Diversity is Not a Military Necessity

Diversity as defined and used by the professional left is complete unmitigated horse crap. It is s cudgel they use to bash the racist, sexist neanderthals who stand in the way of their crusade. You see until every group of people in every possible human condition is equally represented by every available color or chromosome combination, we have failed.

This is an idiotic idea that is the last resort of the professional victimologists who arose from the civil rights movement. The idea that diversity is an unalloyed good has become far too accepted for a concept with absolutely no factual basis. If you are a fuzzy-headed lefty then it is self-evident that unless we have all the colors we don’t have a rainbow. The rest of us nurture this quaint notion that since associations are voluntary and organizations have an innate need to promote the best they can, that merit ought to be the basis for upward mobility.

Sadly, No. And so we have situations like this where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs makes this promise to decrease the readiness of our military and sacrifice lives on the altar of political correctness.

When he became chief of Naval Operations in 2005, Mullen said, he made diversity a priority. “When you’re taking on a very, very difficult challenge like this and trying to change your institution, you can’t go fast enough,” he said. Mullen said he focused his diversity goals for the Navy on two areas: minorities and women.

You can’t go fast enough? You are undertaking a basic change to what is valued in the military. Currently it is competence and experience, under the Mullen PC Protocols it will be melanin and genitalia. This is hardly good for readiness or morale or esprit de corps and it will guarantee that lesser-qualified officers will rise in the ranks based more on characteristics that have nothing to do with skill and leadership. The reason that there are not more minorities and women in senior positions has little to do with institutional white racism and a lot to do with who in our country decides to devote their life to military service.

“We know how to make [general officers],” he said. “We’ve been doing it a long time, and it’s actually pretty simple. You put them in the right jobs, and if they do well, they get promoted.

Now most people would have no trouble with that simple concept- do well, get promoted. But you see that wasn’t churning out the correct number of non-white and baby-capable officers so it must be the system that is broken. Mullen blamed the fact that the officers making career placements weer too white. So he injects purposeful racism into a system that before had this archaic notion that you put the best people in the best jobs to get the best result. He attempts to cover himself by saying all of a suddent after they put minorities who were told to promote minorities in these positions that tons of qualified recods started showing up. Yeah right. Or maybe if you decide to change the standards then you can pick and choose who you want to match your quotas.

I did a lot of executive search and one of the most disgusting, yet lucrative, things we did was diversity search. My client was a top three defense contractor and they always need more minorities. They basically had a standing order for any “diverse” talent, period. So we would scour the ranks of their competitors and would take any minorities we found and offer them a step or two up the ladder, regardless if they were actually qualified. If we had a specific position that had been designated to be filled by a minority then we would actively screen highly-qualified candicates out simply for being white. In the course of a normal search that would mean discarding and discriminating against 95%+ of the best people available in order to promote someone from an accepted victim class.

If the problem was actually that talented minority candidates were being ignored by the military or industry then perhaps this fixation on diversity would make sense. But they are not and they have not been for almost my entire adult life. In fact the military and related defense contractors have been under the gun to push affirmative action for decades now.

The problem is that equality of opportunity doesn’t lead to equality of outcome and that is what burns the victimologists. So they will tweak the system to discriminate in a way that gives them the diversity they want. In the college admissions system there is such an insane fight for non-whites that the sons and daughters of African plutocrats and elites push American blacks and whites out of the way since they have good grades and check the African- American block. And let’s not even begin to talk about the blatant and wholesale discrimination against Asians in this racial re-distribution game.

Racial discrimination is evil and that is true no matter who does it and for what reason. If you want more black kids to get college degrees, then you need to get more of them to stay in school. You can’t just magic the process and print them pieces of paper you have now devalued. The same applies to the military and it has that added focus factor that lives will ride on the process. If we decide that having the a beautiful rainbow for an officer corps is the right answer, then we will see more of the one color they all share in common- The blood of our troops shed on the battlefield.

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Are you a sexual terrorist? New York worries about “street harassment.”

