“Diversity” and “Divisiveness” are perhaps our most important cant-words in both meanings of the word: “sanctimonious and hypocritical talk,” and “language peculiar to a specified group or profession and regarded with disparagement,” as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. That certainly fits the political and media industries, which trade in duplicitous language that distorts the meanings of words in order to construct narratives that serve their ideological preferences and gain leverage over their political rivals.
For the “woke” Left, there are few goods greater than “diversity,” and not many worse crimes than being “divisive,” an offense limited to Republicans. But the abuse of these words reflects a misunderstanding of our political order, which is founded on the assumption that the young country’s complex diversity meant that diverse “passions and interests,” and a corruptible human nature would generate divisive factional struggles for power, the necessary corollary to genuine diversity.
Moreover, the “diversity” that progressives trade in is not real diversity, which comprises much more than superficial appearance. The American colonies were very diverse in ethnicities, religions, dialects, languages, folkways, cultures, and mores, the pluribus from which the American unum was comprised.
But this genuine diversity, which still characterizes the United States, is not what our “woke” institutions and ideologies mean by diversity. As David E. Bernstein writes in Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America,
“Modern America’s racial and ethnic classifications do not reflect biology, genetics, or any other biological source. Classifications such as Hispanic, Asian American, and white combine extremely internally diverse groups in terms of appearance, culture, religion, and more under a single, arbitrary heading. The government developed its classification scheme via a combination of amateur anthropology and sociology, interest group lobbying, incompetence, inertia, lack of public oversight, and happenstance.”
The purpose of these classifications was to determine which political clients would be eligible for set-asides in government contracts and later, admissions to colleges, universities, and professional schools. This expansion came by dint of the 1978 Bakke decision, which papered over affirmative action programs’ blatant violations of the Civil Rights Act by creating “diversity” as a “compelling state interest” that justified ignoring the illegality of racial discrimination in the Civil Rights act. In the following decades, nobody, including subsequent Supreme Court decisions, has been able to provide a believable definition of “diversity,” or any empirical evidence of its contribution to improving desired educational outcomes or inter-ethnic relations. Yet this simplistic, vague, concept has become part of federal law and enjoys its enforcement powers.
The result has been the monolithic “woke” orthodoxy now dominating our politics and public institutions––the opposite of the actual diversity of ethnicity, culture, region and, most important, minds and ideas, upon which our country was founded. No wonder we’ve been seeing for decades a growing tyranny of orthodoxy dominating our political and social life, as a powerful central government and ideologically uniform cognitive elite extends its intrusive reach across the country.
The simplifying of diversity is also expressed in the homogenizing of the “people” and their interests that can be served only by a technocratic, centralized elite, which demands a unity of beliefs and interests in order to run the country more efficiently and productively for their own interests. So we hear the endless laments about the “political polarization” that Potemkin conservative David Brooks has called a “major problem.”
In fact, the complex diversity of conflicting ideologies and “factions,” as Madison called them, explains our Constitutional order of divided, balanced, and limited government and powers. Human nature, as Madison wrote, is moved to action by “passions and interests” around which factions form, and which always seeks more and more power to realize their interests, and gratify their irrational passions.
Finally, these factional interests often collide and cannot be reconciled, for they are “sown in the nature of man,” as Madison wrote. These diverse beliefs and interests have “divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good.” The danger lies in one faction or group of factions growing powerful enough to aggrandize enough power to limit the rights of other factions and create a tyranny. For, as Alexander Hamilton pointed out, “momentary passions and immediate interests have a more active and imperious control over human conducts than general or remote considerations of policy, utility or justice.”
Political division, then, is not a “major problem” in the system, but a necessary consequence of politically empowering diverse free peoples. It has characterized American history from the start. Colin Woodard, in his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, has documented this connection between the genuine diversity of the first settlers in America and its chronic divisions: “Americans have been deeply divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth.” In the Colonial period, these distinct peoples “regarded one another as competitors––for land, settlers, and capital––and occasionally as enemies.”
Subsequent history reveals similar conflicts, from the Constitutional convention and ratification debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists; to the Civil War and the conflicts over race and slavery; the challenge of communism, and disagreements over America’s role in the world as a global power. And it’s the diversity of these distinct cultures, mores, and world-views that lies behind all of these conflicts: “All of these centuries-old cultures,” Woodard writes, “are still with us today, and have spread their peoples, ideas, and influences across mutually exclusive bands of the continent. There isn’t and never has been one America, but rather several Americas.” That’s because, Woodard continues, “Each of these founding cultures has its own set of cherished principles, and they often contradicted one another.”
