You guys may be thinking about two different contexts:
1. calling someone with a disability a retard (which I would never, ever do)
2. using the word "retarded" in a generic sense. For example: I may have called my kids retarded, in exasperation, for doing something nonsensical. Not elegant, but has been used as a figure of speech, of sorts, for ever.
My problem with censoring words (and political correctness in general) is that it is an overly simplistic intent to make the world a gentler place - even if you forbid people from saying/writing certain words, you will not change how they think/behave.
Nobody dares to use the n... word, but there are still a lot of racists (and reverse-racists, it needs to be said) out there. The only way to fix it is education and culture - no other way around it.
Agreed, it is just that my example covered one particular race being discriminated, so I wanted to make it clear. For some reason, people think only non-white people can be discriminated against.
The difference is that you are picking on a particular nationality, while "retarded" is a generic term meaning "mentally under-developed" which, while certainly not a term of endearment, may apply to any human.
In the first case, you imply that Jews are stingy. In the second case, you don't imply anything about retards other than the normal definition of the word.
1. calling someone with a disability a retard (which I would never, ever do)
2. using the word "retarded" in a generic sense. For example: I may have called my kids retarded, in exasperation, for doing something nonsensical. Not elegant, but has been used as a figure of speech, of sorts, for ever.
My problem with censoring words (and political correctness in general) is that it is an overly simplistic intent to make the world a gentler place - even if you forbid people from saying/writing certain words, you will not change how they think/behave.
Nobody dares to use the n... word, but there are still a lot of racists (and reverse-racists, it needs to be said) out there. The only way to fix it is education and culture - no other way around it.