This past weekend, Karl Rove addressed the radical Hispanic advocacy group called La Raza (“the race”) and said: “Everything that this country is, everything that we have achieved, everything that we hold, everything that we promise, is because we are a nation of diversity, brought together by immigration, and sharing a common dream.”It is most dispiriting to hear a spokesman for a Republican administration appealing to ethnic chauvinism and making ”diversity” the central defining feature of the United States of America. He did not even mention our founding ideals, which are growing thin enough as it is as our culture fragments, but instead reduced our commonality to a “dream,” which could mean almost anything anyone wants it to mean. Is this the best our leaders can do in defining America to immigrant advocacy groups? Is this what is needed to get the Hispanic vote? Reducing America to diversity and dreams? Ward Connerly has a very different view of “diversity”:

There is not one major American success throughout our history that can be placed at the doorstep of ‘diversity.’ Whether it is a student body, a Supreme Court, an athletic team, or a private board, any organization or entity that is constituted around the quota mindset will not be the best that it could otherwise be–and the nation suffers because of this.

In addition, a Harvard study in 2001 found that diversity does not exactly live up to the ecstatic hype that surrounds it. For example, the study found less civic participation and more personal isolation in diverse communities.