When Diversity Goes Rogue, Stick To Your Own Kind - The Demise Of A Central, Universal Ethical Core

In Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, the Broadway 50s musical based on Romeo and Juliet, a boy and girl from two opposing gangs, one white and the other Puerto Rican, fall in love. Anita, a friend of Maria, warns her against getting involved with someone from a different community.  She sings:

A boy like that
Who'd kill your brother
Forget that boy
And find another
One of your own kind
Stick to your own kind
A boy like that
Will give you sorrow
You'll meet another boy tomorrow
One of your own kind
Stick to your own kind

“Stick to your own kind” is her refrain. If you don’t, you’re asking for trouble.  Of course Maria does not listen, bad turns to worse, and the final scene is a melodramatic replay of the end of the star-crossed lovers.

Of course Bernstein was just whistlin' Dixie.  Ever since the first Paleolithic settlements, human beings have formed likeminded groups and have been suspicious of 'the other'.  Human and animal societies have always prized centrality, core identity, universal belonging and have fought fiercely to defend polity, consensus, security, and identity.  Bee and ant colonies are built on complex social systems designed to propagate, protect, and defend the colony.  No outsiders, no intruders, no external intent is tolerated. 

In human society there has always been a tendency to form larger groups of associated, similar interests.  There is clearly strength in numbers, but only if those numbers add up to the same sum.  Groups become larger groups, extend their each, become more and more inclusive.  Religion became a central camping ground as did politics. 

Social groupings - the natural colloquies of the similar and likeminded - have always described human aggregations and always will. 

For large social groups comity is essential.  Fragmentation into self-interested groups is antithetical and destructive.  This is why China has always been a powerful nation and is now increasingly so.  It has refused ethnic separatism and insisted that all distinct groups abandon cultural distinction and join the universal, national polity of the nation at large. 

At the heart of this cultural polity is a strong ethical, Confucian core.  Separate ethnic identity means nothing compared to universal comity - subscription to a social, ethical, and moral core that guides every action and anneals divisions of self-interest. 

Japan is no different, hewing to the same idea of a central ethical core, in their case derived from Shintoism and Buddhism, but with a strong, undeniable cultural and historical legacy. 

Russia and Turkey, both with storied empires, understand the importance of cultural unanimity.  The Ottoman Empire - like the Roman, Mongol, Mauryan, or Persian - could never have existed without a strong, ineradicable cultural center and a universal embrace of it. 

Understanding the natural human tendency to form identity groups, but equally realizing the corrosive nature of such separatism has been the key to national strength and geopolitical supremacy. 

The United States once understood this - Thomas Jefferson and his Founding Fathers colleagues formed the new republic based on philosophical and religious principles.  The nation, although refusing the dictatorial imposition of European religion, would nonetheless be 'One Nation Under God' and would be guided by the principles of the Enlightenment. Logic and reason were only means to the end of better understanding God and his Creation. 

Now, however, the nation is ruled by identity politics - the division of the country into racial, ethnic, and gender groups, all legitimized by narrow self-interest.  National ethos, polity, comity, subscription to universal norms of right behavior have been rejected in favor of cultural separatism.  Blacks and whites have nothing in common, nor do gays and straights.  There is no attempt to find common ground because a priori, ipso facto there is none. 

Europe, after decades of the liberal, inclusivist policies which have let in millions of Middle Eastern and African Muslims, has realized the mistake it made.  These immigrants, always harshly critical of and militantly aggressive against all other religions, have made it clear that they will create a sub-state within national borders.  They have refused European secularism, and have insisted that God's law - their Islamic social code - will always have the ultimate say. 

Conservative leaders in France, the UK, and Germany will most certainly be elected in the next round of voting, and they have vowed not only to close the borders but to deport all who are in the country illegally and to insist on overt and universal subscription to European cultural laws and traditions.  Cultural diversity will be respected as long as it does interfere with, counter, or reject the universal norms of the nation. 

Poland and Hungary have made cultural integrity the cornerstone of their political agenda.  Poland has been publicly proud of its tight immigration policy, and Giorgia Meloni, President of Italy has said loudly and proudly, 'I am Giorgia.  I am a woman.  I am a mother. I am Christian. I am European, and I am Italian!' the litany of foundational values. 

Japan under its new conservative leadership has vowed to close down mosques, deport anyone who has not become fully Japanese, and has vowed to preserve Japanese culture. 

Of course the European Left has cried fascism, neo-Nazism, and right-wing extremism, and have begun a hate-mongering campaign to cast all conservatives as retrograde, bullying Hitlerian National Socialists. 

Conservative adherents have been very outspoken in their frustration and anger at having for so long been forced to bow to the claims of the Left that white, Christian Europe has been nothing but a predatory, warmongering, colonialist, oppressor, and good riddance to it. 

American conservatives have raised the same angry cries.  For years Americans have been told that white, Christian America is evil, the perpetuator of slavery, Jim Crow, persistent systemic racism, and the oppression of minorities and the poor.  The creation of identity groups has been an important way to counter white, straight, Christian supremacy. 

Conservatives are having no more of it.  White, Christian, Europe has given the world modern civilization - art, literature, science, philosophy, architecture, laws, and civil governance - and its inheritors in America should not only be proud of that legacy but do everything to restore it. 

To create a culture of identity is to foist a superficial, discrediting, demeaning philosophy on the citizenry.  A focus on race, gender, and ethnicity diminishes and detracts from the attention which should be paid to intelligence, talent, creativity, insight, and social courage.  There will always be differences among people. 

The bell curve will always and inevitably define human society - there will always be the smarter and the less able, those with will and ambition and those without, those with talent and insight, and those who remain ignorant and credulous. 

The bell curve describes performance, actual or potential - and that has always been part and parcel of the American ethos.  A land of infinite opportunity which some will take advantage of and others won't.  Racial differences might be factors in the character of the bell curve, but are irrelevant in and of themselves. 

Europe will soon close its borders, expunge anti-cultural elements, and return to a central cultural ethos. The smell of ragu, kielbasa, couscous, and thieboudienne will still fill alleys and byways, but that's where cultural diversity will stop.