Jonah Goldberg is More than a Douchebag

I can conclude a couple of things about Jonah Goldberg from his essay in NRO: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDQ2ZmJjOWM4OGY2YTRmYWQ0YWVlZjJlODg4NjE0NDg=

He is a racist.

He is a dumbass.

The gist of the essay is that whites who vote for Obama do so because they don’t really understand how bad black people really are, what a really horrible thing diversity truly is. It’s whites in states with no blacks and rich whites who don’t know any real blacks who vote for Obama. Them as know blacks for the miscreants that they really are vote for Clinton.

Jonah knows better. He has presumably experienced first hand the horrors of diversity, perhaps in the form of a brownish maid who left streaks on the windows or an insufficiently obsequious busboy at the bistro. For Jonah, his dislike and distrust of those who are not like him, who are not in the smarmy frat boy who never grew up set, is simply realism. The rest of us have different names for it: racism, collectivism.

Diversity is not so very deep down code for any difference. If we are free, we will differ from one another, and authoritarians hate this. They hate this even more than they hate the black and brown folks who are different in ways that they can’t even control. If diversity is bad, how can black and brown people stop being so damned diverse? They could cease to exist, for starters. Short of that, they could try real hard to be just like Jonah and have their mothers get them jobs at right wing fringe publications. Now wouldn’t that be utopia? A world of Jonah Goldbergs. At least until everyone starved to death.

Jonah cites the favorite study of the anti-diversity crowd that purports to show that increased diversity is correlated with decreased trust. Can we all say "spurious relationship"? The conclusions drawn from the study say more about the conclusion drawer than the subjects. Seriously, check out the study and see if the premises don’t want rethinking in a big way.

As a libertarian type, I necessarily reckon that diversity is good. Everybody should do and be as they like, and this will mean that they will all be different, diverse, varied, not the same. How much more so must I accept differences such as skin color and national origin and ancestry over which folks have no control? I even accept that there will be Jonah Goldbergs in the world. Let's just hope there aren't many.