When Prime Minister Paul Martin just couldn't bring himself to utter the word "Christmas" last Sunday while out buying a Christmas wreath, I chuckled and put it down to another example of political correctness run amok. But a wise friend of mine had a better phrase to describe it. He called it an example of "the inversion of tyranny." More about that in a moment, but for those of you who missed it, Martin was purchasing a Christmas wreath for his family farm last week with the media in tow for the requisite photo-op. After he had made his choice, a reporter jokingly asked him, while the news cameras were rolling, whether it was "a Christmas wreath or a holiday wreath." Simple question. Martin's reaction? You know how a deer looks when it's caught in the headlights just before a truck hits it? That's what our 21st prime minister looked like. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence in which you could see Martin struggling to come up with a safe, inoffensive and politically correct answer, he finally blurted out: "It's a $240 wreath!" Ha, ha, ha.
How sad. Our prime minister, a grown man of 67, a Christian (Catholic) and a successful businessman before he entered politics, can't bring himself to utter the word "Christmas" in the context of buying his own family a Christmas wreath. To be sure, it's a fitting punishment for him, because no political party in Canada, with the possible exception of the NDP, worships more at the shrine of political correctness than the Liberals. But how is this an example of an "inversion of tyranny"?
As my good friend explains it, the goal of the practitioners of political correctness, with their constant psycho-babble about using the language of "inclusiveness" to make minorities feel welcome, has never really been about making minorities feel welcome or comfortable at all. Rather, it is aimed at making the majority feel uncomfortable. The pretext these folks use -- be they government human rights officers, self-appointed and perpetually aggrieved spokespeople for various "minority" groups, befuddled bureaucrats and cowed politicians -- is that all they are trying to do is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. But their real goal, far from promoting genuine understanding between the majority and the minority, is simply to exchange one form of tyranny for another -- to replace the tyranny of the majority with the tyranny of the minority. Hence, an inversion of tyrannies.