Diversity is destroying our Social Contract

Jul 15, 2016 | Politics

For the times they are a-changin’ ~ Bob Dylan
We are up against a new idol to worship-diversity. It is the latest in the tropes from the arrogant idealists who are really the 2.0 version ofCultural Marxists.  Their policies are leading to suicide by democracy.It is no easy task to hold in your mind two opposing views, let alone live them at the same time. It is unabashedly Orwellian. Yet our leaders extol the virtues of diversity while at the same time embracing globalization, the softening of borders and reduction in nationalism.  We are seeing the blowback in Europe through Brexit. In Canada, famous for its multicultural ways, we are watching as human rights councils prioritize rights, dividing the country, and now there is a confrontation brewing in America for its heart and soul.

We are experiencing a tug of war between the social contract and identity politics: diversity.
Instead of pulling together to keep the social contract that has held America together since 1776 and Canada since 1867, we are prioritizing groups of people who need-or demand special treatment. We are splintering into groups based on race, creed, colour, religion, and no religion. Wealthy and poor. Able bodied and not so able. Women versus men. And neither. We have gender politics that have caused a kerfuffle regarding bathrooms, upending a system that has worked well for a long time in order to accommodate a few rather than have the few work around the majority. We are living in a time of identity politics. All about ME!We know this because in Canada we have Human Rights Tribunals that decide which human rights are more important than others. Instead of Canadians living together, working together, we have special needs:Indigenous Rights competing with the “immigrants,” that is the rest of Canada; ; theQuébecoisare special gay rights came up against the rights of aMuslimmale barber-he lost.Elsewhere, Idle No More blames the wealthy for the ills of the world.

Canada has its ownBlack Lives Matter, whose lives seem to be more important than the lives and rights of the LGBTQ community, blaming the police for all of their problems.

Last year, October 23, 2015, President Barack Obama defended the Black Lives Movement saying that the protests are giving voice to a problem happening only in African-American communities, adding, “We, as a society, particularly given our history, have to take this seriously.”Black Lives Matter “blame the shooting” in Orlando on “the four threats of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and militarism” while “gay activists have a vision of the world where only “patriarchal” white males of Jewish or Christian heritage can cause the world’s problems.Then came Dallas: “The heavily armed sniper who gunned down police officers in downtown Dallas, leaving five of them dead, specifically set out to kill as many white officers as he could.”At UC Irvine, Protesters shouted, shouted “Long live the intifada,” “f*** the police,” “displacing people since ‘48/ there’s nothing here to celebrate” and “all white people need to die.”Students for Justice in Palestine blame the most recent shooting of black men by police on the Jews.

We don’t hear about responsibility to and for one another anymore because we have been raised in an environment that teaches we are all special and entitled and far too many have been raised on victimhood; not my fault-it must be yours. You cannot maintain the social contract when individual rights or group rights overwhelm responsibilities.Yet we are promoting “special groups” at the same time that we extoll the virtues of globalization. On one hand we are calling out to the world “We are one world” while we are “tribalizing” within the country. We are dividing into new tribes who fight for superiority. “We the people,” is no easy feat. Bringing people together from different “tribes” is not easy. We have been working on it for more than 3500 years and still we kill the other. But at least our Judeo/Christian ethic demands that we try to get along; sadly it is getting lost in our secular “all about me” world.

We are biologically wired to want to be with our own. It comes from survival of the fittest. We still feel most comfortable around those who are like US. Whether it is a similar religion language, colour, culture, creed. Think about the last time you walked into a room with many different “tribes.” You looked around the room-perhaps a little anxious because your amygdala is wired up and looking for an enemy based on traits that are different. Your pre-frontal cortex, the moral seat of your brain, is busy internalizing the messages and deciding what to do. This happens in a nano second. You will probably walk over to someone who looks like you or speaks your language. Tribal. Survival.To be one people from many people requires a social contract to which we agree. We had one. It is being devoured by identity politics which pits one against another.
The seeds of destruction of Western civilization lie in an irrational view of its basic principles of freedom. Political freedom does not give anyone the right to demand customs or rituals that weaken the very foundations of democracy. There is a living social contract described by Philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is an agreement that makes it possible for citizens to “give up certain of their rights and freedoms, handing them over to a central authority, which in return, will ensure the rule of law within the society and the defense of the realm against external enemies.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762 wrote in Of The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right that one of the building blocks of a healthy society is the agreement with which a person enters into civil society. “The contract essentially binds people into a community that exists for mutual preservation. In entering into civil society, people sacrifice the physical freedom of being able to do whatever they please, but they gain the civil freedom of being able to think and act rationally and morally.” Citizens enter a democratic community voluntarily. By doing so, they are choosing to accept what has been established as the best interests of that society: the common good, and the general will, which expresses what is best for that state as a whole. This requires a delicate social balancing act of both rights and responsibilities that is at its best in a democracy.If everyone in a democracy only pursues their own individual goods and in any fashion they want to, then the social contract—that invisible social infrastructure that protects our democracy and freedom and equality for all—will unravel, and our democracy will come crashing down.
The social contract sits on the foundational documents of the country. In Canada and the USA and all Western countries the social contract revolves around ethical monotheism; from the Hebrew Bible. And we are so busy being inclusive through diversity (another Alice in Wonderland oxymoron) that we are losing our connection to the ethic and tearing apart the social contract that binds us together.

Diversity will be the death of the social contract, and the demise of the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed, and now take for granted, as groups of people declare their views as special, overruling the rights of others, without a thought to one’s personal responsibilities, responsibilities to others and mutual preservation.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”