Destroying Diversity

Those who play in the political sandbox are well aware that "diversity" is a core principle of modern progressivism. It is not only an end unto itself, its benefits are treated as fact rather than opinion by the woke and their brethren.

The sham of all this has been apparent to everyone who doesn't live in their corner of that sandbox for decades. The most important diversity of all - that of viewpoint - is persona non grata in their Crayola box. Even their arguments that having diverse representation, including skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other demographic markers, enriches a group or community fall short, because all those "diverse" individuals are expected to share the same leftist viewpoints. Thus, the "wise Latina" Sandra Sotomayor is only acceptable to the arbiters of this matter because she shares their politics, but the conservative Clarence Thomas's blackness marks him as a race traitor rather than as a contributor to the diversity stew.

This sham is further reflected in the Left's desire to eliminate the Electoral College.

The EC is part of a remarkable diversity package instituted by the people who crafted the structure of the nation. They built a system that not only gives voice to the people in a population-proportional sense, it ensures that every state will have some voice in what happens at the federal level, and so the variety of cultures across the states gets well represented. In the legislature, both are accomplished by a population-based House of Representatives and a state-based Senate. In the executive, "diversity of viewpoint" is enhanced by the Electoral College system for electing the President.

Because that system has twice in the past quarter century given us a President that didn't garner the most total votes, and because both those winners were of the wrong team, the Left, in typical toddler tantrum style, wants to change the rules of the game.

That's not a very new sentiment, and it's reflective of the "we only care about winning" belief that Team Blue's strength in big population centers will give it a structural advantage under this rule change. Rest assured, if Team Blue had won those two Presidencies via EC while losing the National Popular Vote (NPV), we wouldn't be hearing a peep from them about changing the rules. We'd probably be hearing it from Team Red, but they'd be as wrong about it as Team Blue is.

Most recently, Team Blue's Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz commented,

I think all of us know the electoral college needs to go.

Then he went on.

But that's not the world we live in. So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada and win.

What's wrong with going to Beaver County and York and Reno? Don't those citizens deserve a President who'd pay some attention to them? Isn't diversity of location as presumptively a Good Thing as the diversities the progressives prioritize?

A NPV presidential election would shift campaign focuses even more toward high population centers, and in doing so it would reduce diversity when it comes to Presidential politics. The range of life-viewpoints that emerge from the blend of city, suburb, exurb, and deep country living, from the North, South, East, West and all points in between, from hot, temperate, and cold climates, from coastal, inland, flat, hilly, and mountainous environs, and from the wide variety of living conditions found in America's 3.8M square miles would be drastically diminished, as candidates would do campaign math and realize that their best bang for the buck would be to focus on and cater to the big clusters.

This loss of diversity wouldn't bother the progressives, however. As I noted above, they reject diversity of viewpoint, and have been doing so for decades.

It would also harm voting diversity. If a particular state in a particular voting cycle is "safe" for one team or the other, third parties stand a better chance of garnering protest votes, i.e. votes that signal dissatisfaction with the two major parties. Going to NPV would sap the third parties of those votes, further entrench the duopoly, further cede power to the party machines that control who gets on the ballots, and further diminish the ability to say "I don't like your policies" to that duopoly.

As I noted not that long ago, we do not live in a democracy. For that we should be very thankful. A democracy is majority will, unchecked and unfettered, and it produces bad outcomes for anyone not in the majority. Unfortunately, the NPV advocates want to move us in that direction, toward a society where the majority gets to impose its will on the minority, with no accommodation for individual rights.

Or for actual diversity.

Because once you get past skin color, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, and the like, you get to the core of what makes us human: our ability to think. That is what makes us free, and what gives meaning to our lives. Diversity of thought produces prosperous societies, while conformity of thought destroys them. History makes that eminently and irrefutably clear.

That those who hate diversity of thought have achieved cultural supremacy is a very bad portent for the future of our society and our nation. That they would blow up the system in order to get their way is another, and that "blowing up" extends well past eliminating the EC and well into gutting the Supreme Court, eviscerating the First and Second Amendments, and continuing to undermine our individual and property rights.

The NPV advocates invariably come up with high-minded rationales for their "change the system" desires, but don't be fooled. They don't give a shit about making anything more fair, they just want to rig the game in their favor.

The Harris campaign walked back Walz's Kinsley Gaffe, but at this point, I don’t believe a single thing that campaign tells us it will or won’t do. I expect that, once in power, Harris will pull the same switcheroo that Biden did, sprint to the Left, and pursue policies she disavowed as a 2024 candidate.