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Notes -
Greene seems to preen like he's speaking hard truths to doubters, but he's clearly eliding the hardest truth: if you remove merit, quality suffers.
What is Greene implying? If you push the big button that says "disparate impact" and "dignity, uplift," good things go up. There are no trade-offs. (He also says "freedom of association," and I think he means it, but I don't think he really means it: freedom of association means bringing back the secret societies and country clubs the Civil Rights Era had to destroy in the first place.)
It's tiresome at this point to talk through all the examples: diversity over merit in airline pilots and traffic controllers, judges, trade negotiators, engineers, etc.
I think the liberal position is a belief that equality and excellence are really the same thing. If only we stop shackling minorities, excellence will flourish. I think it sounds nice and in many cases is probably true: think of all the gifted kids who could excel with the right opportunity. But somewhere along the way this all becomes entangled with race, and ethno-narcissisms, and ugly political realities: Harvard can't just admit the best students, it has to have a little chinese, some black, some latino, a little ethiopian, some finno-ugric-somalian-jew. And so the dream of "equality" or equity defeats itself, because true excellence cannot flourish when every class and tribe asserts privileges and rights that must be upheld.'
My belief is that the world is shaped, on the whole, by the truly excellent. And the only question is whether you create a system that rewards them, whoever they may be, or one that stands in their way.
Reading the article and then this comment makes me wonder if you skipped the article.
To make a long story short, the 'truly excellent' want minorities at Harvard. Now what do we do with your 'liberal position'?
Somebody who is not me has a position that is not mine. Looks like I have been totally eviscerated.
I'm sure the author of the article feels the same way about your comment.
Great talking to you!
Don't do this kind of petty low-effort back-and-forth sniping (you and @hanikrummihundursvin both).
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