"Diversity is Our Strength"

"Diversity is Our Strength" seems something that the pig rulers in Orwell's Animal Farm would have posted with their original seven commandments. This phrase gets repeated regularly with such conviction and energy by the proper thinkers and politicos in North America, Western Europe, and Oceania that one hesitates to ask "Why? Why is it our strength?" One also must ask, "Why isn't diversity considered a strength in places other than those mentioned?" First, however, one must ask something else, "What is meant by diversity?"

A common dictionary definition of "diversity" reads, "The state of being diverse; variety; a range of different things." Sure. OK. One can accept that a diversity of food products is good; as is a diversity of job opportunities; of vacation options; of car and gun manufacturers, etc. These are all good things, and in some cases, as in nutrition, prove "strengthening," but, is that how "diversity" is used in daily socio-politico-economic-academic-media discourse? Ah, let us remember that as Orwell also noted in a 1946 essay, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." Let's see what's in front of our collective nose.

Almost four years ago, I wrote about how progressives,

Appropriate certain words, redefine them, and then use them to shape the ideological battlefield. The classic example of that, of course, is "bolshevik" and "menshevik." The Bolsheviks were, in fact, the Mensheviks and vice-versa. The word "bolshevik," derived from the word meaning "majority," was appropriated by the radicals who were in reality the minority of the old Social Democratic party. The minority labeled the majority the minority and got away with it. Clever. There are many other examples of this in history such as the insistence on calling nazis and fascists right-wing when they are clearly left-wing products,

 and, subsequently noted that,

Words have meaning, and the left is very good at ever so subtly altering the meaning of words so that over time those words no longer mean what they meant. Words, of course, are the bullets of intellectual debate. If you allow your opponent to select your ammo for you, well, let's just say you are at a disadvantage.

"Diversity" must now join that legion of words appropriated and deformed almost beyond recognition by our progressive overlords. It joins "gay," "liberal," "male," "female," "fascist," "racist" and many more words that now form the core of modern progressivism's narrative. All perfectly good words that now have become unrecognizable and put into the service of the progressive "vision." When, for example, a college dean calls for more diversity in the institution, he or she is not calling for more conservatives and libertarians on staff to balance the school's overwhelmingly progressive bent. Same with corporations and government; it is a call for more "ethnic" and "gender" diversity; it is a call to label anybody who questions that as a "racist," a catch-all term of opprobrium and dismissal; it is increasingly a call for a form of "diversity" that seeks to destroy Western Civilization. It is a call for uniformity of thought.

We see in the ongoing debate over immigration in the West that the proper thinkers want ever more "diversity." As I noted several years ago, we saw,

a leftist attempt to alter radically the nature of British society by encouraging immigration from poor countries and have those immigrants become dependent on and vote for Labour . . .  not unlike what happened in the US with the horrid 1965 immigration law which significantly changed the source of our immigration away from Europe to the third world, put the emphasis on "family reunification," and created a whole new class of people dependent on the government and the Democratic party urban machine. The effect, however, has proven more dramatic in Britain for a number of reasons. The US, of course, is much larger and since its creation has been an immigrant-based country; while our founding political and ethical traditions come largely from England, we are used to a relatively high degree of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. That was not the case in the UK or in the rest of Europe where nationalities were akin to racial groupings, or at the very least well defined tribes. Those European countries, consequently, were much less adept at incorporating immigrants into the life of the nation than the more heterogenous less densely populated USA. Massive immigration to Europe from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean has proven more jarring and disruptive than in the US. With, however, the rise of leftist multiculturalism in the US, and the extension of a vast social welfare state, our once vaunted ability to "melt" immigrants and recast them as Americans has suffered. We have begun increasingly to resemble the European nations as they struggle to retain their tribal identity.

We have the wise ones asserting that people all over the world have some right to immigrate to the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and Australia. That wherever and whenever the cry of "Refugee!" or "Immigrant!" goes out, the West must respond by opening our wallets and our doors. We have to allow millions of persons to violate our national sovereignty and laws, lay claim to a vast array of taxpayer provided benefits, and, above all, demand fundamental changes in our culture and institutions. We apparently no longer have the right to defend our borders and establish immigration laws and policies that benefit our people.

"Diversity is Our Strength." Really? Are Japan and China weak and miserable because they are not diverse? The historical record would beg to differ. "Homogeneity is Their Strength"?

That aside, I have noted before (here and here, for example) that many if not most of the so-called Syrian refugees, the current progressive plat d'jour, are neither Syrian nor refugees. They are not particularly persecuted any more than anybody else unfortunate enough to live in a Muslim majority country. Let us not forget that the bulk of Islam's victims consists of Muslims, the same ones who come to our countries to instill the same sort of barbaric Islamic regime and practices they supposedly "flee." I tire of comparisons of these "refugees" with Anne Frank and the millions of other Jews who fell to the Nazis. Prior to and during WWII, we did not take in Nazi "refugees." We did not take in the people vowing to destroy us. The US also didn't take many Jewish refugees either because, if you remember, the Democrats held power, and the Democratic party is the historic repository of racism and anti-Semitism in American politics. The Nazis of today are the Muslims pouring into Europe. The Anne Franks of today are the Christian, Baha'i, and Yazidi minorities living in the hell created by Islam. That same Islam, by the way, long ago eliminated the Jews from the Muslim world. I also would note that Islam drove the Hindus, the Buddhists, and the Sikhs out of Pakistan, but we have no UN programs or refugee camps for them. We have no Hollywood celebrity calling for justice for them.

The progressives seek to destroy our culture, and replace it with . . . what exactly? The progs can't or won't say, but we can certainly get a glimpse of what's to come if they succeed. Has "diversity" of the progressive kind made Europe a stronger and a better place to live? I think that hundreds of victims of Islam in Paris, Nice, Brussels, London, etc., might have an interesting answer to that. I note that thanks to the strength derived from diversity, Swedish police now advise Swedish women not to go out alone after dark and to dress modestly so as not offend the "refugees" who might just have to rape and murder these women for cultural reasons. If "diversity" is so good, why not encourage it in the Muslim world? Let's build churches in Mecca! How about that? Why not more diversity in Nigeria? Perhaps Mexico should diversify its demographics by taking in hundreds of thousands of "refugees" from the Middle East and Africa, and not funneling them northward? The same progs who worry about cultural contamination by missionaries of an isolated tribe in the Amazonian forest have no problem turning vast swathes of our cities into "no go" zones ruled by the practitioners of Sharia and the other blessings of the Religion of Peace.

Opposition to the progressive concept of "diversity" has nothing to do with race. I, for one, find race a boring concept, and one that tells you little useful about any person. Melanin levels have no bearing on the worth of an individual. A typical Caribbean person has much more in common with a typical North American person, regardless of color, than does a white Iranian or Syrian. The issue is culture. The overwhelming majority of the immigrants to the US, for example, came from "diverse" backgrounds but within a cultural range framed by Judeo-Christian concepts. Islamic culture is not within that range, and, unlike Buddhism or Hinduism, is openly hostile to our culture and its values. We have the right to defend ourselves from that sort of "diversity," PM Trudeau and Hollywood not withstanding.