Diversity Sucks

Diversity sucks. There, I said it so you won’t have to. In a de facto Orwellian bizarro world where you can’t speak the truth because it’s the truth, the world in general and the United States in particular is desperately in need of a cadre of people who aren’t afraid to stand up and be disliked and reviled. In other words, we need people who are willing to be the bastard. People who are willing to step on toes, nay, stomp on them when necessary. People who can be counted upon to say the damn emperor is stark raving naked. We need these people to show by example that criticism won’t kill you and to bully our so-called leadership into doing what they were elected to do. This is something we can all do. If you don’t think you can find the time, put a bullet through your television set. You’ll be amazed.

The first order of business needs to be to rehabilitate any number of beliefs, traditions, and concepts that formed part of the core of our national psyche. I believe there has been a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater throughout our short history and sometimes I suspect that the dirty bathwater was just a cover for eliminating the baby. The so-called Progressives, or whatever cover name they called themselves at any given time, have been chiseling away at the underpinnings of our country since before the ink was dry on the Constitution.

So why do we have trouble now? Because Americans’ have an Achilles Heel. The average American is physically hardworking, but intellectually lazy. Now, before you start clicking frantically on the comments link, allow me to explain. I’m not saying that Americans are stupid, there’s no need to say that because the Europeans don’t need any help. Americans are just as smart as anyone else, but culturally we have a tendency to apply that intelligence towards things that have an immediate practical explanation. Furthermore, we tend to admire and respect the people who do just that.

Americans who show intelligence and interest in more abstract realms are eyed suspiciously at best and regarded as weird and dangerous at worst. Unfortunately, abstract ideas drive what occurs in the physical world and affect everyone eventually, whether they’re pragmatists or not. If you don’t deal with ideas directly they’ll sneak in the backdoor. Just a few days ago, I was at my Anatomy and Physiology class and the professor was talking about the nervous system, which lead to neurotoxins, which lead to chemical weapons, which led to the war in Iraq, which led to 20 minutes of valuable class time being wasted on the professor’s irrelevant political ideas. I’m a 45 year-old cynic, so I was safe, but I wondered about the kids that were sitting all around me.

So, let’s start of with a shocker/ American Exceptionalism is more than a concept. It is a reality that we live in this country every day and it is awesome. The intelligentsia would much rather you believe not only that it’s a just a myth, but also that it would be really horrible if it wasn’t. When you tally up the pros and cons, the United States has done far more good in the world than bad.

The highest good we have provided is by providing an example for how the rest of the world can get what we have. It isn’t our fault that most of the rest of the world would rather gouge their own eyes out than see what is there for everyone to see. Even during recessions the average American citizen has a standard of living that is unprecedented throughout history. People whose ancestors have been at each other’s throats for centuries live in peace together here. So how does such a miracle happen? Easy, you chuck all that crap from the old country when you move here and assimilate into the distinctive American culture, thereby transcending whatever you were before and becoming an American. If you continued the feud from the old world you would be fighting with your own.

To that end, assimilation needs to be rehabilitated as a positive concept. The Left pushes as hard as they can to stigmatize assimilation in general, and interest groups do a pretty good job of stigmatizing assimilators. Failing to fail in school equating to “acting white” is a common example. Americans tend to be fairly comfortable with assimilation, otherwise all that civil rights legislation would never have passed (over liberal Democratic objection). But strangely, after a brief move toward integrating our society, the demand became, not integration, but separate facilities. At colleges we find the outrages of separate dining facilities, dormitories, and even separate graduations. Not at the instigation of some evil WASP conspiracy, but at the demand of the affected minorities themselves.

So, combine that with white supremacists demanding a “homeland” in the Northwest, the president of Mexico claiming that the territory of Mexico extends beyond its current borders (and a Mexican Consulate who stated matter-of-factly that the US-Mexico border is in Arkansas now), the small but vocal group of die-hards in the deep south wanting to resecede from the union, and so on, and we now have the beginnings of American Balkanization.

