Western civilization’s ever increasing self loathing as evidenced by the rise of political correctness over the last twenty years struck one of its lowest points this past weekend in the Isle of Wight, the United Kingdom with the arrest of singer Simon Ledger for publicly performing the 1974 Carl Douglas #1 hit song “Kung Fu Fighting”. To the reasonable and sane it boggles the mind how a performance of any top 40 song could lead to an arrest, but apparently Mr. Ledger had the misfortune of performing this crowd favorite as two people of Chinese origin were walking by, and of course how else could this performance be construed but as a form of racial abuse. Having been faced with this supposedly racially motivated musical assault a complaint was filed with the police and Mr. Ledger and his offensive voice were promptly arrested that very evening. No doubt the racial and ethnic minority communities of the United Kingdom gave a collective sigh of relief to know that this dangerous vocalist and his vitriolic lyrics were placed behind bars even if only until he made bail.
Friends in case you have not said it already, allow me to say it for you: WTF?!
In my short lifetime I have witnessed the Western World devolve from a people proud of our collective contributions to humanity over the last two thousand years to a people raised instead to focus on every real or imagined sin committed by our ancestors. So ashamed are we now supposed to be that we can only make amends by groveling at the feet of the rest of the world and loudly crying “mea culpa”; the results are not surprising. The West no longer commands the respect of the world and has invited instead the disdain and hostility of peoples who once aspired to either live among us or bring the best we had to offer to their own people. It is a sad truth about humanity that if you give an inch people will take a mile. Now that we shun the hard earned laurels of our ancestors is it any surprise that there are those people who wish to press the advantage and overtake us?
Simon Ledger’s arrest, though simultaneously comical and sad, is a warning signal. It is, as he himself said, “political correctness gone potty”, but the fact is that political correctness has always been only worthy of the toilet. It is one thing to be sensitive to the feelings of people and quite another to encourage people to be oversensitive to the point where they seek out personal slights. As Americans we most likely laugh at this incident confident that it could never happen here, but are we not seeing variations of that every day in the media? In a time and place where just the act of dissenting with President Obama can earn one the label of racist are we perhaps not even more far gone than what happened to Simon Ledger? Before anyone in this country thinks with smug certainness “that could never happen here” I would suggest it already is.
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