Merit vs Diversity

AF Branco [Americans for Limited Government] cartoon at Townhall    

In his column “Destroying Meritocracy Is Deadly” at Townhall, Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decline in the aviation industries, both commercial and military, but his concerns could as easily be about the medical, educational, agricultural, energy and other professions. VDH concludes:

. . . America's security, safety, prosperity, and postmodern lifestyles are not our birthright.

They are the dividends of centuries of prior hard work, unfettered freedom of speech, disinterested research, and a meritocracy.

Tamper with any of that and the system begins to fall apart.

The United States will then resemble the miasma we see in most of the world abroad where ideology suppresses free inquiry, political correctness warps research, and tribalism trumps meritocracy.

Many of the major airlines have established racial and gender quotes for government pilot training programs. United Airlines has set quotas to ensure half of its trainees will be minorities or women. Since 2013, the FAA has been lowering standards for air traffic control qualifications to achieve de facto race and gender quotas.

In testimony before Congress our top military brass has bragged not of their reduction in standards for enlistment, but of their "diversity" hiring, as they purportedly ferret out "white supremacy" and "white rage."

In sum, our government is playing with our lives as it prefers diversity, equity, and inclusion over ensuring the best qualified employees are hired on the basis of racially and gender-blind competitive tests and experience.

Keep it up, and there are going to be a lot more Afghanistan-style surrenders, Chinese surveillance craft in our skies, and airline nightmares.

The full column is here.

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President Biden’s Words of Division

 

Heather Mac Donald watched President Biden’s inaugural speech so you didn’t have to.  Her commentary at City Journal begins:

It’s an odd way to seek national unity: call a significant portion of the American public white supremacists, racists, and nativists. Welcome to the Biden presidency.

Joe Biden’s inaugural speech as 46th president is predictably being hailed for its “unifying” message. And just as predictably, his invocations of the divisive bromides of the identitarian Left are being swept under the rug.

According to Biden, we are a “great nation” and a “good people.” But we also oppress minorities with an ever-rising fervor. “Growing inequity” is among the greatest challenges facing the country, according to Biden, along with the “sting of systemic racism” and encroaching “white supremacy.” Only now are we confronting “a cry for racial justice, some four hundred years in the making.”

One might have thought that more than 50 years of civil rights legislation; the banishing of Jim Crow segregation; the ubiquity of racial preferences throughout corporate America, higher education, and government; trillions of dollars of tax dollars attempting to close the academic achievement gap; and the election of black politicians by white voting districts would have reduced inequity, not increased it. But to Biden’s speechwriters, steeped in academic victimology, racial inequity is always with us, requiring constant remediation from government.

Ms. Mac Donald’s full commentary is here. 

Note:  When this blog makes reference to President Biden’s speech, or decision, or agenda, or whatever, I assume he is delivering whatever his masters require.

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