Immigration Creates Diversity as a Liberal Value and Vice Versa

By Brenda Walker
Volume 26, Number 2 (Winter 2016)
Issue theme: "Immigration Briefing Book"


Human beings construct their cultures out of the physical and social materials available. Eskimos are said to have 50 words for snow because frozen water surrounds them. So when the nation changes demographically due to immigration, liberal scribblers see an opportunity to meme up.

It just so happens that most third worlders (who are the majority of newbies these days) prefer big government as a matter of culture. They say they come to work, but they also regard a generous safety net of freebies from government as part of the deal—just like at home, the socialist paradise they fled. Most don’t seem to grasp the inconsistency.

Therefore immigration is really advantageous for the Democrat party, and massive immigration of big-government-preferring foreigners has turned conservative states like California dependably liberal. Texas was in the Democrats’ sights in the last election, but Texans are made of sterner stuff than mellow west coasters.

The diversity meme has become quite inflated, apparently based on the notion that if a little race/culture variety is good, then more is better. If having a few Mexicans and a taco joint in your town is good, then the presence of thousands of burqa-hidden Muslims and sketchy mosques is even more morally superior. This principle has been pushed to the point of embracing anti-American values, which are widely taught in schools and colleges.

The extremes of diversity ideology we see today are off the charts, but it wasn’t always so among liberals. The Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt was a strong war leader who didn’t worry about hurting the feelings of the enemy. Conveniently, there was essentially no immigration to America from 1924 to 1965; nevertheless FDR didn’t allow naturalizations of persons from Axis nations during World War II.

In comparison, Obama frequently lectures Amer-icans on our alleged moral failings. In particular, he believes we should not hate Islam, despite it being the enemy of western civilization for the last 1,400 years. During the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2015, he remarked, “Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

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Note to president: the bad behavior of the Crusades occurred centuries ago. The atrocities of ISIS—like beheadings and burning people alive—take place now.

Diversity has become a quasi-religion, because it is regarded by liberals as the highest value, partially as a leftist strategy to promote open borders.

The withering of traditional religions and church attendance has left a void in the morality scoring department. Ostentatious display of virtue was apparently a problem in Jesus’ time also, since he remarked, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.” (Matthew 6: 5)

So the preening display of virtue is not a new thing, but today it is based on different values, which are promoted by the liberal media culture, with the assistance of the liberal education culture.

Diversity the ideology is the latest in a string of bad ideas that were supposed to make a flowering of utopia possible. Many liberals believe that if only the right political organization and belief system could be figured out then surely humans could stop all the wars and get along. The problem, of course, lies in human nature, which is tribal, not universal.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam put a major smackdown on diversity doctrine in his research published in 2007, titled “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century.” After interviewing 30,000 subjects in a five-year study, he concluded that diversity decreases trust. In mixed communities, he found, people tend to withdraw into themselves and “hunker down”—his expression.

Another effect of big immigration on values is the increasing fear of offense toward the diverse and the corresponding shrinkage of free speech as an important democratic principle. A November Pew Research poll asked members of different generations whether speech should be restricted if it might offend minorities, and the results showed a remarkable misunderstanding among younger people about the importance of free speech as foundational in a free society.

Do you favor allowing the government to prevent people from saying things considered offensive to minorities?

40 percent Millennials Agree

27 percent Gen Xers Agree

24 percent Boomers Agree

12 percent Silents Agree

Remember that the definition of what’s offensive has broadened in these hyper-sensitive times. Therefore accurate or legal phrases like “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” are now considered slurs, or worse.

Maybe the idea all along has been that everyone should just shut up about diversity and take what the elites are forcing upon us. The open borders policy has been very profitable for billionaires desiring cheaper labor, and they are fortunate that the media have been willing to help with promoting diversity as a valuable social element. But then the scribblers have never been replaced by a cheaper foreign worker since there is no employment visa for journalists. It’s a great system for elites and those who serve them directly, just not so much for Americans who prefer fairness.

About the author

Brenda Walker is publisher of the websites LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. A resident of the San Francisco Bay area, she is a frequent contributor to The Social Contract.