Wokeness doesn't ban offense: it bans offense without consequences

Proge doesn't take away your freedom: it takes away your impunity

Proge hasn't banned rudeness; it has raised its price. Those who complain about not being allowed to be disrespectful are, at bottom, asking for a world where disrespect carries no consequences. Freedom of expression is invoked as a shield, but the right to offend does not include the right to humiliate.

---

The invisible economy of respect

Respect works like an asset: it builds trust, reduces friction and lowers the cost of transactions. Political correctness, in its most reasonable form, is a technology for protecting that asset. Those who reject it often argue that it turns social life into a funeral. But the alternative is not spontaneity: it is insult as the norm.

In Spain, insulting has historically been a form of affection; in other countries, the same phrase is grounds for a complaint. That cultural difference explains why rudeness in politics and the media is tolerated more here. The complaint against proge, in many cases, is not a defense of freedom of expression: it is a defense of the right not to be answered back.

The asymmetry of the right to offend

The argument that the right to offend must be bidirectional is reasonable on paper. In practice, it is used to claim the privilege of offending without being answered. When someone feels insulted by criticism, they respond with an accusation of censorship. That move turns the victim into the executioner.

Oscar Wilde's quote — "if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear" — has become a banner. But freedom of expression is not a safe-conduct pass for humiliation. As long as proge remains a catch-all term, the dispute will continue. The question is not whether you can offend, but who pays the cost. And there, predictably, there will be no agreement.