What’s happening to American society? With the exception of our vets, the military, firemen and police who put their lives on the line to protect us, are we digressing into wimps or wusses offended by simple words or phrases?
With all the ridiculous political correctness going on, you have to believe we are. On July 1, Washington state lawmakers mandated that college students will no longer be “freshmen.” Now, you must address them as “first year students.” “Freshman” was too sexist. The word “penmanship” is also outlawed as being too sexist. You have to use the word “handwriting.”
I simply cannot understand how so many people are so offended by mere words. They’re offended by words like: God, Jesus, illegal immigrant, illegal alien, terrorist, hobo, Christmas, Easter, the Pledge of Allegiance and a gazillion others too numerous to mention.
Some words are inappropriate when they are used to hurt people’s feelings, like the “N” word or calling the mentally challenged “retarded.” The words I’m referring to just aren’t offensive. I wonder what the easily offended will do to these words in the near future: trashman, manufacturers, policeman, serviceman, mankind, woman (contains man), the name Herman, manage, manatee (will the female of this species become womantee?), mangrove, manger etc.
I can see it now. Thousands of sexist words will be stripped from Webster’s because the rest of us will allow such nonsense. We just don’t have the backbone of generations before us, many of whom fought and died for us. What a shame that we are so weak that words offend us. And yet millions of us are still willing to put their lives on the line to defend us, that’s the part I have a difficult time trying to understand. How can we be so willing to send our youth into battle, our police into dangerous, life-threatening areas and our firemen into blazing infernos while we sit back and get angry over a word we saw or heard?
How long will it be before we do away with our 4th of July celebration? Don’t you think one of our closest allies, the British, would be offended by our celebrating independence from England?
— Donald Schumacher

Salisbury