DEI: Lipstick On A Very Old Pig
No matter how it looks or what you call it, a pig is still a pig.
The proponents of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) see it as a process of outcome equalization.
What it really is, is an identitarian, racial essentialist strategy to disadvantage the majority race and ethnicity of Western civilization to the benefit of minority members seeking benefits of Western civilization without the thousands of years of painful development of the basic ideals upon which our civilization rests.
The fallacy in all of this is that it is impossible to lift any individual or group by bringing another group down – but that view is now commonplace among progressive Democrats – in reality, every collectivist “party of the people” has always blamed successful people (or those with generational wealth) for the plight of the less fortunate.
The irony of that belief is the fact that many of the richest people in American history came from the ranks of the disadvantaged. Many came to our shores penniless and left a wake of innovation and riches behind that still exist today. Andrew Carnegie is a perfect example. He came to America with his family in 1848, his first job was as a “bobbin boy” in a textile mill making $1.40 a week. After he sold Carnegie Steel Company to J.P Morgan in 1901 (for roughly $10.7 billion in today’s dollars), he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest man in America and became perhaps the greatest American philanthropist in American history.
While it would seem, given the billboard adverts for DEI, it is all about overcoming disadvantage and lack of access, the mechanisms used to cure discrimination by discriminating more aggressively are less diverse, equitable and inclusive than the name implies.
The primary tool is little more than viewpoint discrimination and outright censorship.
Why?
Because people cannot be allowed to know there is opposition.
The Soviets were once the best at this but it sure seems the American left (which forms the core constituency of the Democrat Party) is now running a close second – if not taking the lead. F.A Hayek wrote of it in 1944, retelling an anecdote that was relayed to him from Sidney and Beatrice Webb (economists, socialists and among the founders of the London School of Economics):
“It is not difficult to deprive the seat majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian enterprise: ‘Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the staff.’”
To quote from Disney’s pre-woke “Beauty and the Beast”, it is a tale as old as time.
The most antithetical part of all this scheme is these forces want to use (and are using) a government designed specifically to govern and protect a people who were created equal in the eyes of their Creator as a tool for that discrimination.
In 1848, French economist Frédéric Bastiat defined government as:
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
This is the basis for what contemporary collectivists call “democratic socialism”, a term designed to sand the rough edges off the harsh reality of the totalitarian state required to achieve their goals. We even have legislators like Bernie Sanders, Sandy Cortez and the rest of the Squad, openly calling themselves “democratic socialists” as if that was a positive - but anytime a Democrat uses the word “democratic”, their intent is exactly the opposite of individuals voting their own conscience.
Hayek had something to say about “democratic socialism” eighty years ago:
“…democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable but that to strive for it produces something utterly different – the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: ‘What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.'”
While all forms of collectivism promise individual equity, the process of getting there inevitably ends in a single point of control, one that exercises coercive control over the masses. There is a reason that every attempt at socialism, Marxism, and/or communism on a national scale has ended in actual or virtual dictatorship and it is not because “it has never been implemented properly”, it is because that is the only endpoint possible.
As the Barenaked Ladies once sang, “It’s all been done before…”
They just call it DEI today. Tomorrow it will be something else.
It is never more than lipstick on the same, very old, collectivist pig.
Every day for at lest the past years I have wondered why younger people succumb to the nonsense being indoctrinated on them in supposed institutions of higher learning. There are many examples of people in their 20s arriving at their definitions of what a working society looks like. Many of the founding fathers were in their 20s. Why is it seemingly impossible for the current 40 and under crowd to think for themselves? I am encouraged by Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and Prager U 5 minute videos on useful topics. Sadly, I believe much of that age group simply watches Korean pop stars and people doing "funny trick shots" on YouTube. Their minds are now officially mush.
My husband often reminds me that the US population is 358 million or so and the # of people working for the government is almost 28 million. Therefore the # of citizens is almost 13 times the size of the government. We should not be afraid to stand-up to the govt. Even if they kill 1/2 of us with advanced weapons and such; there would still be millions more citizens than govt workers.
Fear-mongering is their single biggest weapon.
I call it DIE to reflect the ultimate endstate if implemented.