When Justin Trudeau was asked why half of his cabinet was made up of women, his answer was, “Because it’s 2015.” Later, Joe Biden pledged to appoint a diverse cabinet that “looks like America.”
The Canadian female cabinet members are an excellent example of the current trend toward, and insistence on, a politically arranged “looks like something.” They got there through two helpings of “affirmative” policy. First, they were encouraged to stand for election because they were women. Second, they were chosen for the cabinet for the same reason—in this case, the announced reason. Of course, if merit weren’t going to be compromised, the affirmative action policy would be redundant.
During the past few months, American and Canadian companies have been scrambling to appoint women and people of color to leadership positions. This isn’t legally required—and it’s important to know that it isn’t being done for any moral reason, either.
Black Lives Matter and similar movements and the continual riots in the aftermath of George Floyd death have created a massive demand for virtue-signalling to and self-protection from the radical Left, and the woke masses. The sword of cancel culture hangs over anyone who fails to take protective measures or suffers a slip of the tongue.
Politicians and other salesmen have a keen sense of the pulse of the mainstream culture. They regurgitate what society wants to hear. The scrambling for “diversity” (which does not include intellectual diversity) is a result of woke culture metastasizing and at least becoming not repulsive to the majority.
Today, organizations openly advertise how many women, gays, and people of color they employ. I wonder if the female employees feel good about being paraded for their genitals. And how confident the people of color and the LGBTQ people feel whenever they realize they are in their positions because of their skin color or sexual orientation.
I have felt belittled, degraded, and less human whenever I have been offered benefits based on my skin colour. And why shouldn’t I? What makes someone think that I can’t stand without his support? The bigotry of the wokes, who claim to fight against bigotry, makes me feel sick. I wonder why anyone who asks for privileges based on sex, skin color, or sexual orientation doesn’t feel the same. Don’t they have an iota of honor?
My relatively poor family taught us to be proud, and I was fanatical about hiding my poverty, particularly when I was desperate and hungry in the UK. My family never allowed us to whine or play the victim card.
There are communities worldwide—albeit mostly centered in Europe and East Asia—who refuse to beg or whine or present themselves as permanent victims.
One of the core building blocks of Western civilization has been “honor,” something that Christian missionaries tried hard to infuse into the poor world, fully realizing that economic prosperity and general well-being are products of specific values that society holds, not vice versa.
Even in the tribal, amoral hellhole of collectivist India, where the concept of values, including honor, is often conspicuous by its absence, those who have a bit of it tend to succeed or get a vision of an exit path. Anyone who blames India’s caste system as the be-all and end-all of his failures merely rationalizes them.
After the departure of the British in 1947, a million Hindus migrated to India from the Sindh province of what became Pakistan. They arrived with very little, apart from the clothes they had on. They had lost everything and had no contacts in India. Wherever they went, instead of expecting alms, they looked for work. Many became traders; women went around knocking on doors to do tailoring work. You don’t find Sindhi beggars. They were soon wealthy by Indian standards.
Indians who had come from the province of Gujarat were thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972. They were allowed to carry a few pairs of clothes and $50 each—everything else was confiscated. A family of someone I know that owned a couple of the biggest businesses in Uganda ended up as refugees in the UK. His mom, who earlier had a fleet of servants, worked as a janitor. But there is something important about not begging, whining, and playing the victim card—sometimes even in suffering silently, accepting that life is not “fair,” and making the best of what is available rather than protesting and complaining. My acquaintance is now one of the most successful people in his field and is, indeed, superbly wealthy.
One must find honor before starting to feel human. Without character and values, there are no foundations on which to build a better life. That is the most important reason why Europe and its offshoots emerged from eternal poverty, borderline starvation, Malthusian existence and became successful. If the core philosophy is not retained, the successes and prosperity will disappear.
I went to an engineering college in India. Getting an entrance was a hard slog. But those from the lower caste managed to get in despite getting close to zero in the examination. Eventually, they were pushed out with a degree. Similar people go to study medicine. I hope no one blames me for caste-ism for my refusal to visit a doctor from the lower caste. I cannot afford the risk.
To fight racism, sexism, and homophobia, policymakers in the West assume that the presumed sufferers must be too weak to deal unaided with heterosexual males of European ethnicity. To accept this condescension and the engineered successes it offers dehumanizes those it claims to help.
The damage is terrible. “Affirmative” policies have been the single most significant cause of Indian institutions’ destruction. As they get ramped up in the West, institutions will keep hollowing out, and accidents and chaos will keep increasing. That’s what happens when group identity is valued more than individual merit and qualification.
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