A Future Brouhaha for Social Media Justice Warriors
13th November 2014
Steve Sailer turns over a rock.
While the clickbait headline on the WaPo’s frontpage refers to “pronouns,” the article refers to “nouns.” These days you must say “343 firefighters died in the World Trade Center on 9/11? because saying “343 firemen died in the World Trade Center on 9/11? is an insult to the memory of all the firewomen who died on 9/11.
…
In the 21st Century, for instance, you can tell if somebody is a Bad Person or a Good Person by whether they use the old “B.C. and A.D. ” (Bad Person) or the new “B.C.E. and C.E.” (Good Person).
Doesn’t “B.C.E.” stand for “Before Christian Era” you might ask, so what’s the point?
Oh, no, it stands for “Before Common Era.”
Now, you may wonder what was so “Common” about the era that began in 1 C.E., but you’re missing the point. The point is that you are one of those Bad People.
November 13th, 2014 at 11:35
I first encountered “B.C.E” and “CE” reading Michener’s Exodus. In that edition B.C.E. and C.E. were defined as “before Christian era” and “Christian era”. Even at a young age this struck me as rather precious. In an early example of political correctness, these circumlocutions were adjudged insufficiently culturally neutral, but the abbreviations had already caught on. A suitable word starting with “c” had to be found. Hence the use of Common. I checked a copy of Exodus in a B. Dalton’s Booksellers in my twenties and Michener or his editors had made the change.