In our modern day society, we have the tendency to be overly politically correct. Merriam Webster defines political correctness as “supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.” It basically means being very conscious to not offend anyone, or a specific group of people.

Political correctness is a nice idea in theory, but too much of anything isn’t necessarily a good thing. Our country is famous for going overboard on everything, from food to makeup, we think more is better. We have gone to certain extremes in order to refrain from doing or saying anything that can be deemed offensive.

America is truly distinct from other countries. We have so many different races and religions, and it’s a wonderful experience to be able to coexist and live with different ethnicities all around. We have the experience to embrace all of these differences and showcase them, to help spread tolerance and diminish ignorance about certain cultures. We have the opportunity to promote the differences, but instead, we shy away from it, because of political correctness. American citizens use this horrific, generic terms in their best efforts to avoid offending anyone, and suppress this wonderful characteristic of this nation.

In an attempt to become even more politically correct the United States government almost did the unthinkable; make the use of a particular world illegal. If this isn’t an infringement on the first amendment, I don’t know what is. The first amendment grants US citizens the freedom of speech, and making it a criminal offense to say a word, regardless of the word is political correctness taken to a whole new level. The United States prides itself in allowing it’s citizens to say whatever they want, no matter how offensive.

How far will this politically correct thing go? Will we soon use different terminology for every day words, just to ensure that nothing distasteful is ever said? It wouldn’t be all too surprising if we started deeming everything too controversial and started using obscure definitions to skirt around the ugly truth. Instead of failing, you might just be achieving a deficiency. Americans aren’t fat, they are gravitationally challenged. Schools will no longer have lazy students, only motivationally deficient ones. Before we know it, we will live in a world where worst is least best, and an alcoholic is an anti-sobriety activist.

Political correctness diminishes the value of our differences. These terms try to generalize and smooth over the differences, when those varying backgrounds make everyone unique. The phrases try to make everyone sound the same, like one big super race, with barely any distinctive qualities. America is supersensitive and needs to drop the politically correct thing, before our rights and differences are forgotten.