Let us consider the following incidents that are quite minor but telling:
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My son is applying for a government job and receives a page giving him the name and address of whom to call in case he has been discriminated. Zech is 14.
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I get a new job working with the developmentally disabled and spend 45 minutes signing forms. Just to make sure I got the Employee Handbook, I sign a form saying it is true: I got it. I tell the HR director that this is like closing on a mortgage. It is.
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I am getting delivery of a new John Deere mower, and it is coming off the truck. “Does it have a little gas in it?” I ask, hoping it does so I can drive it into the garage. “No,” the driver says. “They don’t let us ship these with gas. It’s considered to be a hazardous material and we would have to get special training.”
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I’m reading about a retired Delta force general who taught at a college for nine years and was recently discharged for joking, “The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery.” End of story – and his job.
We should be clear about one thing. I’m really not for discrimination, and of course I wouldn’t want Lowes delivery men to get blown up from a few ounces of gas in the tractor, and far be it from me to think that the Employee Handbook should not be validated by me in some fashion, but still: maybe we are going down the road of replacing common sense with dating and signing everything, initializing on the little line, endless notes about everything pertaining to our children, defensive medicine ad nauseum, victimization by all groups somehow and everyone has a constitutional right not to be offended by his neighbor’s behavior.
Welcome to Political Correctness!
What can we say? We might conclude that trust is a thing of the past, and at one time business was done on a handshake. Those days are long gone. And we have exalted the individual’s rights far above the simple injunction of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The result? There will be a bureaucrat in your life or even worse a lawyer, and perhaps someday there will be a knock on the door in the middle of the night because you said something remotely resembling the truth – which of course is very offensive and shall not be tolerated.
Cancer Chronicles 