complaint against Frank A. Meyer with the Examining Magistrate's Office Bern-Mittelland - for possible violation of the "criminal norm on racism".
Sarrazin, the social-democratic former German senator from Berlin and current member of the board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, has long shunned political correctness and spoken plainly. Even in his Berlin days, he was regarded as a provocateur who often offended with statements that were true in essence but undiplomatically formulated. His interview in the cultural magazine Lettre International last September just went one better. The culmination of the provocation was then reached with the publication of his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab.
Reproaches hailed from the left and the right. The German Chancellor felt obliged to make public her negative judgment of his book. The chairman of the Bundesbank asked the German president to dismiss the unpopular lateral thinker. The political exponents were outraged, the presenters in the various talk shows indignant, only the dumb people accepted his theses. This immediately led to another outcry, because it meant that the evil intellectual could also be called a populist.
All the outraged reactions are not exactly evidence of intelligence. Instead of justified criticism of certain statements, the author is condemned, and one feels transported back to the times of censorship and book indexes. In any liberal country, freedom of expression is an important asset that must be respected. Even when the tone does not fit into the feel-good atmosphere that is common today.
Thank God, there are still people who are not afraid to tell uncomfortable truths in an unvarnished way.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
When Frank A. Meyer castigates the excesses of Islam, there is immediately a criminal complaint. The fundamentalists (is it even allowed to say that anymore?) feel "massively denigrated" by statements in his column "In the name of freedom". The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) has therefore filed a criminal complaint against Frank A. Meyer with the Examining Magistrate's Office Bern-Mittelland - for possible violation of the "criminal norm on racism".
Sarrazin, the social-democratic former German senator from Berlin and current member of the board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, has long shunned political correctness and spoken plainly. Even in his Berlin days, he was regarded as a provocateur who often offended with statements that were true in essence but undiplomatically formulated. His interview in the cultural magazine Lettre International last September just went one better. The culmination of the provocation was then reached with the publication of his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab.
Reproaches hailed from the left and the right. The German Chancellor felt obliged to make public her negative judgment of his book. The chairman of the Bundesbank asked the German president to dismiss the unpopular lateral thinker. The political exponents were outraged, the presenters in the various talk shows indignant, only the dumb people accepted his theses. This immediately led to another outcry, because it meant that the evil intellectual could also be called a populist.
All the outraged reactions are not exactly evidence of intelligence. Instead of justified criticism of certain statements, the author is condemned, and one feels transported back to the times of censorship and book indexes. In any liberal country, freedom of expression is an important asset that must be respected. Even when the tone does not fit into the feel-good atmosphere that is common today.
Thank God, there are still people who are not afraid to tell uncomfortable truths in an unvarnished way.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
