Accepting Difference

Today, I want to make an appeal. It’s a simple proposition: I want you to take a step beyond the ever-present framing of our reality offered by the Left and to trust your lying eyes. 

The West is now roiling with dozens of small and large group conflicts, the sex binary seems to be reduced to a whim, and every year new and more outlandish rights claims are made by an ever-expanding cast of bizarre biopolitical novelties and constituencies that seem to have formed out of the ether. Every one of these new fractures in the body politic has been a source of growing power for the Left, who specialize in making impossible promises and blaming the inevitable, disappointing results on you. 

This is their perpetual power machine. But like any perpetual motion, it can’t go on forever. 

The only thing more powerful than an edifice of carefully constructed convenient lies and omissions, built up over decades, over centuries, is to be willing to unapologetically state the truth, especially at times like these, when those lies are becoming glaring. 

And the truth is that no, not all cultures are the same; no, not all peoples are the same; no, not all lifestyles are the same; and no, men and women are not the same. Though not predictive of any single individual, groups do differ in the aggregate in deep and persistent, socially and economically relevant ways. We have some of the most consistent social science data to document this, spanning decades, that is still out there, despite heavy suppression. Data that, unlike most social science, has actual predictive power, and data that hasn’t budged much after uncounted billions have been poured into attempts at aligning it with our best wishes. This reality is coincidentally also nakedly visible to the eye. 

And pointing out that disparities between groups, between constituencies exist and that they are persistent has been a winning argument. It has been the winning argument because its conclusion has been, up until now, that, therefore, we should cede power to the Left, the home of equality. 

And this conclusion is based on the fact that liberalism, both of the Left and Right flavor, promises equality and cannot deliver it in reality. 

Of course, only the Right will be blamed for the failures of equality because equality is the territory and beating heart of the value system of the Left. They define it and have used it to gain immense power. 

That’s why decades of efforts by right-wing politicians of every stripe to insist that equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, should be our goal have had zero results. This is because, in reality, in our present framing, with equality as the cardinal value, the only test for the state having actually provided equality of opportunity is equality of outcome. Only equality of outcome has clear measures in reality, you know when you have it.

Any difference between the two will be branded as the result of bigotry and will fuel the fires of left-wing power. So, if after a few generations, your policies toward ensuring equality of opportunity fail to manifest into equality of outcome for a protected class, what do you get? Well, you get what we have, the eternal ratchet of equity. 

The fact is that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and whatever pseudo-psychiatric conditions may pop up next year are not ours to police. They are not our framing. They are not our language. They do not belong in our pantheon. 

And as we’ve learned after decades of hopelessly trying, pointing out left-wing hypocrisy may make for good ratings on talk radio, but it doesn’t move the needle in reality. They don’t care about your startling revelations of left-wing bigotry. 

The people who follow the Left are simply the client class of a different elite, one who takes care of them, at least in the short term, and makes profound spiritual claims of bringing about material and status heaven on earth and vanquishing unworthy enemies. This elite has also made an art out of ring fencing your value hierarchy as low status, as something beyond the pale. They have done that by overwhelming cultural power and then, through blackmail. 

Let’s take, say, the entire career of someone like Ibram X. Kendi, left-wing luminary, public intellectual. His prominence and status are based on a dare. “I dare you to contradict me when I state that racism is at the core of persistently, and now, in many ways, worsening unequal outcomes.” 

Most conservatives up to this point have failed this challenge, trying to either bypass this argument completely to save themselves from accusations of bigotry, understandably given the dangers that come with this scarlet letter, or trying to ‘beat the Left at their own game’ by proving that the Left have always been the real racists with futile mental acrobatics like unearthing the dark histories of long dead Dixiecrats or Hillary Clinton’s relationship to the KKK. 

We’ve now reached a point—hopefully not one of no return—where, in the U.S., under Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, and in the UK, under the Equality Act, this perspective, Kendi’s perspective, is also legally binding. Without having to prove intent, the fact that a disparate outcome exists between members of a protected class compared to non-members of a protected class is enough grounds for litigation. Equality, even though a utopian ideal in reality, is now compulsory. 

This legal perspective also gives us a look into the moral foundations of our current liberal order. It seems that the situation is presented as follows: If it turns out that there are indeed immutable differences, on average, between the capacities, interests, and proclivities of different human groups, that means some groups are also worth less. This betrays something that the more religious people in the audience today will have long intuited, that without a transcendent vision, in today’s system, human life is all about your stats. The individual may be a sacrosanct dimension to the liberal order, but he can be reduced to a mere spreadsheet sum: How smart you are, how beautiful you are, how high on the status ladder you can climb, how much enjoyment you can achieve, and how much GDP can be attributed to you. 

All of life is about attaining these metrics, and it is unfair not to make them available to everyone by any means necessary. 

The only snag in this vision, it is impossible.

