Political Correctness In the Dock

Norway on Trial

Anders Breivik  is on trial in Norway for mass murder.  The court will decide his guilt--which is a pretty straightforward affair, since Breivik admits setting off the car bomb which killed eight people, and executing a massacre of young campers, murdering sixty-nine.  The trial is supposed to last ten weeks.  Since his guilt is straightforward, the only other question is his sanity.  Ten weeks to determine the sanity of Anders Breivik.  How bizarre.

What has led Norway into such a fix?  We suspect it has something to do with political correctness.
  The Commentariat--the dominant axis of politicians, intellectuals and media--has a shared view of reality.  All that conforms to the group-think is considered rational, sane, normal.  Anything which is not politically correct--that is, all which fails to conform to group-think--is suspect.  Extreme violations of the "code" imply a person may well be insane. 

Clearly Breivik is not a babbling, incoherent idiot.  He is not delusional.  He does not think that trees talk Swahili to him.  He has a world view, which he has followed through with cold logic and a ruthless, deadly precision.  Is the Islamic terrorist mad?  Of course not.  By the lights of their perverted religious ideology they are perfectly rational and consistently sane.  Was Stalin mad?  Of course not.  Once again, by his ideological and political principles, he was the sanest man in the Soviet Union.  Utterly depraved, to be sure--but sane and rational, nonetheless. 

Norway's problem is that the Commentariat is so oppressively powerful it has got to the point of thinking that anyone who does not likewise believe the Catechism of Political Correctness is mentally unstable and delusional.

We have always found it particularly chilling to read of regimes (usually Communist) which consign their  malcontents to mental asylums, or re-education camps.  North Korea has, at present, thousands upon thousands of its citizens so incarcerated.  You will either learn to think as we do, or you will die: probably, for many victims, both will transpire.   Norway, apparently, has its own "soft" version of the same regime.  If you hold views which lead you to murder innocent people, you are probably insane.  Not wicked.  Not depraved.  Not degenerate.  Mad.  Not guilty by reason of insanity. 

Noway prides itself on its PC tolerance.  Evil is always environmentally and circumstantially caused in that country.  Total depravity and Adam's sin skipped over that Scandinavian paradise.  The Commentariat insists upon it.  Evil is not native to the human soul.  Sweet love and tolerance will free people from the fleeting darkness of the human conscience.  No Conradian Heart of Darkness there. Dostoevsky would already be in the asylum in Breivik's land.   It is part of what makes Norway so sophisticated, so enlightened, so European.

So, now Norway needs to take ten weeks to determine if Breivik is sane.  Either way, guilt and doubt will now leech through the Commentariat as never before. If Breivik is judged sane and guilty of his crimes, how could such evil seep from Norwegian society into his soul?  If he is judged insane, how could the system have failed this soul so comprehensively?

By the peculiar, stupid blindness of that place, it is not Breivik who is on trial--it is Norway itself.