The BFD | A Faux Philosophy of “Diversity and Inclusion”

Bruce Logan

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the state.”

Planned Parenthood of South-Eastern Pa vs Casey 505. US 83. (1992)

By her own admission, the Prime Minister is a “Progressive” which suggests she has confidence in her government to “define the attributes of personhood”.

Such an experiment of cultural, political, and religious restructuring is the Progressive’s bottom line and profoundly significant for everyone.

Of cultural significance because progressivism must deny the authority of its heritage. In order to survive, it cannot nourish the roots from which it drinks because it has distorted social order by turning the legal concept of equality before the law into an equalising theory.

Of political significance because it inculcates into young minds a deconstructed materialism disguised as universal truth. The ideology is presented with such energy in schools and in many university faculties that children and young people grow up believing that there is no other way to understand the world.

It is of religious significance because progressivism, denying transcendent revelation, ultimately collapses into civil religion. And in New Zealand that civil religion is particularly ambiguous. Maori religion and culture is manipulated by a secularising bureaucracy in order to create public rituals that appeal to human emotion and arouse “inclusive” national sentiment.

In all of these progressivism is a parasite because transcendent truth remains its source but its raison d’être is to disfigure it. Having lost any concept of the sublime it develops its meme disguised as the faux philosophy of “diversity and inclusion”. It presumes all-knowing beliefs of autonomy and equality sustained by an aura of a spiritualised politics.

By spiritualised politics I mean that view of the world motivated by politics but which acts like religion. Progressivism isn’t a revealed insight into the evils of colonialism or the authoritarianism of the patriarchy. It is a religion driven by a belief in the sovereignty of the subjective: an impoverished, even tatty imitation of classical paganism. History is understood backwards.

The old Christian understanding of dignified equality before the law is plagiarised and turned into the doctrine of equality of opportunity and outcome.

The social justice warrior does not seek justice. Social justice snatches at power while creating its own myopic egalitarian vision. Those who fail to benefit from that exposé, which is every sanctioned self-endorsing minority group, need to be liberated from their victimhood by law.

For example, one social justice warrior during recent riots in New York said she had come to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It was from the Bible, the book of James, she said. But it isn’t. Such is the social justice warrior’s grasp of Scripture, rationality, and defence of its anti-history.

Hence the need for much authoritative waffle around diversity and inclusion disguised as compassion. It distorts the theological and historical understanding of human dignity and equality while clinging to the benefits.

Debate becomes impossible because progressivism is the author and actor in its own bubble of absolute truth. Opposition is either misguided or evil. Such is the revolution in human meaning and identity.

Again, the human being, unless enjoying some level of immersion in the equalising world, is a victim who must be liberated. And liberation from that victimhood is the major function of law. Criticism, or even suspicion of that “imperilled” victimhood is offensive.

Having rejected the unique biblical description of human dignity the progressive parasite transforms that universal truth into a politically dogmatic theory of power. Victimhood replaces the old belief of human sinfulness, the need to repent, to be forgiven and redeemed. The State is God and a bureaucratic priesthood proclaims who you are.

So hate speech legislation is essential: “You shall have no other gods before me, the State is your Lord.”

So stifling dissent is a primary virtue of the new idolatry. That’s why punishment, stigmatising, cancellation, ostracism, de-platforming, and banishment from society can be justified. One does not hold a conversation with Satan.

“I am what I am, and if not I will become what I am”, declares the devotee. Such is the strained logic that demands the State protect each bellowed identity.

Where folly rules irony is never far away. The state recognises, filters, imposes, and regulates that captured autonomy and in doing so undermines its primary duty: to protect the freedom and dignity of every citizen.