Various Veins
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D. H. Lawrence battled Victorian prudishness to get his novels published. Lady Chatterley's Lover was read under the table, or under the sheets. It contains English vernacular that everyone knew. Latin and Greek terms for the same thing were acceptable, probably because few readers knew what they meant, especially the children.
James Joyce had the same fight to have Ulysses published, and for much the same reason.
Henry Mayhew, who founded Punch, interviewed many people of the streets and slums of London. He was a contemporary of Charles Dickens whose novels were firmly blue penciled. Life was as robust as Lawrence and Joyce describe it.
William Manchester tells us the aristocracy freely enjoyed life once the first heir was born. Titles and estates went to eldest child in those days. Although the nights were filled with activity, no one talked about it at breakfast. That was the double standard that plagued authors.
We can't quote much of George Carlin without expecting a call from the language police. He did write, "...as far as other people's feelings are concerned – especially these 'victim groups' – when I deal with them as individuals, I will call them whatever they want."
Let's skip the dynamite that follows and pick up the quote. "When I'm speaking generally... I will call them what I think is honest and fair."
Here is the paradigm shift that loses much of the freedom of speech won by Lawrence and Joyce, although the four-letter words are widely free of censure.
The philosopher Emmanuel Kant would not tell a lie, not even a white one, to spare anyone's feelings. Today we are compelled to lie either in words or in keeping the truth to ourselves lest we offend some group or other and end up in a human rights tribunal.
When Dr. Philippe Rushton published his study that correlated intelligence with the size of a certain organ he lit a fire storm. Dr. David Suzuki was flown across Canada to London to debate him (1989). Personally I have had no respect for Dr. Suzuki since watching and listening to him on TV that night. He didn't lie. He didn't debate the pros and cons of Rushton's research. He roared and scowled and went back to British Columbia.
That for me was the beginning of having to suppress something rather than speak the truth.
Today the Canadian federal justice system is being found wanting because the percentage of prison occupants doesn't reflect the general population. It is wrong to send a lot of offenders to prison because prisons are universities for crime. To that extent the feds are responsible. We dare not suggest one social group may be committing more offences. That would be racist.
In London a councillor has brought the wrath of politically correct society on her for using the "N-word." It matters not a whit that she didn't address anyone by the epithet. Listeners lose all logic when someone uses a trigger word. The validity of the argument goes up in smoke.
Full disclosure: in the privacy of my home I use full-blown language from my tobacco field days. It would make a sailor blush when I drop things or burn the eggs. My language in public is much keyed to the audience.
In public school we played a game called by the N-word. No one in the mid 20th Century gave it a thought. I don't propose to turn back the clock to the social attitudes of the past.
I do hope for some resurgence of freedom to be honest.
Otherwise our society will become as divorced from reality as George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984.