Over at Instapundit, the always helpful and insightful Professor Reynolds points out an item that he recognizes as very useful:
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Be Polite.
"Indeed."
The article starts off like this:
Most people don’t notice I’m polite, which is sort of the point. I don’t look polite. I am big and droopy and need a haircut. No soul would associate me with watercress sandwiches. Still, every year or so someone takes me aside and says, you actually are weirdly polite, aren’t you? And I always thrill. They noticed.
The complimenters don’t always formulate it so gently. For example, after two years ago at the end of an arduous corporate project, slowly turning a thousand red squares in a spreadsheet to yellow, then green, my officemate turned to me and said: “I thought you were a terrible ass-kisser when we started working together.”
She paused and frowned. “But it actually helped get things done. It was a strategy.” (That is how an impolite person gives a compliment. Which I gladly accepted.)
She was surprised to see the stubborn power of politeness over time. Over time. That’s the thing. Mostly we talk about politeness in the moment. Please, thank you, no go ahead, I like your hat, cool shoes, you look nice today, please take my seat, sir, ma’am, etc. All good, but fleeting.
And it ends like this:
Last week my wife came back from the playground. She told me that my two-year-old, three-foot-tall son, Abraham, walked up to a woman in hijab and asked “What’s your name?” The woman told him her name. Then he put out his little hand and said, “Nice to meet you!” Everyone laughed, and he smiled. He shared with her his firmest handshake, like I taught him.
That's what it always comes down to, for these sanctimonious, self-satisfied liberals who want to teach you how to properly behave: showing deference to their Muslim betters.
That's really the whole point of the article. If politeness were the whole point of it, he could have written that his son "walked up to a woman and asked," but no - and he didn't write that his son "walked up to a woman wearing a hijab" or that his son "walked up to a woman wearing a headscarf" or that his son "walked up to a woman in a hijab." He wrote, "walked up to a woman in hijab," because he wants you to know that he is so cool and hip, that he knows the Muslims like to say "a woman in hijab." He is so definitely down with his dhimmi subservience to his Muslim betters, that he wants to show off to you, that he knows the sharia-approved way to describe the dress that is as much a banner of Islamic supremacy as the blood-stained black flags of the ISIL pirates.
And he is already teaching his son to kiss the hand that will slit his throat.
