My dear friends,
I don't know how the situation is at the place/country that you were born in. Where I live we have been taught to respect cultures and foreign people. More than respect we were just told to treat them the same way we would treat one of ours. It is in the character of my country and also the people themselves to be quite straight-forward. This means that everybody could say his opinion and people would actually listen to it, agree/disagree with it or just ignore it.
Recently however my country has experienced a 180° turn. We have come to a society, where simple the emotions and feelings of certain individuals or a certain group stand above the reality. This is not even about opinions anymore. It is in the nature of opinions to be subjective. They are with no doubt personal and nobody is obliged to listen to them. But how can we call ourselves a free society if we accept the denial of the reality and call it "Political Correctness". Political Correctness is for me not to call a muslim sandngger. I act so out of mutual respect. If the respect is not bilateral, I might also utter previously mentioned words but with the sole aim to infuriate him as much as possible. But once this level is reached in my opinion the discussion is far from being productive and healthy.
I would also like to shortly talk about the kind of political correctness that we experience in America today. The toupee orange (aka Donald Trump) boasts itself to be against political correctness and to be anti-establishment. From what I can see the orange really is not the thing you usually find in the political fruit basket. I tried to watch some of his speeches. But the only thing I could see were pointless baiting against either minorities or other the left. Many of the claims he made during his speech were based on fake facts and could be debunked soon after. The paradox itself is when you claim to be against someone who is lying and you argue by lying again. Just because someone really wants to believe something it does not make it automatically true. If this was the case I'd be rich by now.
You can find the same situation when you observe some feminists who often like to breed in the left corner of the political spectrum. They may be for freedom of speech. But slight mentioning of the wage gap is often enough to trigger them to infinity. Even though this is quite fun, it will not lead us to a good conversation.
So in order to summarize: We find ourselves in a world where continuously feelings and believes disguised as political correctness overshadow facts and limit our freedom of speech. Sometimes we tend to focus too much on not hurting certain individuals rather then focusing on the reality. Facts should definitely count more than emotions. But we are only humans after all...
Finally I would like to thank you for the time you invested reading this text. I would be glad also to hear your opinion and I apologise in advance for any grammar mistakes you'll find since English is not necessarily my first language.
Have a nice day
*In order to anticipate a discussion: I am neither left or right. Just because I am criticize one side does not mean that the other side is better. I try to observe every part individually and not to compare them.