The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Why DEI Needs to Die
We’ve all heard of the Left’s DEI agenda by now, but we might argue it’s better to organize those leftist buzzwords this way — Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity — because it makes the acronym DIE. We said that back in February. Political analyst Bruce Thornton is thinking along the same lines, especially with DEI falling out of favor with consumers and, thus, with some companies and even universities.
We should all celebrate these pushbacks, since the politicized dogma of “woke,” as well as the requirement of fealty to it, violates the very core of the university’s traditional mission and purpose: “to know the best that has been known and thought in the world,” as Matthew Arnold defined it, “irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other consideration whatsoever,” and “through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically.”
The pseudo-concepts of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” have long been “stock notions” that our “woke” commissars “follow staunchly and mechanically.” Typical of all tyrannies, these words have been warped into propaganda advertising an illiberal political program of expanding the political power of one faction of citizens at the expense of others’ freedom — the cost being paid by our unalienable rights to freely think, and freely speak in the public square our opinions and beliefs.
He goes on to tackle each word.
Our unholy verbal trinity displays the same corruption. “Diversity” is the most abused, having been written into federal law by the recently overturned Bakke vs. Regents Supreme Court decision of 1978. This word, however, never has been defined by our race-mongers, nor have the benefits supposedly provided by it. But it’s clear that this spurious “diversity” never has had anything to do with actual diversity, whether of complex ethnic diversity, or the more critical diversity of individuals, their minds, and their characters. …
…Today “diversity” in fact means the opposite: a rigid, homogeneous orthodoxy of an illiberal political ideology that brooks no dissent, and seeks to silence the true diversity of ideas and opinions in order to aggrandize more power and influence for one faction, the “woke” Democrats, at the expense of all the other diverse factions.
Like “diversity,” “equity” also recalls a dysfunction of representative democracy recognized 2400 years ago. True equality is the equality of opportunity and equal rights on a level playing field, where each is free to strive as far as his character, talent, hard work, and yes, luck, can take him. But one of the most pernicious consequences of collectivism has been radical egalitarianism, which depends on levelling off all those disparities of talent, industry, and virtue. As Aristotle wrote, “it arises from the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
But since people are in fact unequal in various respects, to create absolute equality requires a tyranny that can take from some to redistribute to others against their will. …
The last bastardized word, “inclusion,” is a mere redundancy. Once “diversity” and “equity” make their mischief, you will perforce have “inclusion,” which means the ruling party’s political clients who now share in the favorable regulations, transfers of tax dollars, social and political recognition, and the privilege of being exempt from the laws that are applied with ruthless vigor to their political enemies. Just compare the fates of journalist Andy Ngo to Antifa thugs, trans activists to pro-life Christians, BLM rioters to conservative Catholics, or Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton and the Biden clan.
Still think we have the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws”?
Ultimately, he concludes:
The DEI phenomenon is diametrically opposed to the principles and laws comprising our Constitution: unalienable rights that inhere in individuals rather than collectives, and are beholden only to “Nature and Nature’s God,” not other men; the sovereignty of citizens from whom government derives its powers, and to whom government is accountable; and the primacy of laws rather than the power and interests of corruptible, flawed human beings.
Finally, and most important, these empty slogans are nonetheless a threat to the whole purpose of our government in the first place — political freedom and political equality for citizens, families, and civil society. The “woke” tyranny of DEI policies weaken all those principles and the freedom they make possible, and as such, it needs to die.