Since Boot's argument is written, in contrast to Adams' videorecording, it's more carefully done, but it's ends up just as dumb and dishonest.
Of course, Boot's first move is to claim that Tucker merely parrots neo-Nazi talking points. Boot is a classy thinker.
The way these people make "diversity is our strength" seem credible is to cherry-pick their examples and to equivocate: they use various meanings of diversity when it suits them. They use it to mean diversity of opinion when they give of examples of stifling uniformity. Boot relies on this meaning when he cites North Korea as an example.
Of course, Boot is cherry-picking here. These guys never focus on the typical situation. Yes, competition of different opinions can help a country arrive at better decisions, but normal countries have more than enough diversity to generate different perspectives. A typical country does not need to import millions of aliens to achieve sufficient diversity. Plus, more to the point, what you need for good decisions is smart people. A very diverse group of dummies is not going to cut it.
Boot conveniently ignores the general tendency: across countries, ethnic heterogeneity correlates with dysfunctional conflict. As a Jew, Boot should be aware of the fact that ethnic heterogeneity predicts genocide. I don't need to cherry-pick to make my point: Everyone knows it's a general truth.
Next, Boot cites the examples of South Korea and Japan. They are aging and need young immigrants to help pay the bills. Here, "diversity" means cheap labor. He conveniently ignores the cost side of the ledger and the long-term consequences of importing huge, alien populations. Poor immigrants are very costly to welfare states, and, again, the consequences over the long haul are likely to be dysfunctional conflict and a society that ends up worse off.
Boot's next move is to sing the praises of America's genius immigrants. He goes all the way back to Levi Strauss to make his point. Again, equivocation. Diversity here means "geniuses." He's cherry-picking. According to a study by Jason Richwine, the average IQ of US immigrants is somewhere between 91 and 94. A person with IQ in the low 90s is suited to do a low-skill job--not to be the next Alexander Graham Bell.
Boot does manage to cite one study that found that public companies with more ethnic and gender diversity have higher profitability. I'll give him credit here -- he's debating in a serious way, for once -- but one study can find anything, and it might be the case that strong, profitable companies can afford the luxury of promoting more diverse leadership. The causal mechanism here seems unlikely: What is it about more minorities and women that would translate into more profit? The only answers that have any credibility are that these people understand minority/female customer desires better, or if "minorities" include large numbers of high IQ individuals (e.g., East Asians, South Asians).
Finally, he argues that diversity strengthens our national security. If the NYPD is made up of Arabic, Pashto, Farsi, and Urdu speakers, we will be safer. In other words, the grave security problems caused by diversity can be addressed a little better with diversity. Lame.
UPDATE: Boot, like Adams, finishes with the point that diversity in the US is inevitable. This is practically an admission that diversity is a weakness -- a weakness we must live with. Like others, part of this "inevitability" is the tens of millions of legal and illegal immigrants who haven't come yet. To the PC-minded, even our future policy choices are inevitabilities. We're somehow paralyzed. There is no way we can change course with respect to mass immigration. So much dishonesty by these people.
Scott Adams's book, "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World When Facts Don't Matter", contains a lot of examples of "thinking past the sale" as a powerful persuasion technique. In the case of "Diversity is our greatest strength vs weakness," the "sale" is that having such a dialogue is legitimate while those of us who are skeptical of "diversity" are prohibited from escaping it. This is akin to a "dialogue" with a woman being raped by an HIV-infected gang having a "dialogue" about whether they are really HIV-infected or not. The point is not whether the results of the activity being forced upon us is good or not. The point is that we did not grant anything remotely resembling prior consent, as evidenced by the fact that over 90% of the US public opposed the manifest policy of ever-increasing immigration rates during the last half of the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteTo quote a Quora comment of mine that was classed as "spam" by their "moderators":
Minorities have rights. Even if less than 10% prefers a social policy, their preferences must be tolerated at the local level if they are willing to assortatively migrate. The "flight from diversity" demonstrates willingness to assortatively migrate. Over 90% opposed increasing immigration from 1965's Immigration and Nationality Act until 2000 when it finally decreased below 90%. The observant will note that 90% is greater than 10%. During those same decades, immigration steadily increased with a huge spike from Reagan's 1986 amnesty. If one wishes to argue that "representative democracy" is consistent with "consent of the governed" despite such a wide gap between popular and enforced policy, then one must be prepared for the emergence of "populist" movements that destabilize society, if not erupt in civil war.
https://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2016/09/diversity-vs-human-development.html
But... so long as guys like Adams and Boot have us hog-tied in the basement while they gang rape us, they should be presented with this list of academic cites showing that "Diversity is our greatest weakness."
ReplyDeleteMoreover, we should utilize such "dialogue" to lull them into a state of complacency, secure in the knowledge that we have "consented" to even having such a dialogue, while we prepare our collection of brown recluse spiders from the dark corners of the basement webs.
But as some on the right have pointed out, liberals and others who promote diversity don't actually believe in diversity. They want homogenization, open borders, one world government, etc., and "diversity" is simply a cover or the means towards that end. And if as the right says diversity is such a bad thing and our greatest weakness, then obviously the liberals and their ultimate goal of homogenization and one world government are right and good things. Just as previous levels of organization such as primitive states, city-states, nation-states, empires, etc. suppressed diversity and its associated problems and weaknesses, the move towards homogenization and world government at the global level represents the next level towards eliminating the problems and weaknesses of diversity.
ReplyDelete