Diversity Is Our Strength

 

“Diversity is our strength” has been a popular slogan in Canada for many years.

Is it true?

Afghanistan stands as the ultimate model of ethnic diversity. “Afghanistan's 2004 Constitution cited Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkman, Baluch, Pashaie, Nuristani, Aymaq, Arab, Qirghiz, Qizilbash, Gujur, and Brahwui ethnicities; Afghanistan has dozens of other small ethnic groups.” (CIA World Fact Book)

Another diverse nation was the old Yugoslavia, with roughly comparable populations of Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenes, Albanians, Hungarians, Montenegrins and Macedonians.

Another was the old Austro-Hungarian Empire; one might also cite the Balkans generally.

Iraq is diverse: Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis, Turkmen, Assyrians, Mandaeans.

In all these examples, diversity does not seem to have been their strength. Instead, it hindered development, made these places relatively ungovernable, and led to bloodshed. Diversity was and is their weakness.

Diversity is a strength only in the context of more fundamental unity. America has been successful, because it had a powerful mainstream, and the motto was e pluribus unum. Immigrants intentionally shed their home culture by coming. Other, successfully diverse countries, like Singapore, India, or the UK, feature one overwhelmingly dominant ethnic group and culture. And even they have had their problems: Singapore was thrown out of Malaysia for being too Chinese, India underwent the holocaust of partition, and there is ongoing trouble Kalistani Sikhs and Tamil Tigers; and the UK underwent the Irish wars of separation and, as recently as the nineties, the Ulster troubles.

Unity is strength; diversity is good for choice of restaurants.

Multiculturalism, as an official policy, is suicidal.

What'sHerFace Gets In Yer Face

 

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said somebody. The original source of the well-known quotation is uncertain. 

In 1836, John Wilkinson wrote:

“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist: another, perhaps equally fatal, is to make them fancy that he is obliged to stand quietly by, and not to meddle with them, if they get into true silence.”

In 1856, William Ramsey wrote:

“One of the most striking proofs of the personal existence of Satan, which our times afford us, is found in the fact, that he has so influenced the minds of multitudes in reference to his existence and doings, as to make them believe that he does not exist; and that the hosts of Demons or Evil Spirits, over whom Satan presides as Prince, are only the phantasies of the brain, some hallucination of mind. Could we have a stronger proof of the existence of a mind so mighty as to produce such results?”

Baudelaire said something similar. The first quotation is usually attributed to him.

It is so true and evident that it has occurred to many minds. Most people will adamantly deny the existence of evil, on the apparent premise—a classic example of denial--that if they ignore the Devil, he will ignore them. Examples abound: the silly notion of “rape culture,” that some men rape women because they do not know better, and need the matter explained to them. The idiotic pacifist idea that any conflict springs from some “misunderstanding,” and war can be averted by negotiation and compromise. That if there is a conflict, the victim must be in part to blame. That anyone who does something unquestionably immoral, like taking a gun and shooting up a school, must be insane rather than evil. Or it must be the gun’s fault. Or it must be society’s fault, or the system’s fault, or religion’s fault, or capitalism’s fault.

And in What’sHerFace’s talk, it manifests as the idea that we who fight for liberty and fairness ought to and can strive for unity in the present political circumstance. And should avoid offending. Peace is not possible; there is no chance of compromise between good and evil. It only ends in Munich, betrayal, and unilateral disarmament. 

We cannot honestly pretend that men can decide to be women.

We cannot honestly agree that “white” people are inherently evil.

We cannot honourably or safely compromise on free speech.

People like Scott Adams are waking up to this, it seems.

Pandemonium

Diversity is our strength.

Or so we are told.

Common sense suggests that unity is at least as important. Diversity is more like friction: energy dissipated without direction. Chaos is the ultimate diversity.

Granted that I love the diversity of the Catholic Church: the thought of people all around the world worshipping as one.

But then, it is not the diversity I love, is it? It is the act of deliberate unity. The old American motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” similarly celebrates a movement to unity, not diversity: “out of many, one.” One might as well say, “out of lead, gold.” “Out of manure, flower.” Diversity is the given, unity the ideal.

The liberal goal of equality is a call for unity: the idea is to treat all men the same.

The medieval scholastics considered unity one of the transcendental values, the ultimate goals of human existence.

So why this new and pressing desire for diversity? Very new in the idea that diversity is to be preserved and celebrated.

A thought occurs. Unity is equivalent to purity, and purity to morality. Sir Galahad said,
“My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.” Our prime directive, Jesus said, is to “love God with your whole heart.”

The devil, conversely, literally means diversity: the word comes from dia-bol, to set apart. Devils are multiple by nature: "pandemonium."

We are dealing with something diabolic.

The subtext to this emerging celebration of diversity, I suspect, is that it releases us from obligations to do what is right. We get to act at random, and nobody can object. That’s “diversity.”

The idiom “to hell in a handcart” comes to mind.