YESTERDAY, UNCA D urged you to read Thomas D. Klingenstein's essay, "Preserving the American Way of Life." I excerpted his definition of "American Way of Life," which is, he argues, "being attacked by proponents of another way of life (or regime)" -- multiculturalism.
Our only relevant choice now, he argues, is between the two regimes: the American way of life or multiculturalism. For reasons he explains, they cannot be reconciled or compromised. Here's the clip (abridged, emphasis added):
That other regime is multiculturalism. As I am using the term, multiculturalism sees society not as a community of rights-bearing individuals with a shared understanding of a national good, but as . . .
. . . a collection of cultural identity groups, ranked in order of victimhood (though all oppressed by white males), and aggregated within highly permeable national boundaries. Multiculturalism replaces American citizens with so-called “global citizens.”
Identity politics is the politics of multiculturalism. Political correctness is its enforcement arm. Multiculturalism involves a way of life that cannot exist peacefully with the American way of life any more than could Communism or the antebellum South.
That is to say, today we find ourselves in a regime-level contest. The Claremont Institute has framed it as "Multiculturalism versus Ameria." A regime-level conflict is a struggle over what a society aims at, what its end is. Differences in ends cannot be negotiated.
Antebellum America provides a good example of societies with different ends. The South believed that slavery was a good thing and so wanted to expand it; the North, on the other hand, believed slavery was bad and so wanted to contract it. This is an example of a non-negotiable difference.
A nation cannot go in opposite directions at the same time. Multiculturalism has its own end, one that cannot exist peacefully with the American way of life any more than the North and South could exist peacefully together.
Multiculturalism's end is a society where there are no outcome disparities among identity groups. Each group has, proportional to its size, the same income (hence the need for socialism) and the same power as measured by job titles; that is, the same number of CEOs, senators, marines, fire fighters, college presidents, physicists, soccer players, etc.
Outcome parity is the multiculturalists’ understanding of a just society. Thus, one role of government in such a society is to free us all from the sins of racism, sexism, homophobia (and all the other ever-growing “-isms” and “-phobias”) that stand in the way of outcome parity.
We saw multicultural justice (so-called “social justice”) in action in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. If, as the multiculturalists believe, individual white men are largely defined by their group identification, and if that group oppresses women, then it follows logically enough that a white male, when accused by a woman, is presumed guilty.
Republicans think Democrats violated rules of due process in the Kavanaugh hearings. I think it is more accurate to say Democrats were playing by their own, multicultural rules. The hearings were not so much a contest over the application of agreed-upon rules as they were a contest over the rules themselves.
Thus, in a larger sense, the hearings presented a contest between multiculturalism and America. When two sides have a different understanding of justice, both sides eventually break the old rules (formal and informal): first the side that does not believe in them breaks them, and then the other side does so in self-defense.
As the Kavanaugh hearings illustrate, multiculturalism’s end (outcome parity) cannot possibly co-exist peacefully with a free society like America that is guided by nature’s laws. For in such a society there will always be group differences—between men and women and among various sub-cultures. Multiculturalism requires crushing these natural differences and so demands expansion of state power and countless social restrictions, including censorship (political correctness).
Nature, however, is not easily crushed. As multiculturalism advances, nature’s resistance stiffens, requiring ever-more state power and restrictions, leading to ever-more destruction of the American way of life.
Coming soon in Unca D's snipatorium, Mr. Klingenstein's guide to understanding how the multiculturalists use the 1619 Project to corrupt education and weaken the American way of life.
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Elaboration by Unca D:
Mr. Klingenstein says, "Multiculturalism's end is a society where there are no outcome disparities among identity groups."
He is correct in this sense: This is what multiculturalists think they are doing. But since no society has ever existed or ever will exist, short of heaven, with no outcome disparities among identity groups, the true end of multiculturalism is to impose the inevitable outcome disparities in favor of themselves and their own identity groups.
This is a weightier topic than Unca D's coda will support. Remember, as we close, however, that Senator Bernard Sanders, titular head of the socialist branch of the multiculturalist enterprise, owns three houses.
He has no plans, so far as I know, to correct this outcome disparity voluntarily by inviting members of the homeless identity group to occupy two of them.
Nor is it likely, in my view, that he will try to correct this outcome disparity by writing laws to strip him of at least two houses.
If multiculturalists prevail, they will live large. See, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and other workers' paradises.
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