Crime, taxes, sanitation, schools, parks…. these are the issues the residents of most cities worry about. But New York is too cool for that, according to gawker: “A substantial crowd comprised of all genders, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, and ages gathered today at the first City Council hearing on street harassment. Armed with suggestions on how the city can combat the problem, one expert said, “Street harassment is a form of sexual terrorism” and an activist called it a “gateway crime, creating a culture in our city that makes other forms of violence against women okay.”

Forget rape, forget assault, forget your boss touching your ass. If you engage in “Cat-calling,” “hollerin’ at a girl,” and “being a huge douchebag” you might be a sexual terrorist.

“One street harassment expert says 90% of women have experienced some sort of harassment on the street, and by 19 3/4 have been followed by creepy guys, according to Gothamist. Panelists speaking to City Council today recommended establishing “harassment free” zones around schools. While it’s a nice idea, it’s hard to see exactly how you could enforce this without seriously infringing on Americans’ hard-won right to be absolute shitbags in public. Maybe we can start with Joe Francis-free zones and go from there?” See here

Yes, the purveyor of Girls Gone Wild is the next Osama Bin Ladden. Seriously, do these people understand the First Amendment? Whistling at a person you find attractive is not sexual terrorism, it’s a compliment! Seriously ladies, if you’re looking for chivalry New York is not the place for that. The rotten apple is famous for being rude, someone insults you and you insult them back. That’s not sexual terrorism, that’s reality.

What’s next? Visual terrorism? Tattoos & Piercings Free Zones to avoid offending squares? How ‘bout Meat Free Zones to avoid offending vegans? Listen New York, if you want to worry about something, worry about bedbugs. They may not be “sexual terrorists” but they are destroying your $30 billion dollar industry.

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Now the British government is trying to get its hands on the internet

With the best of motives of course

Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP, will today call for an investigation into the collection of personal data by Google during its Street View mapping service. The MP will also call for an internet bill of rights to protect the privacy of web users.

He will tell the House of Commons that a legal framework is necessary to "protect ordinary people" from having private information collected by commercial companies.

Mr Halfon requested the parliamentary debate following Google's confession in May this year that it had collected "fragmentary" data belonging to UK citizens while compiling information to use on its Street View application. This data included passwords, email addresses and Wi-Fi addresses.

Google has since apologised for collecting the data, claiming it did so unintentionally.

But Mr Halfon will say: "Google's invasion of privacy is not a few isolated mistakes. It is starting to look like a pattern." The MP is expected to criticise the internet search engine for impinging on people's civil liberties saying: "Either our home is our castle, or it is not."

He will warn against the use of private information "on an industrial scale for commercial purposes" and MPs will be told: "There is a real risk that we are sleepwalking into a privatised surveillance society."

Mr Halfon will claim that the UK's response to the infringement of the general public's privacy has been inadequate when compared with other countries.

In Greece and the Czech Republic Google Street View has been banned while the Candian privacy commissioner gave the company an official reprimand.

He will conclude: "When it comes to internet companies, the question of civil liberties is much murkier and less defined. That is why we need a robust commission of inquiry - with teeth - into the role of the internet and its relationship to individual liberty."

Google has insisted that the collection of the data was an accident caused when code left in a production system kept the content being broadcast over the Wi-Fi networks as the Google Street View car drove past.

A spokesman said: "'As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks. As soon as we realised what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the UK authorities. We want to delete the data as soon as possible and will continue to work with the authorities to determine the best way forward, as well as to answer their further questions and concerns.

"Over the past several months we have been working to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. We are making three types of changes: more people, including a new post of Director of Privacy, more training, and better procedures and compliance. For example, in terms of compliance every engineering project leader will be required to maintain a privacy design document for each initiative they are working on. This document will record how user data is handled and will be reviewed regularly by managers, as well as by an independent internal audit team."

Google has admitted to accidentally intercepting data in 30 different countries and deleted information collected in Austria, Denmark and Ireland in June. In July the UK Information Commissioner concluded there is no evidence of any "individual detriment".

In August this year police raided Google's South Korea headquarters, seizing computers and questioning company officials, following concern over alleged privacy violations.

