{"id":6885,"date":"2015-10-31T14:06:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T14:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/10\/31\/how-valuable-is-ideological-diversity\/"},"modified":"2015-10-31T14:06:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T14:06:45","slug":"how-valuable-is-ideological-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/10\/31\/how-valuable-is-ideological-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"How Valuable is Ideological Diversity within Communities of Interacting People?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arthur C. Brooks  deplores the lack of ideological diversity and the prevalence of 'groupthink' in academia in an October 30th NYT editorial entitled "Academia's Rejection of Diversity."  He is of course right to do so. But this is nothing new as any conservative will tell you.  And we don't need studies to know about it, which is not to say that studies are not of some slight use in persuading doubters.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I would take issue with, though, is Brooks' apparently unqualified belief that "being around people [ideologically] unlike ourselves makes us [intellectually] better people . . . ."  I have added, charitably I should think,  a couple of qualifiers in brackets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interaction with ideological opponents can be fruitful, and sometimes is.  That goes without saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I think it is very easy to overestimate the value of interactions with people with fundamentally different views.  It is a mistake to think that more and more 'conversations'  will lead to amicable agreements and mutual understanding. This mistake  is based on the false assumption that there is still common ground on which to hold these 'conversations.'  <\/span><\/p>\n

I say we need fewer 'conversations' and more voluntary separation.  In many situations we need the political equivalent of divorce.  In marriage as in politics the bitter tensions born of irreconcilable differences are relieved by divorce, not by attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable.  Let's consider some examples.  In each of these cases it is difficult to see what common ground the parties to the dispute occupy.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Suppose you hold the utterly abhorrent view that it is a justifiable use of state power to force a florist or a caterer to violate his conscience by providing services at, say, a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony.  <\/span><\/p>\n

2. Or you hold the appalling and ridiculous view that demanding photo ID at polling places disenfranchises those would-be voters who lack such ID.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Or you refuse to admit a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Or you maintain the absurd thesis that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity at the present time. (Obama)<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Or you advance the crack-brained notion that the cases of Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till are comparable in all relevant respects.  Trayvon Martin Was No Emmett Till!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

6.  Or, showing utter contempt for facts, you insist that Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri was an 'unarmed black teenager'  shot down like a dog in cold blood without justification of any sort by the racist cop, Darren Wilson.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Or you compare Ferguson and Baltimore as if they are relevantly similar. (Hillary Clinton)<\/span><\/p>\n

8. Or you mendaciously elide distinctions crucial in the gun debate such as that between semi-auto and full-auto. (Dianne Feinstein)<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Or you systematically deploy double standards.  President Obama, for example,  refuses to use 'Islamic' in connection with the Islamic State or 'Muslim' in connection with Muslim terrorists.  But he has no problem with pinning the deeds of crusaders and inquisitors on Christians.<\/span><\/p>\n

10. Or you mendaciously engage in self-serving anachronism, for example, comparing  current Muslim atrocities with Christian ones long in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

11. Or you routinely slander your opponents with such epithets as 'racist,' 'sexist,' etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

12.  Or you make up words whose sole purpose is to serve as semantic bludgeons and cast doubt on the sanity of your opponents.  You know full well that a phobia is an irrational fear, but you insist on labeling those who oppose homosexual practices as 'phobic' when you know that their opposition is in most cases rationally grounded and not based in fear, let alone irrational fear.<\/span><\/p>\n

13. Or you bandy the neologism 'Islamophobia' as a semantic bludgeon when it is plain that fear of radical Islam is entirely rational. In general, you engage in linguistic mischief whenever it serves your agenda thereby showing contempt for the languages you mutilate.<\/span><\/p>\n

14. Or you take the side of underdogs qua underdogs without giving any thought as to whether or not these underdogs are in any measure responsible for their status or their misery by their crimes.  You apparently think that weakness justifies<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

15. Or you label abortion a 'reproductive right' or a 'women's health issue' thus begging the question of its moral acceptability.<\/span><\/p>\n

On each of these points and many others  I could write a book demolishing the hard Left position that underlies the points and that dominates the universities, the mainstream media, the courts, and our current government.  So what's to discuss?  What conceivable motive could a conservative have to enter into debates with people who, from a conservative point of view, are willfully wrongheaded and demonstrably  mistaken? There are open questions that need discussing, but the above  aren't among them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Related:  Sam Harris and the Problem of Disagreement: Is Conversation Our Only Hope?<\/a>  This is a substantial entry  in which I take Harris to task for his astonishingly naive view that 'conversation' is our only hope.  If that is our only hope we are . . . [insert epithet of choice].<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Michael Walzer, "Islamism and the Left"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arthur C. Brooks  deplores the lack of ideological diversity and the prevalence of 'groupthink' in academia in an October 30th NYT editorial entitled "Academia's Rejection of Diversity."  He is of course right to do so. But this is nothing new as any conservative will tell you.  And we don't need studies to know about it, … Continue reading “How Valuable is Ideological Diversity within Communities of Interacting People?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,180,251,163,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-decline-of-the-west","category-disagreement","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}