Is Diversity a Strength, and Should Strength Be a Core Value?

Might is a strange ideal for a democracy.

By Jonah Goldberg, NATIONAL REVIEW

What if diversity isn’t our strength?

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) says he scolded the president for saying something scatological about certain countries and their emigrants. “Diversity has always been our strength,” Graham allegedly said. By my very rough count, this makes Graham the bazillionth person to proclaim some variant of “diversity is strength.” But is it true? I think the only close to right answer is, “It depends.” Specifically, it depends on which (often clichéd) analogy you want to hang your argument on. Diverse stock portfolios are more resilient. Diverse diets are healthier.

But that doesn’t mean picking bad stocks will make you richer, nor that eating spoiled foods is good for you. I once heard the Reverend Jesse Jackson explain that racial integration of the NBA made it stronger and better. He was right. But would gender integration of the NBA have the same effect? Would diversifying professional basketball by height? Probably not. In other words, all of these analogies can only take you so far. Thomas Sowell once said, “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” President Trump’s 8 Biggest Accomplishments

There’s a growing body of evidence that even if diversity once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore, at least in the short and medium term. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs, and institutions. People tend to “hunker down” and retreat from civil society. Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society.

I think the real culprit here isn’t immigration or diversity in general, but the rising stigma against assimilation. Particularly on college campuses, but also in large swaths of mainstream journalism and increasingly in the louder corners of the fever-swamp Right, the idea that people of all backgrounds should be encouraged to embrace a single conception of “Americanism” is increasingly taboo. Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society. There’s a shortage of both these days.

But while traditional notions of assimilation are increasingly heretical, there is a kind of anti-assimilation assimilation movement afoot. It insists that we must “celebrate our differences” and make them the essence of our identity. The University of California officially considers terms like “melting pot” offensive and “triggering.” But no one would confuse the UC system as a hotbed of free and independent thought. What is expected is assimilation into an ideological worldview all its own, one that simply asserts without proof that one kind of diversity makes us stronger.

So far, all of this should be familiar to anyone who has followed the debates over immigration and assimilation. Liberals, broadly speaking, assert that diversity makes us stronger. Conservatives, broadly speaking, respond with skepticism or emphasize a different kind of diversity.

What gets less attention, however, is the premise that “strength” is an indisputably overriding priority or ideal. Strength has always struck me as a strange ideal for a democracy. Strength, like other fetishized ideals such as “unity,” is wholly amoral. Even “diversity makes us richer” has more moral content than “diversity makes us stronger.” Stronger to do what, exactly?

This has been one of my core objections to Donald Trump’s rhetoric. He constantly extolls strength, at home and abroad. He praised the Chinese government for showing strength at Tiananmen Square. He admires Vladimir Putin’s strong leadership. On the campaign trail, he upended the traditional conservative critique of big government by decrying the “weakness” of America’s political leaders and institutions.

Strength, it seems to me, is a top priority of every nationalist creed. It fits more uncomfortably within American notions of patriotism. If you read the Federalist Papers, you’ll learn that among the top priorities of the founders was to ensure that the government, particularly any branch of government, not be too powerful. The Bill of Rights is all about constraining the power of government. The Constitution never once mentions the words “strength” or “strong.” Neither does the Declaration of Independence. But both documents include a great deal about freedom and liberty. Of course, I don’t want America to be weaker, depending on how you define weakness.

But maybe the overriding problem with the debate, on both sides, is the assumption that strength is its own reward?

READ MORE: Higher Education Needs More Diversity… Of Thought The Contradictions of Diversity Homogeneity Is Their Strength

— Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. © 2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

January 18, 2018 | 4 Comments »

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  1. Right. I forgot. Gun rights advocates point out that “well regulated” was used refer to individual in the 18th century. I guess that was their way of saying, not nuts nor prone to anger management issues, and above all, punctual (King Richard was actually popular but his forces came late to the battle. Henry had French mercenaries punching a clock, “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse? Uhh, will be that be regular or unleaded, mister?”). Gun Control advocates use it to mean gun control. Ruined the whole joke. Darn.

    OH, well, I’ll think about it tomorrow. Frankly ma dear, I don’t give a darn.

  2. Actually, I have to correct myself. The Unity of Diversity of Zangwill is very much played out in Star Trek. It’s only their origins and forms that are diverse in Star Trek. The values they share. Planets that do not share the enlightened values of the Federation yet are not invited to join. The Federation is not open-bordered and sharia-compliant, for all that liberals choose to interpret it that way.

    https://thecontinuingvoyage.com/2016/08/11/strength-in-unity-how-star-trek-beyond-frames-todays-world/

    How, ironic. By contrast, Jews have never interpreted Deuteronomy 20 to mandate genocide. Just the opposite.

