“Diversity is a Strength” is Just Something Stupid People Say

By Selwyn Duke

What has so often struck me, and irked me, about the embrace of “diversity” dogma is how profoundly unintellectual it is. A wiseguy might say it’s really a simple IQ test, though a wise guy understands it’s a soul and sagacity test. To wit:

To the extent that a person accepts as imperative diversity, DEI, CRT, wokeness in general — or whatever the latest shiny anti-Truth thing is — he is a vacuous know-nothing, not just unqualified, but dangerously ignorant.

Two recent examples are disgraced ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay and Johns Hopkins Hospital’s chief diversity officer Sherita Hill Golden, now infamous for disseminating a “privilege hit list.” Affirmative-action hires both, each one is the kind of woman about whom ex-radio giant and now podcaster Michael Savage would say, “In my day, the highest she would’ve gone is owning a brassiere store on Queens Blvd. — and after 19 years, she’d have had two brassiere stores.”

What’s simultaneously so laughable and so sad about all such people, supposedly the crème de la crème of the intelligentsia (I call them pseudo-elites), is that they will obediently disgorge the latest word-salad-replete, cock-and-bull academic theory like part of a hive mind. But that’s the problem with elevating empty vessels on identity bases: You get no creativity, just craven conformity.

This is what political theorist Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” If, however, you merely seek conduits through which to push an agenda no virtuous, thinking person would push, such people are precisely who you recruit.

For they’ll accept Diversity™ — they’ll even worship the DEIty — no questions asked. They won’t wonder why diversity should be considered desirable, a good, without proof; they won’t demand data. They’ll just repeat, mindlessly, “Our strength lies in our diversity!” because they’ve heard it so much. Repetition imprints most effectively with soft heads.

This brings something to mind, too: an old Twilight Zone episode that wonderfully places diversity calls in perspective. Titled “Eye of the Beholder” (1959), it features a demagogic leader who repetitively issues his own slogans. A clip follows (note: It is a spoiler of sorts), and pay attention to the segment beginning at 0:27 and, in particular, the several seconds starting at 01:10.

“Conformity!” the tyrant yells. “Conformity!” Analyzing the above superficially, some will say it actually supports the diversity agenda, as the demagogue inveighs against “differences”; conformity is the opposite of diversity, after all. And Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, a WWII vet, was greatly influenced by his experiences and often wove warnings about Hitler-like seducers into his work (his commentary was not infallible, either, mind you). But the point is this:

The pig-faced demagogue’s “Conformity!” and our lipstick-on-a-pig “Diversity!” are both slogans uttered mindlessly, without understanding or nuance.

In reality, both diversity and conformity are necessary and good — in certain situations.

We absolutely, for example, want conformity to the truth that one mustn’t commit murder, rape, or theft; to the imperative of having nice manners; to the virtue of honesty; and many other goods. As for diversity, it’s an inescapable reality, with people being taller and shorter, stronger and weaker, smarter and duller. It also can be a good: That people have varied gifts is why we’ve had Einstein, Pasteur, Aristotle, da Vinci, Aquinas, Watson and Crick, and history’s other geniuses. We have diversity in products and services and invention and innovation because man has diversity in talent and inclination.

But our diversity agenda is like pig-face’s conformity demands. It’s divorced from the only thing that informs us as to when diversity or conformity is desirable: Truth. When this happens, an agenda, which should be meant to serve the good, becomes the “good” — aka a false god.

The result, then, is confusion, people thinking that the diversity of children claiming they’re the opposite sex is good and the conformity of marrying only the opposite sex is bad, that the diversity of foul language in art is liberation but the conformity of a common language in life is oppression, or that the diversity of different group-performance outcomes is bad but conformity to social engineering meant to eliminate them is good.

Sloganeering can be done with anything. “War!” “Peace!” “Hope!” “Change!” “Forward!” “Progress!” “Equality!” Be careful, however, anytime something becomes a mantra. It may mean that when promoting the given idea, reason would fail so repetition is the fallback.

Also realize that everyone wants a type of conformity. Our pseudo-elites, for instance, want us to conform to their diversity machinations — or suffer persecution. And our reaction must be something that, within the context of our now left-wing status quo, would be a real example of diversity: the complete destruction of their agenda and replacement of it with sanity.

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