Diversity - But Not Diversity of Opinion

In High School we get taught a lot about 'diversity' and 'tolerance'.  The proponents of this doctrine come from the left leaning folks in academia and Mainstream Media.  It is impossible to pick up a copy of the NY Times or take a class on a college campus today and not get force fed empty slogans about 'tolerance' and 'diversity'.  To some degree, these institutions have a point, but as usual, the credo is for you, not for them.  Case in point is today's cover story on Rand Paul on the front page of the NY Times.

Rand Paul is Ron Paul's son, and he seems to be getting popular.  A "Republican", with a libertarian leaning must be a threat to the Order of things because they put a story on the cover titled "Rand Paul's Mixed Inheritance."  The entire article can be summed up by one of the comments: "Do the authors of this article not realize that their entire screed is a guilt-by-association smear? One wonders whether the journalists learned the art of sophistry and fallacies in their training at University, or whether they picked it up in the field."

The main point of the article is basically that Rand Paul's intellectual inheritance includes a bunch of fringe racists and republicans.  Probably the most logically fallacious and silly attempt at smear is the one that tries to connect Gary North and Michele Bachman. "Gary North, a Paul aide, was a proponent of “Christian Reconstructionism,” the Bible-based political ideology that propelled Michele Bachmann into politics."

There is no explanation for this sentence.  It is simply placing Gary North (whose material you can read here) and Michele Bachman in the same box.  The two people have nothing in common.

The authors use ad hominem and from the very beginning. The following is the lead sentence on the front page of a once proud bastion of the Fourth Estate: "The libertarian faithful — antitax activists and war protesters, John Birch Society members and a smattering of “truthers” who suspect the government’s hand in the 2001 terrorist attacks — gathered last September, eager to see the rising star of their movement."

Do you see what they did?  There's the dose of Ad Hominem in "John Birch Society members.  There's  the odd pairing of 'anti tax activists and war protesters.  Then there's the key part that you're supposed to, without thought, look at and say 'conspiracy kook' and that is the term "truthers".  The sick irony is that during the W Bush years, the 9/11 Truth movement was one to be taken seriously, as was the anti war movement.  As we've seen, those movements were just anti - Bush reactions.  Now that a good Democrat is in office, there is no anti war movement and it is trendy to malign the people who want the truth about 9/11.  The truth movement doesn't think that 9/11 was an inside job, they simply realize that the official story is a joke, implausible if not impossible, and they want the truth.  Only the mainstream, which thankfully is dying, has chosen to malign and denigrate people who seek the truth.  In my opinion, an arm of the media that turns the word 'truth' into a pejorative should be shunned.

The NY Times is shown to you as a leader in journalism, something to be taken seriously.  Take a look at the whole article and sad sacks who make up about 85% of the commenters.  It is filled with historical inaccuracies, empty statements and ignorance.  10 minutes of research on Gary North, Walter Block, Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises will show you from where Rand Paul's intellectual underpinnings arise.  The comment board is basically a collection of "without government, who will build the roads and schools?" type wailing.  I found the lockstep opinions in the comments frighteningly limited on an intellectual scale.  The fact that the current administration is everything that the Bush administration was, but worse, seems to be beyond the scope of the commenters.

To the Guardians of the Status Quo, doing a little research is too much to ask.  The fact that Rand Paul thinks somewhat differently is sin enough.  You're supposed to kneel before the 537 people in Washington DC who know better than you.  If you dare question the rapacious killing machine that the Federal Government has become it's obviously time to smear you on the front page.

Diversity, but not diversity of thought - not from the Thought Controllers.  By the way, note the lack of diversity on the Editorial Board of the Times, with regard to race and the $40,000 per year universities they attended.  Why anyone takes this institution seriously is a mystery.

Edit - January 27th: Lew Rockwell answers the NY Times in devastating fashion.