Just in case you don’t know, my dictionary defines Balkanization as the process of breaking up a group, nation, etc. into smaller and usually mutually hostile units. Just FYI, this is considered a bad thing. If you listen to the news, or even ABC, CBS, and NBC, you learn quickly that not a lot of good news comes out of the Balkans. The take home lesson here is that it would be idiotic to even think of doing something here. I think it is highly unlikely that we would ever do such a thing, on purpose that is. I don’t know what things are like in your part of the country, but I get a fair amount of interaction with people from other countries and I get to watch how they interact with each other. If you think of racism, or any other –ism as a white vs. “other” thing, you are sadly mistaken. I have seen hostility between different minority groups that would make your blood run cold. Individually, certain members of these groups seem to have made their peace with the majority, but many don’t extend that courtesy to each other.

The only thing worse than becoming Balkanized nightmare would be to become a polyglot Balkanized nightmare. I’m definitely not discouraging anyone from become multilingual. I have always believed that one of the most valid criticisms of Americans was their stubborn insistence on not learning another language. I’m talking about the phenomenon of people moving somewhere and not bothering to learn the native language. The end result being groups of people who not only can’t talk to us, but can’t talk to each other. There’s a formula for misunderstanding.
A certain amount of hypocrisy exists in this. I once asked a Mexican co-worker why he didn’t show more consideration for me and speak English when I was present. He became furious and shouted at me, “I learned your God damned language, now you learn mine!” Well, I was a little more timid and leftist in my thinking back then, so I took it as a well-deserved criticism. However, a few months later, I heard the same fellow talking to a black co-worker about some Vietnamese people that had been hired. The “Yeller” was complaining bitterly about the new guys speaking Vietnamese to each other. As I recall, he said, “I don’t like it when they talk that shit.” To which the other fellow replied, “Yeah, [the boss] should make ‘em stop.” Some people have said that a common language is one of the few unifying characteristics that we have in the United States; I’m inclined to believe it.

It’s been said that, unlike just about every other people on Earth, being an American is not so much a matter of race or ethnicity as it is about embracing the ideas and ideals that it was based on. I think this must be dead-on because every splinter group nut-job in the country swears that the nation was built on the principles they espouse. That’s why, on rare occasions, the Left will admit that the Founding Fathers were a bunch a great guys, then they’ll try to convince you that they were a hair’s breadth away from being socialists.

So anyone can be an American, because there is no American race, at least not yet. I’ve heard people claim that an American race is in the process of becoming, but that nobody knows what it will be like. I’m inclined to make an analogy to something I learned in an Economics class once, The professor told us that there was no such as the economy being in equilibrium, that it could never reach the state of static equilibrium Marxists so longed for. Rather, equilibrium was something the economy was eternally moving toward, but never reaching. I think that the whole concept of an American race is similar; it is something our population moves toward, but never quite reaches.

Samuel Johnson once said that, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” This inspired my belief that cynicism may very well be the first refuge of a misanthrope, but I digress. What I believe even more is that the chest-thumping pride in heritage and race that we see more and more in our multiculturalism afflicted world is the first refuge of people who have nothing to offer the world. I’ve written before that I don’t feel any particular pride in my race, but I don’t feel any shame either. Think about it, you rarely hear about a Hispanic M.D. or Ph.D. ranting and raving at a MEChA rally. Conversely, you don’t hear about a lot of Caucasian nuclear physicists joining the Aryan Nations. Maybe it happens, but it’s rare. More than likely, when I mentioned on of the groups above you probably got a mental image of a person with only a partial set of teeth and a 30 year-old car, whether that’s fair or not.

