At the end of the day, Ann Coulter is as serious as a chipped nail. In a curious puff piece she claims, At the End of the Day, Diversity Has Jumped the Shark. What prompted her latest outburst? It was horrible. General George Casey "responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: 'Our diversity ... is a strength.'"
Well, that travesty nearly ranks up there with a botched pedicure. To Coulter, diversity is like painting each fingernail a different color. We can't have that! She asserts: "Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem." It's true, color coordination is so cool. Clearly nail polish and high heels must match the blouse. We wouldn't want fashion-clash, would we? No, not like nasty "Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations."
I wonder why she didn't mention the USA with its nasty religious diversity and ethnicity? Has this been nothing but a problem? A failure? Does she crave the uniformity of a national church? What about capitalism with its economic diversity? Was the USSR's coordinated state monopoly a worker paradise? Is this what she envies? Or could she envy the Muslim world. They managed to keep diversity in check. How is it working out? What if we fielded a football team and put a 300 pound offensive tackle in every position. Does that sound like a winning team?
Ann Coulter and her breed are overrunning the conservative movement. They're nothing but issue whores. Coulter may be more upscale than most but that doesn't change what she is. As soon as a case can be made that "liberals" are for something, the issue whores line up against it. The issue doesn't matter. It's done for easy money, this breed being too lazy for actual thought. I might say it's done for easy political capital but that's too generous. In reality, Coulter's whole article is little more than an excuse to promote her own "electrifying" book, Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America. Politics is the means. Self-satisfaction is the end.
For those of you who are tired of lipstick conservatives, let's remember "America's most irritating cliche" was at one time a firmly held conservative belief. Conservatives used to cherish diversity. "Balance, diversity, creativity -- these are the elements of Republican equation" -- so said Barry Goldwater in his 1964 acceptance speech. His conservatives "cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments." He added, "This is a party, this Republican Party, a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists." But the Coulter wing of the Republican Party, which now seems to be virtually the whole thing, is a party of conformists. They worship conformity. They loathe the evil called diversity. They've forgotten Ronald Reagan who championed it:
It seems to me that America is constantly reinventing what "America" means. We adopt this country's phrases and that country's art, and I think it's really closer to the truth to say that America has assimilated as much as her immigrants have. It's made for a delightful diversity, and it's made us a stronger and a more vital nation.
But our diversity is not only ethnic. You'll find, if you haven't already, that this country is full of different and, sometimes, conflicting ideas and philosophies. Walk by a newspaper stand, and you'll see scores of magazines and newspapers arguing this point and that. Listen to television and radio, and you'll hear more than enough opinions with which to agree and disagree. In fact, if you don't over the next several years find one time, at least, when you feel like taking off your shoe and throwing it at a television screen, then you will have missed out on one of the great American moments. [1]
Even Coulter's one-time hero, George W. Bush spoke the dreaded cliche: "But I am mindful that diversity is one of the strengths of the country." [2]
Coulter is a symptom of the death of the conservative movement. It's not a shell of its former self, it's the reverse of its earlier self. No doubt something will rise out of the ashes of the 2008 defeats. But it won't be conservativsm. It won't be freedom loving. And in a country made great and defined by its cliched diversity, it won't be truly American.
-- Don Jindra
Notes:
[1] Remarks at Naturalization Ceremonies for New United States Citizens in Detroit, Michigan, found here.
[2] When asked about an impending Supreme Court nomination, quoted here.
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