The Boundaries of Freedom and Political Correctness

The debates referring to the boundaries of freedom (in a context wherein the philosophy of rights has to deal with conservative reactions that evoke duties and obligations, civic responsibility and “political correctness”) represent a new kind of philosophical-legal “fashion”, which helps in the shaping of a special type of social control. It attempts to move people away from their old habits, beliefs and mind sets in order to make them “consume” ideas, values and behavioural standards agreed upon by the political power that has proclaimed itself as “democratic” and concerned with the faith of Humankind. Among the items of “political correctness” we identify the adoption of Manichean clichés in understanding the world, the hypostatization of the Western model of democracy, the “embarrassment” with belonging to a majority, Christian and heterosexual, correlated with the “positive discrimination” of minorities, the recalibration of behaviours according to the new “values” and self-censorship in expressing ideas.