I despise political correctness in almost any form. I could understand withdrawing the song from airplay in markets immediately affected (not that Tragically Hip gets much airplay in New Orleans, Houston or Dallas) but not everywhere.

Does anyone remember a time when small and few words did the job of describing a situation or person accurately?

Words like "idiot", "moron", "imbecile", or "lunatic"? Simple English words, that were used popularly and were part of legislation. The words had commonly understood meaning.

Words like "mentally retarded" or "manic-depressive" were not verboten.

Airlines and police forces could develop psychological and personal profiles of actual or likely criminals, so that little old Jewish ladies from Pump Hill or Thornhill weren't being strip-searched at airports. Pedophiles were often harassed by police, so they kept their sexual urges and offensive conduct to themselves.

Now the age of "liberation", "awareness" and "love" are upon us, little abated since the days of hippydome. We use indecipherable, "non-judgmental" terms like "intellectually challenged", or "emotionally challenged" or worse yet, use bureaucratize to describe people. Thus, even figuring out what someone's real problem is, and addressing it, is hard. We are forced to endure endless, sterile debates about whether homosexuality is pathological or normal behavior. Some suggests that if a gay person wants to go "straight", a psychiatrist should refuse to "treat" the person for "gayness" notwithstanding the loss of opportunities that a gay person suffers. He will never have biological children. His parents will never have grandchildren. There are victims here.

Heaven forfend, we can't "profile", since that would be "stereotyping" and "degrading" a person because of their origin. We have to pretend that the Bronfmans of Montreal are as likely to blow up a synagogue or a transit conveyance as Abdul or Mohamed. This has real and deadly consequences as police resources are squandered searching harmless people, and ordinary people are badly inconvenienced in their daily life by pointless searches and checkpoints. this undermines public support for real measures that do improve security.

And pedophiles now get a free pass since homosexual people are "entitled" to their "pride" and "dignity". The possibility of my 9 1/2 year old or 8 year old being diddled by some strange man strikes me as more serious that the "pride" or "dignity" of the gay community.

Harper loses an election for Canadian PM in part because he honestly states the obvious, that the Liberals have not been aggressive about kiddie porn. Something has to give.