Mein Kampf and the Liberal Conception of Diversity

What do Liberals and Adolf Hitler have in common?  The surprising answer is that there is a disconcerting affinity in the way in which they view ethnic diversity.  Of course, Hitler held that that the Aryan people were superior to all other peoples; and no Liberal would ever embrace that view.  Yet, owing to the way in which Liberals embrace the idea of ethnic pride, the result is that Liberals have a tendency privilege ethnicity in a way that veers towards a Hitlerian view of things. 

I understand, of course, that this charge can be made of some Conservatives.  The difference, obviously, is that Liberals claim to have the morally superior view regarding race than conservatives.  All sorts of people expect Conservatives to have morally untenable views about race.  But Liberals deem themselves to be the very darlings of diversity.

Ethnic pride is roughly understood as the view that in virtue of their ethnicity people have certain wonderful qualities that they would not have otherwise and that people not belonging to that ethnic group cannot have those qualities—at least not as well.  As we know, people have in the name of ethnic pride argued against marriage across ethnic groups.  This idea of ethnic pride flirts—and flirts mightily—with the idea that there are racial essences.

Bearing in the above mind remarks, here is what Hitler wrote in Chapter XI of Mein Kampf:

Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents.  This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one . . . . 

The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens . . . .

From considerations such as those above, Hitler concludes that:

Historical experience . . . shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people. 

Of course, people who talk about ethnic pride will be quick to point out that they do not believe in the inferiority of any ethnic group.  Alas, the problem lies with the idea that ethnic pride is based upon a quality that is very much akin to racial essences.  And with racial essences, one can assert “They (those members of ethnic groups) are not like us”.  This one can assert even if one cannot make the claim of inferiority.  And this very assertion has been the handmaiden of evil, because it is the seat of suspicion and mistrust.

Liberals have embraced the idea of racial essences or, at any rate, they have done so for all practical purposes.  And therein lies the affinity between the view that liberals hold regarding ethnic groups and the one that Hitler embraced.  As I noted above, although some will accuse Conservatives of this, it is Liberals who insist that they have the better view regarding race and ethnicity.  So Liberals are the very last people on the planet who should have a view that bears any affinity to Hitler’s views.

Formally, the liberal view goes rather like this:

(1) All ethnic group are equal but in different ways, with no one ethnic group being superior to any other ethnic group

And thesis (1) is compatible with the view that

(2) The intermingling of one ethnic group with another will result in both groups being diminished in some fundamental way (where the issue is not about disappearing)

Indeed, we know that various members of both white and non-white ethnic groups have boldly asserted various versions of (2), in claiming, for instance, that marriage between ethnic groups is out of place. 

Needless to say, the view that racial intermingling in marriage is inappropriate is one that Hitler himself would have endorsed.  Well, perhaps not quite; for he probably did not care much at all that non-Aryans of different ethnic groups intermingled.  The point, of course, is that we have an affinity here that should be an embarrassment to anyone committed to racial equality. 

George Santayana observed that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.  We now know beyond any shadow of doubt that from an evolutionary perspective ethnic differences are utterly inconsequential in terms of both talent and temperament.  Thanks to the work in evolutionary biology in the 20th Century, we now know this truth in a way that not even Darwin could have known it.  Yet, in the name of racial equality, we have made more of racial differences than a wicked man like Hitler, himself, could ever have imagined. 

What follows from this is the poignant truth that our progress is far more precarious than it should ever be given the facts that we have at our disposal.  Accordingly, we have no one but ourselves to blame for this moral reality.