Henceforth, the vision-impaired will lead the vision-impaired, men will be vision-impaired by their prejudice, and my wife, when I ask her for something that is right in front of my face (I am reliably informed that practically all husbands do this; it is not our fault, it is biological) will ask “€œAre you vision-impaired or something?”€ Blindsided from now on will be visionimpairedsided: we should not be visionimpairedfolded to the implications of this and I personally shall be hearing-impaired to any protests at this idiocy.

It is more than mere idiocy, of course: it implies a kind of moral imperialism on the part of enthusiasts and moral cowardice on the part of those who do not resist the demands of those enthusiasts. And the moral imperialists know no limits to their ambition; they will not rest content unless they have bent the whole world to their will, and even then would not be fully content, for they would regret the absence of new worlds to conquer”€”conquest being the transcendent purpose of their life for lack of any other. I have little doubt that they would soon enough find those new worlds. 

Calling the blind vision-impaired requires no actual kindness or generosity toward the blind, no actual generosity; on the contrary, it is perfectly compatible with complete indifference towards them. The blind are a small minority in the world, while those who speak are the immense majority (apart from the speech-impaired, who are often hearing-impaired as well). To interfere in the lives of everyone, to make every person just a little afraid that if he uses normal words he commits an act of cruelty or worse, gives a sense of power and meaning to those who demand that we change the way we speak. 

Among other things, political correctness is the tribute that indifference pays to charity. It is the clamor of the empty-hearted. Its reach is great, no nook or cranny of the world is beyond it; it is the Coca-Cola or Nescafé trademark of our time.