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France: A “revolution” to preserve the status quo

In the past, youthful rebels were heroically indifferent to their long-term security. The French protesters are obsessed with theirs

Throughout history, young people have been in the forefront of protest. Revolutions have relied on the idealism and the energy of the young. Even during periods of stability and social peace, the adult world expects youth to kick back against conventions and rebel. Indeed, acts of defiance and rebellion are an integral part of young people’s development, of their transformation into mature adults. So, do the children currently protesting on the streets of France represent yet another example of generational defiance and rebellion? Yes and no.

In one sense, there is nothing peculiar about young people marching on the streets and chanting radical slogans. However, in one fundamental respect the French protesters’ movement is very different to conventional forms of youthful rebellion. For a start, this isn’t really much of a rebellion. Historically, the youth are animated by an aspiration to change the world, so that the future will look very different to the present. By contrast, the French schoolchildren and students are protesting to preserve the status quo; in fighting to retain the current age of retirement and the pensions system, their concern is to make sure that the present state of affairs continues indefinitely into the future.

Of course, there have been numerous examples of defensive protesting that is aimed at preserving the existing state of affairs. However, the young protesters in France express a caricature of that kind of defensive protesting. There is something very strange about young people becoming preoccupied with the age of retirement and old-age pensions. Listening to the statements made by the protesting youth, one gets the impression that they are all speaking from the same tired script written by an exhausted old-age pensioner.

Perhaps they cultivated this very sensible, defensive demeanour in order to reassure the public, through the media, that their protests are not a threat. However, when one Parisian high-school student expressed her fears that if people had to work for an extra two years then there would be a million fewer jobs for the young, it was clear that this very young person was giving voice to the preoccupations of her grandparents. Numerous other young protesters expressed concern about ‘l’insecurite’. Historically, the young rebel partly because they are heroically indifferent to their long-term security; in contrast, today’s French rebels show that adopting a very old mindset can come at a surprisingly early age.

From the outset, these modern-day ‘children of the revolution’ were thoroughly infantilised by their elders. Time and again, the French cultural elites and media assured the youngsters that their protest resembled the student rebellions of the 1960s. Courtesy of a severe historical amnesia about what really occurred in the 1960s, an imaginary revolution has been constructed. With a wink and a nod, French adult society has communicated its approval of the youth’s pension protests.

In reality, there is a fundamental difference between the real thing, those protests of the Sixties, and its impoverished imitation today. One sought to change the world; the other wants to preserve it. The youth of the Sixties challenged the old France, whereas today’s youth have been self-consciously sanctioned by the old to hit the streets and stir up a storm.

Bereft of a political project or any vision for the future, French grown-ups have resorted to inciting the young to give President Nicolas Sarkozy – or ‘Sarko’ – a hard time. The French are not alone in this. Only a few years ago, schoolkids in England were celebrated by crusty grown-ups for going on strike and protesting against the war in Iraq. Hiding behind children has become a widely practised activity amongst twenty-first century adults, who parasitically feed on the energy of the youth.

Back in 2003, Britain’s Stop the War coalition could rely on groups of schoolteachers and university lecturers to instruct their students to protest against the Iraq War. In such circumstances, taking time off from school was not so much an act of defiance as a demonstration of responsible behaviour, which was likely to gain the approval of the citizenship studies teacher. These are modern-day versions of a medieval children’s crusade. The concerns and actions of these young protesters are not really the outcome of a generationally inspired radicalism. Rather, the youth is behaving in a way that is expected of them by their society. And indirectly, what this radicalism really expresses is the emptying out of adult identity.
Adult fantasies about youth

Society’s interest in and representation of youth are invariably driven by an adult agenda. So, what is truly interesting about many protests today is not so much the activities of the protesters themselves, but the way in which youth are perceived and represented. For a long time now, Western culture has tried to make sense of its hopes and fears through its interpretation of youthful behaviour. Often, youth are presented as having qualities that elude the old. Young people are endowed with characteristics like innocence, idealism, altruism and bravery. On a bad day, however, adult fantasies about young people focus on their depravity; youth are cast in the role of undisciplined, decadent and easily corrupted delinquents.

