Diversity, 11/13/2003

Editor, MNH, 11/13/03

There is a bandwagon rolling through town. Its banner reads “diversity.” I am not mentally nimble enough to join the parade by embracing the present  politically correct mindset  and forgoing its opposing one. It was not long ago that instead of diversity  (another name for multiculturalism) we were supposed to integrate for the sake of unity. This unity, the culture of  Western civilization, is made up of three components, Greek and Roman antiquity;  Christianity; and the Germanic migration ( 500 A.D). The proponents of diversity are throwing a stone into the mirror of  this lead culture fracturing it. Each group will see itself no longer reflected in the whole mirror, but only in a fragment, which is a throwback to tribalism, or as a historian would call it - balkanization. Anybody  remembering just ten years back will remember the break up of  Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was an artificial creation of the victors of Versailles. The moment the iron fist of  Communist rule was lifted it broke up into its ethnic and religious components. Seventy years  of “unity” interrupted only by the Nazi period, had not welded a country and a people together. Have you forgotten the bloodletting? Are you so self-righteous to believe  we are so much a better people than the people of former Yugoslavia? 

    I read in “India Abroad” (June 6, 2003) that  presidential  candidate Lieberman promised  an Indian audience that if elected President he will appoint Indian-Americans to senior positions in his administration  and will have at least one in his cabinet. One of his first trips, if not the first would be to India.  Our  politicians are already doing the bidding of the Jewish minority and pander to the Hispanics.  Lieberman has discovered a new minority.   How much more diversity can this nation take before it shatters?