Finally, true diversity and open debates about how we are ruled and for what aims, impedes a technocratic elite that requires a unified consensus in order to grow and keep its dominance. That’s why so much of our policy debates involve the big-state progressives invoking the authority of science as a trump card meant to silence dissent, and why they treat America’s diverse peoples as an abstract, homogenize “people” whose job is to listen to their betters and keep their mouths shut.
That dynamic explains the extraordinary resistance and irrational hatred of Donald Trump, especially from Republican Trumpophobes. Once Trump won the nomination, and progressive Hillary Clinton would be his opponent, all the complaints about “decorum” and “norms” and “principles” and his “mean” Tweets were moot. Clinton’s long career of influence peddling, hinky business dealings, harassment of Bill’s paramours, failed tenure as Secretary of State, role in the Benghazi fiasco, and Leftist inclinations should have made the choice obvious for any conservative who could see how bad another four years of Obama’s policies would be. Just look at Biden’s first two years.
But for many anti-Trump Republicans, his braggadocios, crude, and blunt manner of speaking was redolent of the ignorant, uneducated masses who, unlike themselves, were easy prey for a populist demagogue who made his money in vulgar businesses like casino development, WWE bouts, beauty pageants, and lowbrow reality television.
Trump’s worst insult, though, was his open contempt for all the establishment political mavens who year after year practiced the preemptive cringe and let the Dems walk all over them, all the while they mouthed platitudes about “reaching across the aisle” and “bipartisanship,” which usually meant helping the progressives pick “living Constitution” judges and dismantle the Constitution’s limited government, federalism, and balance of powers.
In the end, all the NeverTrump Republicans achieved was to confirm half of American voters’ perception that Republicans were loyal to their fellow political guildsmen with whom they worked for Leviathan, Inc. The Trumpophobes never seemed to get that their missish attacks on Trump also insulted his 75 million supporters by implying that the cognitive elite’s way of being an American was the only legitimate one.
Any political system that empowers truly diverse peoples and gives them scope to speak their minds, whether decorously and politely or not, about foundational beliefs and interests about which they are passionate–– such a political order will necessarily be divisive and polarizing. Accepting both diversity and divisiveness is the price we pay for freedom.
Mo de Profit says
“ distorts the meanings of words in order to construct narratives that serve their ideological preferences”
They sure do
Shame becomes Pride
Man becomes Anything
Pedo becomes Minor Attraction
Racism becomes CRT
Peaceful Protest becomes Violent Destruction
Capitalism becomes Cronyism and Corruption
Islamic Terror becomes The Religion of Peace
Safe and Effective becomes Died Suddenly
Selfish becomes Ideal
Altruistic becomes Self Sacrifice
The list goes on.
THX 1138 says
You have it wrong when it comes to altruism — altruism IS self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, self-renunciation, self-denial, self-destruction, self-immolation.
I don’t precisely know how the word altruism became mistakenly synonymous with charity, kindness, generosity, benevolence, goodwill, or respect for the rights of others — but that’s not what it means. I think it was the Leftist intellectuals that did know what altruism really means and so they intentionally obfuscated its meaning with charity and kindness so that people would accept it.
Ayn Rand never attacked charity, kindness, generosity, benevolence, goodwill, or respect for the rights of others and yet still you refuse to accept that. The fact that you REFUSE to accept that fact is telling. Is it because deep down you really expect and demand that others sacrifice themselves to you? Do you fear self-reliance that much? Do you fear independence that much?
What psychological, emotional, need and fear, is it that makes you stubbornly refuse to see the difference between altruism and charity, between self-sacrifice and generosity?
Mo de Profit says
Why don’t you use the generally accepted definition of the words then?
THX 1138 says
Because — the ignorant public be damned. The public’s ignorance of what altruism really means, and what rational selfishness really means, will damn them and has damned them to the tyranny of collectivism in all its variants of socialism and theocracy.
What the West and America need to rescue them from collectivist tyranny is a MORAL revolution and nothing less than objective clarity and precision of moral concepts will make the public understand what is at stake.