So if you can’t feel good about yourself because of your race or nationality, what can you feel good about? How about what Americans have always felt good about—your accomplishments? Notice I said your accomplishments. Not your grandfather’s and not some distant ancestor who might have distinguished himself in the Crusades. I know this is tough to do. I, like some many others, used to feel I was thoroughly awesome because of the great accomplishments of members of my family both living and dead. However, I was confronted once with the prospect that some of my ancestors may have been slave owners and that I was effectively “guilty for life” through them. I objected strenuously to this absurd idea. I protested that to hold someone accountable for the actions of another, especially if they have been dead for hundreds of years was laughable at best and viciously unfair at worst. I had scarcely finished making my point when it occurred to me that by my very own logic I couldn’t lay claim to my ancestor’s accomplishments. It was then I realized that being American isn’t laurels that you rest on; it is a standard that you have to live up to and, if possible, elevate. I’ve found that idea to be a great motivator in my own life.

I’m going to suppose that most Americans want their country to be safe and secure and the place where their descendents live for generations to come. To do that we need to stop accepting statements like, “Our strength is in our diversity,” out of context. Sure, having Navajo Code Talkers in WW2 to confound Japanese spies was a great boon, but that superficial diversity was serving an underlying greater good, the preservation of our homeland. Thus, we were united behind a common goal. Multiculturalism is biggest pile of crap ever foisted on a gullible American Public. The Leftist snake oil salesmen that infest our land try to sell us this philosophical nightmare by passing it off as some sort of panacea for every social ill. I contend that trying to treat America’s problems with multiculturalism is like trying to treat a heroin overdose with heroin. It is unity that the country needs.

There is an old saying to the effect that a man cannot serve two masters. Anyone who has had the misfortune to be subordinate to two or more supervisors with wildly different agendas knows what I’m talking about. So, to that end, I suggest that we take the, “I can’t believe they haven’t done it already,” step of abolishing dual-citizenship. In my opinion, either you’re here, or you “ain’t”. It’s a dangerous world we live in and people with split loyalties are luxuries that we can’t afford. An acquaintance who emigrated from Germany once summed up his feeling on the subject like this, “If there was anything to miss about Germany I would still live there.”

About those dangers that I mentioned above, there’s no denying that there are people out there that would just as soon see all of us dead, and they’re probably swarming across our border with those people of questionable loyalty that I mentioned. We never could afford the de facto invasion of this country that has been going on for decades. Our leadership, however, was very adept at denying it. Now that there’s no denying it, our leadership seeks to minimize it. We have to demand iron clad border and coastal security, and I don’t give a damn who says that it’s impossible. If necessary, I’m willing to stand behind, and yes, pay the taxes necessary for, a Manhattan Project style endeavor to seal the borders and coastlines. Whether sealing the border is possible or not is irrelevant, we must proceed as if it were to achieve the maximum security.

For those that are howling that we’re sunk without the immigrants, let not your heart be troubled. Immigrants will still be accepted, but they would be monitored and processed such that we would know who and where they are, and just exactly how many immigrants we need. Under the current system we have no way of knowing for sure how many immigrants are needed to fill labor shortfalls. Also, a more orderly immigration process would help us get the workers we need. If the country needs more molecular biologists, importing a molecular biologist from India does the country a lot more good than importing 100,000 Mexican cooks, maids, and gardeners.

This brings us to the whole issue of needing immigrants to fill job shortfalls. Just like the ideal would be for us to produce all the energy we needed domestically, unfilled job openings in America are a symptom of us underproducing labor. That’s right, I’m on the having babies thing again. If we were living through Great Depression-like times with 25% unemployment you could make a case for the tiny family, but we’re not. We have one of the highest rates of economic growth in the world year after year and an ever rising standard of living. I hate to say it, but most of us can afford a fairly large sized family now. In the end it will be more fulfilling than your friggin’ Porsche anyway. So once again, I invite you guys to throw the birth control pills away for a decade or two. We really, really need to destigmatize large families.

Next, I reject the entire world citizen concept. For one thing, I like the idea of the nation-state. We essentially have competing governments (we can vote with our feet if nothing else). Before we merge all the world’s nations into one massive government, I think all those other countries have a lot of growing up to do. Rant and rave at us all you want, everybody knows you’re just jealous.