Comments on: It’s Not All Rolling Hills Of Globalised Wonder, Is It?

by: Daniel Larison

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:23:58 +0000

That last point seems to be confirmed by some of Putnam’s research, at least according to the reports about it that I have read.

Michael–I am glad that these ideas are finding an outlet in major newspapers, and most of this post involved stating my agreement with Brooks’ observations (or so I thought it did). That David Brooks is talking about these things in NYT is a good sign, and I basically approve of the direction of this article. Most of my comments were reinforcing what Brooks was saying.

Yes, the title of the post was a bit of a shot at something Brooks wrote last year, but for me the “discovery” that diversity creates many problems is a bit like when Fred Thompson or others have “discovered” the importance of history and ethnicity in making foreign policy. It is very good that they have come to this conclusion, but it simply highlights how unduly optimistic and mistaken they were about things in the past. Perhaps I shouldn’t dwell on those things as much as I do, but I think it is fair to offer reminders that optimistic “progressive globalists” and those who sympathise with them have been badly wrong in the past and never seem to face much in the way of accountability for having been wrong.

by: A.K.B. Cusack

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:07:02 +0000

My impression is that most people say this because they have been trained from the time they were old enough to believe that this was a basic moral truth. They do not actually see much value in diversity itself, but believe that to deny the value of diversity is to be a bad person. If they say that diversity is what they want, it is because they have been told that this is what they are supposed to want.

I agree with this one hundred percent. Having finally returned fulltime to New York from Scotland and attempting (with only mild success) to settle down again, I am surprised how much more comfortable Scotland was for the mere fact that the people all by appearance were very much the same as I. Being constantly confronted with the different, the seperate, the other, every day in Manhattan proves a slight psychological strain.

Nonetheless, I am sure there are many quite happy middle-aged liberals who look around a subway car and say “Wow, everyone’s different here and that’s great“, but I just think “Gee, everyone’s different“. Contrarily, in Scotland, I never looked around a rail car and thought “Gosh, everyone’s white, that makes me feel good”; nothing of the sort. I was simply comfortable and so it was an utter non-issue.

Along the same lines, I believe there was a study not too long ago which showed that the less “diverse” a community or neighborhood was, the greater the level of happiness expressed by the participants of the study.

by: Michael Brendan Dougherty

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:06:05 +0000

I don’t know. I thought Brooks’ column is indicative of a huge shift in the thinking of our elites.

He says (IN THE NEW YORK TIMES) that the dream of integration may be the problem. I have no doubt that ten years ago, he would have been thrown out the door for suggesting this much. Then he goes on to compare it to communism.

The intellectual assumptions that have given us multi-culturalism and mass immigration are falling apart rapidly.

We should be happy about this.