Ayn Rand’s moral code of rational selfishness is historical and revolutionary. It offers a paradigm shift in the history of liberty.
‘If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice.” – Ayn Rand
Chief says
You dared to insult the great prophet!
THX 1138 says
Not a prophet but a great philosopher-novelist.
Kynarion Hellenis says
This is generally a very good article. But I object to this statement:
“Finally, true diversity and open debates about how we are ruled and for what aims…”
As soon as we begin to debate the AIMS of government, either ignorant of or untethered to the Constitution, we begin to lose our legacy of freedom and prosperity. The Constitution has clear aims, the respect of which will, according to Thomas Jefferson, “bind [men] down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
I think debating “how we are ruled” asks the wrong question. We should not be ruled, but served by protection. The purpose of government is the protection of individual rights and national sovereignty. The “aim of government” is the same.
We have strayed far from the ideals of limited government and equality before the law. Westernkind know this and have been willing to die for it.
THX 1138 says
As monumental and historic an achievement as the American Constitution is, it had and has fatal errors in it, from the very beginning. As monumental and historic a generation of intellectuals that the Founding Fathers were they did not have all the necessary philosophical ideas and concepts to formulate a flawless Constitution defending liberty flawlessly. The Founders only started an experiment in Liberty, and they were fully aware of that, why else would they have included an Amendment Process to their Constitution?
Even so, an experiment in liberty can be initiated by a people and a culture that is philosophically ripe and ready for liberty but can not be carried on when the philosophy of that culture and people has become the polar opposite of freedom and liberty. A republic of liberty if you can keep it.
“The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.” – Ayn Rand
Mo de Profit says
I agree, nobody but nobody rules me. The same goes for all free people.
Stan says
Diversity (anti-white), Equity (equal outcomes/Socialism), and Inclusion (Trans rights); it’s just another Democratic language perversion that does the opposite of what it portends. DEI has brought about illegal laws that call for firing whites first, for hiring whites last, and anyone that disagrees with them is a Racist, a Fascist, a Homophobe, a Xenophobe, a Misogynist and now, an Ableist. Did I miss one? There seem to be an infinite number of pronouns so that people can decide to be whatever they want, except for a male or a female. They say men can get pregnant and they pass idiotic laws like the “Menstrual Protection Act” in Oregon that mandates installing tampon dispensers in every boys restroom in every public school in the state. Seriously, go look it up. They want to teach your children to hate themselves and cower if they are white or be a perpetual victim and hate whites if they are black or brown. We now have biological males destroying women’s sports and we have a transgender fake “Admiral” as the “highest ranking official of the U.S. Public Health Service”. He/She? also thinks that it’s O.K. to mutilate and castrate children in the name of “gender equity”. Then, of course, there’s the non-binary head of our country’s nuclear waste disposal that just got arrested for stealing women’s underwear out of airport luggage. It’s almost impossible to comprehend how we are living in such an upside down clown world.
THX 1138 says
What can unite a diverse people? What united Americans? The principle of INDIVIDUALISM and its political implementation of individual rights and private property rights.
But what has undermined this principle of individualism from the very beginning of this historical republic and experiment in individual liberty? The predominant and status quo religious moral code of altruism and self-sacrifice.
“The Americans were political revolutionaries but not ethical revolutionaries. Whatever their partial (and largely implicit) acceptance of the principle of ethical egoism, they remained explicitly within the standard European tradition, avowing their primary allegiance to a moral code stressing philanthropic service and social duty. Such was the American conflict: an impassioned politics presupposing one kind of ethics, within a cultural atmosphere professing the sublimity of an opposite kind of ethics.” – Leonard Peikoff
“America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.” – Ayn Rand
Jim says
Joe of course is not guilty of any of the obvious sins of a Trump. He is the perfect gentleman, never swears, never molests women, never lies, has earned all his money in legitimate businesses. The polar opposite of Trump. NOT. Actually, he is vulgar, rude, mean-spirited, selfish, dishonest, a liar. He earns his wealth by influence peddling. So, of course we could never elect a vulgar man without principles, culture and good breeding like Trump. And joe has all the desirable qualities and more. Doesn’t he.
THX 1138 says
Joe Biden does not EARN his wealth, he STEALS his wealth. A producer earns his wealth, a parasite and looter steals his wealth.