As someone who comes from the Eastern bloc, where we’ve had experiments with making equality the end goal of our societies, I can assure you that the pursuit of equality as the cardinal virtue has significant downsides. What you get, time and time again, is equal immiseration for most and a class of shadowy oligarchs who are more equal than the others. 

In reality, equality is what happens when everyone is equally poor. 

In the long run, we also don’t have a choice but to confront this. 

Western countries and their satellite states around the world are starting to fracture along these lines. We’re in a state of cold war now, and it’s only getting hotter.

The Danegeld, as we’ve seen time and time again, is never considered paid. The more you pay it, the more demand for it will grow. The more you lower your standards, the more crime you accept, and the more harm to your local population you can live with, in the name of equality, the more will follow. The Danegeld will not be considered paid until the coffers of the West and its culture are well and truly empty. 

Will an acceptance of difference mean we’re doomed to eternal conflict, to open war, to blistering prejudice? No, not at all—you have places like Singapore, where a multiethnic society exists and is thriving despite not letting an egalitarian psychosis rule the roost. If we look back at speeches given by Lee Kwan Yew, the father of Singapore, he was not someone overly concerned with accusations of bigotry. And Singapore, despite its expected share of bad PR, is one of the wealthiest and most peaceful nations on earth. 

And the difference is not chauvinism. It’s confidence. 

The state of Singapore is simply not letting itself be blackmailed. It has solid pro-social values of what is acceptable and what is not – and holds onto them without flinching. 

And despite its challenges, the UK also boasts some victories. The rugged, unapologetic persistence in the face of brazen lies of a handful of courageous women (and some men), the so-called TERFs that give the island its name, has already started to bear fruit. The infamous Tavistock clinic, specializing in “gender identity health services for children and young people” (what a string of euphemisms), is now history. This doesn’t mean the fight is close to over, but it is a sterling example of what an intransigent minority can do, despite swimming against the tide. 

There is also a lot of confusion about what minorities expect of you. You may be surprised, but having a confident, unapologetic core culture, clear boundaries and standards, law and order you can count on, and simply not quivering and collapsing under the weight of your own history is perceived as good. As someone who used to be an immigrant to this country and very grateful for having had that opportunity—I’m not sure that that’s going to be the case again after this speech—I can tell you that people voting with their feet to come here, or to the U.S., or to other places in the West, are not coming to see you prostrate yourself before them. 

And even though, yes, money is an important incentive, they are also lured by the confidence and competence that built this aspirational world. And they are put off and corrupted when they find this culture deserted by its descendants. Why should I believe in your culture, your state, and your right to rule and impose order on your domain when you so obviously, so vocally, don’t? 

It’s not surprising that many in the diversity and inclusion racket, the most high-profile, most ardent activists, are sons and daughters of high-caste foreigners. They simply spotted a loophole to instant status here because they can muster the confidence to make demands, while here it is seen as low status to believe the ground you are on or the people you represent have any special worth. 

So, what can the Right offer instead? 

In reality, where we live, life is about more than equalizing material and status outcomes. It’s about more than where you sit in the relative pecking order and your stats as a producer/consumer. 

Here, in reality, it is self-evidently good to enforce laws equally, it is good to promote people on merit, and it is normal to know and have a say in who is coming to your country and what their intentions are. It is also good to prioritize the well-being of your citizens over non-citizens. It is good and proper not to see your country as just an economic zone, a royal family theme park, or an airport lounge for the world. It is good to protect your citizens and even members of minorities who often bear the brunt of this, from hardened and ever more exotic recidivists. It is good to hold your police force to account for actually stopping and preventing crime, however disparate the impact. And it is good to recognize that these countries, of the West, represent people that need to have certain rights over their homelands, their only homelands. 

In reality we see difference as a fact of life and aim for wide-reaching prosperity and opportunity instead. 

While we can’t offer equality, we can offer fairness in the eyes of the law, a functioning society, and an appreciation and care for the timeless and for the ever more necessary gifts of the past. These are things that slowly break down, and you simply cannot maintain or revive, without boundaries, rules, and standards. 

Holding on to the self-evidence of these standards without renegotiating them at every step with both members of the Left and the mainstream Right is what we should aim for.  

My appeal to you, to everyone considering themselves aligned with conservatism or the Right more generally, is to stop letting yourself be blackmailed. Stop neutering your worldview by adopting a slowed-down version of another ideology’s program.

There is infinite harm in untruth, and there is infinite harm for both the West and the rest in the dissolution of every single one of the most sophisticated and effective institutions humanity has created to date. 

The Right, like in the case of Florida, in the newly very popular red states, in Singapore, and everywhere it still fights to exist, shines through the fact that life is good for those who stick to the rules. And this is fine. The rules are there for a reason. 

Entropy is easy. Letting things fall apart and eating the seedcorn is an instinct as old as time, as is resentment and the lust for power. 

And as someone born on the outside, on the fringes of this civilization, looking in, it is more precious than even you may intuit and more worthy of your stiff upper lip in its defense than ever.