When adults are confident of their status and their authority, they can live with and reconcile their often conflicting fantasies about the young. For example, in classical antiquity the elders had no problem living with the cult of youthfulness. ‘Youth meant a healthy physique, beauty, and sexual attraction’, notes one fascinating study of the subject, before adding that, unlike today, the old in ancient times were ‘not goaded’ into being young (1). The line separating the generations was underwritten by a belief that only the old had the moral authority to run society. Indeed, in Ancient Greece and Rome, it was widely believed that ‘the young were not to be trusted with public affairs, that they were easily “corrupted” intellectually and morally and therefore a threat not only to themselves but to society at large’ (2).

For a variety of reasons, since modern times adult perceptions of the young have changed in Western society. Although the metaphor of youthful depravity still persists, the idealisation of youth has steadily gained momentum over the past three centuries. In the nineteenth century, radical and nationalist movements self-consciously adopted the word ‘Young’ to describe their parties. From the Young Italy movement to the Young Turks, a self-conscious emphasis on age conveyed an aspiration for change. Nineteenth-century Italian nationalist leaders demanded that the movement put youth at the head of its rebellion. This fantasy was carried on by Mussolini, who projected Youth as the ‘man of the future’ or, as he put it, a ‘young man not corrupted by the bourgeois and liberal past’.

In the interwar period, adult fantasies about a youthful vanguard became more powerful still. This was an era in which there was an intense concern about cultural decadence and decline. Cultural pessimism, it seems, is one of the driving forces behind the modern apotheosis of the young. In the interwar period, youth were cast in the role of a generation that would put right the mess created by their elders. It was in this era that the platitude about the young fixing adult problems gained influence in popular culture. Numerous publications predicted that the ‘revolt of the young against the old’ would help to save civilisation from the terrible damage inflicted on it by a generation steeped in the ways of the old.

The emptying out of adult identity

In recent decades, grown-up fantasies about the young have acquired an unusually desperate and confused character. So, what has changed? The main thing is that the identity of being an adult has lost much of its cultural weight and validation. Consequently, adult society often attempts to resolve the emptying out of its identity and authority by living through its young people.

Adults have become confused about how to conduct their relations with children. And this confusion is compounded by cultural trends that dispute and challenge the idea of adult authority (3). Since the 1960s glorification of youth culture, many parents have felt uncomfortable with their role as responsible adults. For some time now, parents, teachers and other adults involved with children have gone out of their way to cross the generational divide and become young people’s friends rather than mentors. Uncertainties about adulthood are invariably linked to changing ideas about childhood. In a world where maturity is disparaged as being ‘past it’, and the older generation is seen as having no special claim to wisdom, parents feel increasingly awkward about exercising authority.

Contemporary culture continually presents parents in a bad light. Popular culture portrays them as out-of-touch deadbeats who are insensitive to the needs of young people. In contrast, children are represented as essentially smart, streetwise and resourceful. This depreciation of adulthood, alongside the elevation of the child, is strikingly conveyed through TV shows and popular films. Children are regularly depicted as being morally superior to grown-ups, while their parents and other adults are depicted as craven fools. The depreciation of adulthood coincides with the idealisation of childhood and of young people.

Until the twentieth century, calling into question the power of elders focused on the manner in which authority was exercised. Youthful critics pointed to the failures, betrayals and cowardice of their elders – but they did not question the right of elders to possess authority. By contrast, over the past century the criticism of adult authority has acquired a more ideological and cultural dimension, leading to what has been described as the ‘de-authorisation of elders’. The elders no longer possess moral or cultural authority. Indeed, in recent times it is not only the authority of the old that has been called into question, but the authority of all adults.

It is this de-authorisation of adulthood that has encouraged the current tendency to defer to the youth. Time and again politicians lecture the public to ‘listen to the youth’; parenting experts have deified the ‘children’s voice’; and of course we are told that ‘children never lie’. In such circumstances, the claim that you are speaking on behalf of children or expressing the interests of the youth – or better still, getting a group of kids in front of the camera to mouth your message – is a way of legitimising your particular outlook. Speaking through the mouths of babes is now a popular pursuit amongst the European cultural elite. In France they have done it big time, with the old sanctioning the young to go out and pursue a ‘revolution’ dedicated to preserving the status quo.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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