The horrible attack on a Jewish shul in Monsey, New York, on the seventh night of Hanukkah isn’t directly connected to the atmosphere on U.S. campuses or in certain quarters of the U.S. Congress. But they are of a piece spiritually and psychologically.
Something is drastically wrong.
The canary in the coal mine (Jews first, others later) is back. It’s permissible to slur Jews and to beat or stab them (five different violent incidents during this Hanukkah alone in the New York City area). Jewish students on college campuses are hiding their religious affiliation as they cross the green to class.
Why now? What has caused all this?
It’s not the sole reason, but I am going to say something outrageous to some. It’s the worship of diversity. Note that word—worship.
Diversity is by itself a good thing. We are a diverse society. As many have said, that’s part of our strength.
What has developed in recent decades, however, is the elevation of diversity above all. The slogan “E pluribus unum” (out of many, one) has virtually disappeared from our country, the “unum” pushed to irrelevance.
Everywhere we go these days, diversity is counted and measured ad nauseam. How many of this group? How many of that group? It’s an obsession.
Where you worship diversity, there will always be winners and losers in that diversity. Like it or not, it creates a pecking order. And these pecking orders are reinforced, consciously and unconsciously, by our media, entertainment, and the academy.
And, naturally enough, out of pecking orders, hatreds (or old hatreds, as in the case of anti-Semitism) emerge.
Today’s Democratic Party—with its devotion to and reliance on identity politics—fans these hatreds, deliberately or not.
The rise (and domination) of the concept of intersectionality in our colleges and universities is also a leading factor in this. In this theory, groups are virtually ranked according to their levels of supposed victimhood. Sometimes, only members of those deemed most disadvantaged are even allowed to speak.
How absurd and morally and psychologically damaging this is, when we are all humans with nearly identical DNA. It’s a reactionary and proto-fascist idea masquerading as progressive. It is, in essence, a new form of segregationism.
Yet, it has spread and been transmogrified to many aspects of our society. Identity is everywhere. Even the recent killings at the New Jersey kosher market were motivated by some people thinking they were the real Jews and the other people weren’t. How crazy is that!
Plenty. But it’s instigated in part by our culture.
You and he are homo sapiens. Get it?
If you’re looking for genuine “diversity,” go to the zoo. Human beings and giraffes are indeed separate species. But please don’t shoot or stab the animals.
And, meanwhile, STOP worshipping diversity. It’s a fact, not a religion.
“E pluribus unum.”
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