Political correctness is something that should be acknowledged as a threat to society.

I apologise, I've become quite busy suddenly and thus my time is very limited. I will, however, provide this respnose (I should note that I ran out of space, and so I cut a bit out): 1. You cite Newsmax as some sort of authoritative source for anything. It would be akin to me citing the People's Daily, but regardless of that, the contents itself is irrelevant: Whether or not political correctness is "Marxist" in origin or not is a simple attempt at poisoning the well ("PC is marxist! You don't want to be MARXIST, do you?") which ignores the logic of the argument in favour of superficialities. Child labour laws are also Marxist, but most of us can overlook that fact because the idea of such laws is good. 2. Cultural expectations can include anything from "One wears clothing when one goes out" to "In a debate, one doesn't insult the opponent.". Conformity in this sense is good because it provides us with the foundations of society: if we all simply acted as our base-passions directed us to with no thought for anyone else, society itself could not collapse as everyone begins to attempt to impose their will. By equalising things in this manner, people are able to interact on the same level, opening the doors for art, science, and other human endeavours. 3. But if you did not act in a polite manner, those around you would have a very negative disposition and would likely act to punish you for your impoliteness. For instance, there are no actual harms to going up to your professor and implying certain things about their mother, but it is extremely impolite and interferes with the ability of the academic society to progress, and thus your professor would likely react in a negative fashion. There is no moral difference between "Don't use the n word to refer to people of colour", "Don't make insinuations about your professor's mother", "Don't but in line", "Don't laugh at a disabled person"...they are all forms of "politeness" or "political correctness". 4. You reference to things like SB777 in California. Having read the contents of that bill, however, I see nothing that would lead to the harms you state; it appears to deal solely with discrimination in education. For future reference, I ought to note that neither Newsmax nor WND are regarded as particularly accurate, impartial, or intelligent sources of information. 5. Politeness very often has negative outcomes! Politeness often results in information being lost as two parties attempt to be as polite as the society expects them to be, and that loss of information can result in troubles in relationships, misunderstood instructions, and the like. You are creating an arbitrary standard between "politeness" and "political correctness" - whereas the former is apparently defined in a manner as "acting in a manner that is in conformity to the expectations of proper society", and the latter seems to be "saying things I don't like", when in fact the former definition seems to be a quite acceptable one for "political correctness". 6. There are a great many situations where one doesn't act as one does in the home! In my home, I wear extremely informal clothing, crack inappropriate jokes, eat like a slob, and generally behave in a very informal manner. At school or work, I obviously do not such thing because that would be extremely socially inappropriate. These conventions exist because, if people were to act in such a manner, business could not get done. So too is the case similar with honesty: Let us use a more relevant example. Suppose your boss is gay. Whatever you may feel, it would be against politeness (and, thus, "political correctness") to then address your boss with a sexual slur. You *can* do it - nobody is saying this is not permitted behaviour. However, it is not politically correct/polite to do so, as those around you will likely take some form of action to punish you (even if that just means a disapproving glare). You have not demonstrated how society asking you to address your gay boss with "Sir" or "Ma'am" rather than an anti-gay slur is a "threat to society". 7. You say that, no matter the definition, it is a tool to harm us. This demonstrates that you aren't really even thinking about the subject at all: the definition of political correctness is obviously of paramount importance when we discuss whether political correctness is a threat to society. You have pre-judged a term without meaning as automatically conforming to your worldview. 8. Can you demonstrate the harms of taking "under God" out of the pledge? The only harms that seem to result is people getting upset - that is, people getting upset because to take under God out of the pledge is not politically correct. All you have demonstrated is that you have a wildly inconsistent definition of PC (though you have also stated that you don't even care about the definition, since you know - on faith? - that PC is bad). What it boils down to is that you label anything that you don't like as "political correctness", while refusing to label the exact same things for positions that you DO like as being PC. 'Under God' has no apprecialbe effect on anything that matters in this country whatsoever, whether ti is in the pledge or not, but removing it offends people's Christian sensibilities...this is no different than offending the sensibilities of gay people. You fail to demonstrate why there is any division whatsoever between "political correctness" and "politeness": Both seem to involve self-censorship for purposes of increasing social cohesion. Whether it is opening a door for someone, saying "God bless you" after someone sneezes, refraining from commenting on someone's hideous choice of fashion, not bringing attention to an obvious disability (for instance, not saying "Haha! You're blind!"), not using offensive language, not using language that disparages minorities...where does "politeness" end and "political correctness" begin? Political correctness is a straw man invented by conservatives to give them a socially acceptable way to state controversial opinions. Calling John Edwards a "[disparaging name for a gay person]" becomes fine because Ann Coulter is able to claim that ANY criticism of this is simply the "PC police". Conservatives are allowed the ability to say offensive and shockingly racist or narrow-minded things because they can now deflect criticsm onto the liberals by claiming their rights are being oppressed. If a liberal gets angry if you use the word "retarded" rather than "special needs" or "disabled" and this is PC, why is it not the case that a conservative who gets angry if you use "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" is also being PC? "Political correctness" is an invented term designed to attempt to stifle certain forms of speech in favour of certain viewpoints (namely, conservative viewpoints). EVERYBODY has a set of things that offend them or do not offend them: the liberal may dislike overtly religious terminology, but the conservative may dislike overtly secular terminology. The only difference between these is what specifically is considered polite and impolite, and yet only the liberal seems to endure claims of "political correctness". Your position, in lacking coherency and consistency of application, then must be negated. Political correctness poses no threat to the stability of society - and you have given NO examples of where the very fabric of society itself is threatened by political correctness. Remember, it is not enough to merely demonstrate that there may be some harms with political correctness: the resolution stated clearly that we need to acknowledge it as a threat to *society*. You have failed to defend any aspect of your argument, and thus we must return in the negative on this resolution. Thank you, and I do apologise for missing a round.