A Diverse Opinion About Diversity
By Burt Prelutsky
Monday, January 21, 2008
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Recently, I heard from a guy who claimed that squirrel tasted just like chicken. Some days, I swear, I get the idea that everything’s supposed to taste like chicken. But it brought home the fact that what we eat, as well as what we think, is often more a matter of geography than of anything else. Frankly, I wouldn’t care if it tasted like chocolate ice cream, I’ve never had squirrel on my plate and I aim to keep it that way. As with frogs and snakes, there are some things I regard as food and some things I’d prefer not to think about at all. And that’s how I want to keep it.

So it will probably come as no surprise that I am not a champion of diversity even though I am aware that the word, itself, has taken on sacred qualities in certain quarters, along with such words as liberal, progressive and Hillary. Leftists mainly enjoy using the word as a club with which to bash conservatives over the head. Suggest that you believe that America’s traditional values and culture trump those of other countries, and you can expect to get whacked.

For a couple of hundred years, foreigners have been flocking to the shores of this most welcoming of nations. They would bring along their art and music along with their cuisine, but they adapted their ways in order that their children and their children’s children would acclimate and be full-fledged Americans. There was a reason, after all, that America was nicknamed the Great Melting Pot.

But somewhere along the way, there was a sea change. Now we have that oddest of strange creatures known as the dual citizen and we have millions of people living here who apparently have no particular loyalty to this country and are being encouraged to retain their own language and their old ways. “Press one for Spanish, two for Englishâ€