    Just goes to show you. If people like something, they will interpret it to mean anything they want; they will seize on some little thing and say that’s the main thing and turn the whole paradigm around.

    which gave me the idea for a humorous observation about fund-raising.

    Gun Rights advocates emphasize that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

    Gun Control advocates emphasize that the preamble says, in order for there to be a well-regulated militia.

    Half the country, geographically, is pro-Gun Control mostly and the other half, pro-Gun Rights.

    The minority in either section will need to raise money to get their point of view out.

    Benefit Concerts are a time-tested way of raising money.

    J.S. Bach is always popular.

    So, in either section, the fund-raising concert series could be called:

    “The Well-Regulated Clavier.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier

    I looked unsuccessfully for a video of it played by pianist Andre Watts, who is half African-American and half Hungarian. So, I will have to settle for “Mr. Rogers meets Andre Watts, the best pianist in the world.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA7Mss_33XM

  3. It’s hard to to debate in airy generalities but if you look at President Trump’s style of governance and contrast it with Obama’s, it’s pretty clear that Trump is a much more democratic leader. Wherever possible, he tries to get Congress to lay the legal groundwork and/or engage in negotiation with foreign or domestic counterparts instead of just issuing executive orders. The Iran Deal is a perfect example. Another is the horse-trading he is attempting across the aisle, DACA for $20 billion for the wall. Recognition of Jerusalem was explicitly affirming not one but two Congressional resolutions. Is he using the IRS as a political weapon as both Presidents Obama and Clinton did?

    When our economy is struggling and we are in the cross-hairs of an heretofore unacknowledged war, what is wrong with talking about strength? How is that undemocratic or not in line with the vision of the founders?

    His point about diversity is well-taken. It’s really two essays that sit uncomfortably with one another.

    The melting pot concept was actually the brainchild of a British Jew, Israel Zangwill, who wrote a play by that name and the concept caught on.

    “The use of the metaphorical phrase “melting pot” to describe American absorption of immigrants was popularised by Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot,[4] a success in the United States in 1909–10.”

    “When The Melting Pot opened in Washington D.C. on 5 October 1909, former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, “That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that’s a great play.”[5]

    In 1912 Zangwill received a letter from Roosevelt in which Roosevelt wrote of the Melting Pot “That particular play I shall always count among the very strong and real influences upon my thought and my life.”[6]”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Zangwill

    “The Melting Pot is a play by Israel Zangwill, first staged in 1908. It depicts the life of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, the Quixanos. David Quixano has survived a pogrom, which killed his mother and sister, and he wishes to forget this horrible event. He composes an “American Symphony” and wants to look forward to a society free of ethnic divisions and hatred, rather than backward at his traumatic past.

    David, the hero of the play proclaims:

    There she lies, the great Melting Pot—listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth [He points east]—the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,—black and yellow—

    VERA: Jew and Gentile—

    DAVID: Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward![1]”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Melting_Pot_(play)

    Somebody should produce a revival on Broadway.

    By contrast, as with John Lennon’s song, “Imagine,” I wonder how much influence in this area, Star Trek, and in particular, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock’s enunciation of the Vulcan ideal of “Unity Through Diversity” has influenced developments in this direction. Today’s leaders are influenced by the fiction they watched in their formative years. I once saw an interview with innovative leaders of Space and Aeronautics who all said they they were influenced by Arthur C. Clarke as children.
    I noticed that the design of cars for quite some time, in the ’80s and 90s, resembled the aerodynamic design of the Empire’s ships in Star Wars. Many cello and bass cases resembled the armor of the Empire’s metallic soldier’s uniforms.

    Human beings have been described as Homo Sapiens, man the thinker, Homo Faber, man the tool-maker, Homo Ludens, man the game player (Huizinga). Introducing:

    Homo Glamourpuss (glamour-driven man). (I once had a cat, who could be fierce with strangers, especially vets, but was as gentle as a kitten with me. I named Sparkypuss.(as in Spartacus))

    Dvorak wrote an American Symphony to show how our diversity was our identity as a unity.

  4. You might read John Jay’s Federalist Number 2, where he thanks God for giving “this one country” to “this one people.” Then read the first US immigration law (Naturalization Act of 1790) restricting US citizenship to “free white persons”. Now you know what America’s Founders thought about diversity and strength.