Opinion

I am concerned about a current tendency to confuse privately held opinions, shared between correspondents or confidantes, and public declarations. I am noticing frequent, slow-newsday pieces in the media about leaked emails, which were never meant to be public information. Usually, these emails have something to do with gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality.

A person thinks such-and-such about gay people, for instance, as expressed to a friend or colleague in a private message. Someone gets hold of this by someone else pressing "Reply All" when responding to the email or by some other thoughtless mistake or by some malicious intent to settle a score. Suddenly, the person who wrote the email or made the comment is subjected to public shaming by a press conference held by some anti-defamation group, to whom the email has been sent or comment repeated.

If we all start having the same opinion about everyone and everything, there will be no room for constructive criticism in our culture. Without constructive criticism, we will stagnate and get more stupid than we already are. This is the nightmare of political correctness, which seems to be endlessly encroaching upon society's tolerance for varied or eccentric opinion.

The issue which does not get addressed often enough in these instances is the total lack of ethical accountability on the part of the leakers of private information to public media. In an era when most people rail against privacy violations when it is inconvenient for them, I find it rather hypocritical that these same people salivate over the opportunity to throw stones at someone whose private correspondence is exposed and found to be politically (conformistly) incorrect.

This is all very immature and unconstructive. If you wish to encourage sound, progressive dialogue on issues of difference between people, this type of mob shaming through politically correct media press conferences, based on purloined documents which violate a person's right to privacy, is as offensive, in my opinion, as saying the "f" word or the "q' word or the "n" word. It is the adult form of school-yard, "gotcha" bullying. It accomplishes nothing positive.

Pluralism

---a social organization in which diversity of racial or religious or ethnic or cultural groups is tolerated
---the doctrine that reality consists of several basic substances or elements
---the practice of one person holding more than one benefice at a time

source: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The current political and social climate in the U.S. is fraught with contention and polarity. The concept of bipartisanship in Congress is spoken of as a mythical Holy Grail. Social issues of gay-vs-straight marriage, religious-vs-atheist thought, color-vs-white racialism, native-vs-immigrant citizenship threaten to mire progress for all on any social or economic problems.

Pluralism, as defined above, is seen by some as a remedy for this dichotomy-based quagmire. In other words, "Can't we all just get along?" I tend to agree, to a point. My ongoing question is this: When does pluralism blur into moral/ethical equivocation, as definition below? This is the inherent challenge of pluralism, in my opinion.

---evasion: a statement that is not literally false but that cleverly avoids an unpleasant truth
---intentionally vague or ambiguous
source:wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

So, it is my practice to carefully gauge pluralist rhetoric against a standard of universal human rights and global peace. For example, while I do not feel it is my place to determine whether or not an adult woman wears a head scarf or a nose ring, I do feel it is my responsibility to stand against these symbols when they mask misogyny and the abuse of women's rights of choice over their own bodies. In other words, while accepted as cultural markers, they must also be open to frank inquiry and discussion in a free pluralistic society.

Pluralism has been used in Neo-Liberal circles as a leveling method to create a Big Tent for progressive political movement. But, the Neo-Liberal line often drifts into equivocation as a way to avoid political dissension in the ranks. This sabotages its own effectiveness as a political philosophy. The free market in Reaganite capitalism often thrives on the abuse of social responsibility and individual rights, for example. This is at the core of the current unpopularity of the Obama administration's Neo-Liberal approach to the financial capitalists who have brought on the current economic collapse.

Progress means change. Change often necessitates choosing between those things which are functional and just over those things which are not. Stagnant pluralism can be a drag on change for this simple reason. Pluralism, to be effective at promoting human rights and global peace, must also be dynamic, ever evolving, always examined. This is very hard work, but it can be less bloody and more effective at getting us to where our core human values guide us.