By Ross Beroff, editorial columnist

After both of my most recent editorials, I have been met with attacks on my character, been called uneducated and a radical and told my words were “disturbing.” In a response to one of my editorials, the author also proved my point by making these assumptions about me. This same author then went on to write another piece, not arguing for her cause, but arguing instead to end all debate on a particular issue.

These emotional responses to my logical arguments do not surprise me. This is part of the greater plague of political correctness that has befallen our society, where all diversity is welcome, except for diversity of ideas.

Political correctness has become a way of shutting down the dialogue on controversial issues under the guise of trying not to offend people, while ignoring the root causes of some issues and letting the problems continue. It has become society’s way of censoring speech.

A great example of this is how it has become unacceptable to refer to Islamic terrorists as Islamic terrorists. They obviously do not represent all Muslims, but a refusal to call them Muslim is the same as a refusal to call the Westboro Baptist Church a Christian group, although there is no moral equivalence between the two. These groups use their own perverted interpretation of their religious beliefs to rationalize their actions, but we ignore the issue because we are too afraid to call them what they are.

It has become unacceptable to call those who illegally crossed our borders, “illegal aliens,” despite them being so by definition. Instead we are expected to refer to them as “undocumented citizens.” They are by all means undocumented, but by no means citizens. There is nothing wrong with immigrating to this country, but ignoring the millions that come illegally just opens the door for millions more in the future and does nothing to reform immigration policy.

Those that preach political correctness do not do so just for the sake of inclusivity or politeness as they may claim. Instead, they hope to end dialogue on all topics that they disagree with to slowly make their point of view the only point of view.

This happens even when the group they claim to be advocating for does not agree. For example, this happens when someone who calls the indigenous people of this country an “Indian,” is immediately called a racist, despite the fact that some of those in that classification prefer “Indian” and reject the term “Native American.”

In further attempts to curb free speech, proponents of political correctness have introduced the concept of micro-aggressions, which is how someone can unconsciously cause someone to feel offended. This is complete nonsense. I cannot offend someone consciously or unconsciously, it is the individual whom my actions or words affect that makes the decision to feel offended.

These micro-aggressions are supposedly only against “any socially marginalized group.” These groups have become so all-encompassing that I must now be so careful with my actions and speech that I do not commit a micro-aggression against someone that is not in a relationship, lest I be guilty of “singlism.” The very existence of the concept of micro-aggressions is just sad, showing how thin skinned many people have become and how they will use that to try and silence anyone with opposing viewpoints.

If the government were to try and censor us there would be uproar, so some in society have found another way. They have become the thought police that George Orwell warned about in 1984, they have become the opponents of the very freedoms that this nation was founded upon, but as Ronald Reagan once said, “those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.”

Those voices certainly do not speak for me, but their attempts to silence me show how there is no greater threat to freedom of speech than the censorship that is political correctness.