Higher Indoctrination, Part III: Intolerance is Diversity

Freedom is Slavery
War is Peace
Ignorance is knowledge

...and now: Intolerance is Diversity

There is simply no other adequate response to the self-flagellation now being administered by the University of Kentucky to itself than sheer amusement. Recently the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky (the Kentucky Kernel) printed a cartoon that used images of slavery to make a point, after which, someone pointed out that the image was insensitive to blacks.

The ensuing fit of mea culpas and the public confessions was followed swiftly by promises never, ever, ever to be so insensitive again and to more strictly observe Diversity in the future.

Diversity?

What does Diversity have to do with squelching anything, much less insensitivity? Wouldn't we, if we were really practicing Diversity, be allowing for such cartoons--whether they violate someone's idea of what is right and wrong or not?

In every dictionary I know, the word "diverse" is synonymous with "heterogeneity" or "variety". If we were really practicing Diversity, wouldn't we allow for such opinions to be expressed, no matter how objectionable they were? So how does Diversity get invoked in a process of limiting what can be thought or said?

How?

Well, anyone with the least familiarity with Newspeak knows how: you simply redefine words. Liberals, you see, have certain shibboleths which must go unquestioned. One of these is Tolerance, the other is Diversity. We must never, ever, be intolerant--except, that is, when some person or idea that has special protected class is offended. At that point we violate the first of these, Tolerance, and cover our posteriors by invoking the other, Diversity.

It's a sort of shell game using two shells: when we want to limit opinions with which we disagree, we violate the idea of Tolerance, and say we are doing it in the name of Diversity. And when we go against Diversity by limiting the opinions that can be expressed in regard to those groups or ideas we think ought to be protected, we invoke Tolerance to justify it.

We've gotten so good at it now that we don't even recognize it ourselves. And after all, isn't this one of the purposes of Newspeak? To so change the language that thought crimes cannot be committed at all because you will no longer have the vocabulary to commit them?

I haven't seen the cartoon, so I can't judge whether it was offensive or not. I'm going to assume it was. But I wonder, was it any more offensive toward blacks than some other cartoons at the Kernal (or the Lexington Herald-Leader) have been toward other groups toward which they have less sympathy, like conservative Christians?

In that case, intolerance is justified, and limits to Diversity are strictly enforced--all by the neat little trick of calling intolerance Diversity and lack of Diversity Tolerance.

Winston Smith would have understood it all very well.