Charlie Danaher: How about some philosophical diversity in Boulder County? - Longmont Times-Call

By Charlie Danaher

I read with interest the Jan. 19 guest opinion seeking diversity, penned by Boulder County Commissioners Jones, Gardner, and Domenico.

A proper response requires us to acknowledge there’s (at least) two connotations of the word “diversity.” As Humpty Dumpty would attest, “When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

First, it’s admirable that the commissioners, in their words, “have always been strongly committed to equity and ensuring that Boulder County is a welcoming place for people of all races and ethnicities.”

Certainly it is helpful, in any society, for minorities to see members of their group elected to positions of power.  But simply having people elected that share some residents’ ethnicity falls far short of creating true diversity.

I say true diversity in contrast to the popular term diversity. When progressives use the term diversity, it usually means, in actuality, people who look different from the majority — in gender, race, age, income, etc. — still have essentially the same philosophy.  Namely, that, instead of relying on natural human ingenuity and cooperation between individuals to solve a perceived community problem, what’s required is another government program, another board, another subsidy, another quota, and of course, another tax.

Boulder County has a long record of expressing a longing for diversity, all the while achieving very little. As the commissioners state: “Yet despite our values and efforts, the sobering reality is that under our watch, there has never been a person of color elected as county commissioner.”

I want to stress that the commissioners’ critique applies to not just our racial diversity, but also to our philosophical diversity. Local Democrats consistently offer nice platitudes about diversity but it appears to only apply to aspects of diversity that don’t threaten the entrenched power structure. I don’t doubt Commissioners Jones, Gardner, and Domenico are sincere about having other ethnicities represented on local boards. However, not for one minute do I think their support would include anyone who had a different set of values than what’s approved by the local Democrat Party’s kingpins. In their piece, the commissioners suggest that voters sign Marta Loachamin’s petition. This must mean that she’s received the “political party establishment’s” blessing.

So let’s assume that Marta is elected. Sure, we’ll have racial diversity, which is admirable, in and of itself.  But will we really have any significant philosophical diversity? Most likely not.

For instance, will we have any change in the mentality that, to save our county from the humans, we must buy up nearly every acre of land that might be developed, never concluding that doing so is arguably the strongest driver of making our county unwelcoming to people of color? Probably not.

As Jonathan Haidt describes in “The Righteous Mind,” the purpose of diversity is to help find the truth and thereby arrive at good governing principles. He states, “We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth or to produce good public policy.”

The problem in Boulder County is that there is rarely an opportunity for someone to, as Haidt suggests, “use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others.” The philosophical homogeneity of the political establishment is rarely challenged, in any real manner. For such an exercise would require a relinquishment from total political control. And we must ask if the local power brokers are really interested in such a thing.

I leave you with two questions: Does an entrenched political structure really know what true diversity is? Does an entrenched political structure even know how to go about creating true diversity?

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Charlie Danaher: How about some philosophical diversity in Boulder County? - Longmont Times-Call
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