Is “tolerance” a dirty word? Is “inclusion?”

We know that the term “political correctness” has become a shorthand for criticizing liberal views on sensitivity for such things as racial or gender differences.

In campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump would incite crowds by proclaiming, to cheers, “The big problem this country has is being politically correct.”

He said of American leaders, again to cheers, “They have put political correctness above common sense, above your safety, and above everybody else. I refuse to be politically correct.”

Where did this term come from and why has it been such a rallying cry?

In the 1990s, when the term, first on college campuses and then in society at large, became commonplace, Stuart Hall wrote in “Some Politically Incorrect Pathways Through PC, “According to one version, political correctness actually began as an in-joke on the left: radical students on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS (Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: ‘Not very “politically correct,” Comrade!’

“Marx (commenting on how the revolutionaries of one age frequently appeared in the disguise of those of a previous age) once famously remarked that ‘History happens twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ He forgot to add the third time the joke would almost certainly turn around and bite you.”

Any sort of groupthink can be dangerous. No one wants to feel forced to conform to a party line about sensitivity. We each should act as individuals, taking responsibility for how we express ourselves.

Our nation was built by many diverse groups and our democracy was created as a grand experiment. It’s true that the Founding Fathers were all white men, and most of them were well off. But it is also true that, as a nation, we have grown and evolved.  A civil war freed slaves, women gained the right to vote, recent Supreme Court decisions have recognized gay marriage and other long-denied rights.

We are stronger as a nation for being diverse. We would argue that our safety, and our progress as a country, is best insured by being tolerant of one another. That, to us, is common sense and ensures the common good.

In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, Benjamin Franklin famously said, “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

He meant, of course, that the revolutionaries would be executed if they did not support each other. We believe the sentiment is true today. If, as individuals, we can’t see the worth in our fellow Americans and treat them with respect, we may not face the noose, but we’ll face the the sort of splintering that will cripple our nation.

In the more than 240 years since Franklin spoke those words, much has changed in the world. America is not an upstart nation, seeking freedom from tyranny. We are a strong nation among other strong nations in the world and we must “hang together” as part of a global community if we want the planet Earth to continue to sustain us economically and environmentally.

The reason we’re ruminating this week on “political correctness” is because of a letter to the editor we published last week. An Altamont resident wrote that political correctness had “destroyed” the village’s  Museum in the Streets.

He objected because the text on the 26 lecterns describing Altamont’s history is written in both English and Spanish. We understood his criticism — political correctness, often referred to as simply P.C. — as a shorthand for liberal views run amuck.

Our question is: What harm is done by having the text in two languages instead of one?

The founder of the Museum in the Streets project, Patrick Cardon, explains in a video on the project’s website that the point is to bring history into the streets of small towns. The lecterns all follow the same international design, to educate locals about their past as well as to attract tourists.

France has 40 communities in the program and Cardon says that, in the Loire Valley, trails link the villages, attracting many bicyclists to wine country. “This I hope will develop in other parts of the world,” he says, displaying a map of the northeastern United States where Museums in the Streets are popping up.

“The walks should reflect awareness of how a community’s history fits into national and World History,” is part of the project’s philosophy. “Bilingual panels can acknowledge the diversity of a town's origins. A second language can also reach out to an international tourist population. The first language on the panel is the one spoken locally, and the second is one either favored by visitors from abroad or by a portion of the population. For local students of foreign languages, the panels can serve as a learning activity.”

James Gaughan, Altamont’s former mayor who spearheaded the project, explained to us before the lecterns were installed that the research he did showed the largest population in the area is Spanish-speaking, second to English. He also said that more Guilderland students study Spanish as a second language than any other. He expanded on that in a letter to us this week and also says that the plan is to eventually have electronic translations in other languages, available through a Quick Response Code.

We’ve been learning pieces of village history we didn’t know as we read the markers. And we’ve enjoyed trying to puzzle out what we can glean from the Spanish text, below the English.

The lecterns give us a daily reminder of both the importance of history and the importance of seeking to understand more than we already know. The more languages we’re exposed to, the better. The added translations will also inform visitors who come from other places as well as town residents — more than a score of languages are spoken in the homes of Guilderland students.

We are reminded of an old joke that goes like this:

“What do you call a person who speaks three languages?”

Trilingual.

“What do you call a person who speaks two languages?”

Bilingual.

“What do you call a person who speaks one language?”

American.

The world is wide and wonderful — why not embrace as much of it as we can?