A year before the American Revolution, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote a letter to the bishop of Killaloe in which he remarked, “The Irish are a fair people; They never speak well of one another.” This clever characterization — or caricature, if you like — may rub you the wrong way, but you will recognize in it a small germ of truth, namely, the social habit the Irish themselves call “begrudgery.” You may even mourn the passing of such bold forthrightness as Dr. Johnson could display so blithely, so long ago. For under the powerful influence of political correctness, it has become unthinkable in respectable circles to engage in any form of group characterization — that patently unfair verbal net by which all members of a particular ethnic, racial, or religious group are made to wear the same costume of loud, unsubtle colors, by which all Poles are made to appear stupid, all Jews grasping, all African Americans hapless. Truth to tell, such characterization, however clever, tends to limit and confine at best; and at its worst, it is a principal tool of unreflective bigotry.