Time to complete the trilogy of reclaiming the DEI acronym from the left. A conservative view defines the D as discipline and the E as example. But what of the I?

MORE: DEI Will Never Work Until the D Stands for Discipline
DEI Will Never Work Until the E Stands for Example

Some necessary backstory. I grew up in an interesting family dynamic. My childhood’s location was the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, my parents were Midwestern transplants — Indiana, to be precise — whose conservative values and mores were quite the opposite of my youthful environment’s culture, best summarized as the Grateful Dead during the 1960s and The Tubes during the 1970s. I remain quite fond of both bands.

While both my parents were staunchly conservative, there were noticeable differences between their implementation of same, as I mentioned back in 2021 when looking back at my oldest brother’s tours of duty in Vietnam.

When I was seven or eight, one Sunday, my parents loaded three of us five kids (my sister being away at college at the time) into the family station wagon and headed over to San Francisco to visit my aunts (Dad’s sisters) who lived there. This would have been in 1966 or 1967. I suspect 1967, because of two events transpiring after we were done with the visit. My father, who was quite conservative, yet also had quite the puckish sense of humor, decided to take a bit of a drive through the city — in the course of doing so, going through the Haight-Ashbury district in all of its Summer of Love glory. My mother, who, when it came to being straitlaced, was so uptight she made Queen Victoria look like Stormy Daniels, was thoroughly horrified at the display. My father commented many years after the fact it took all he had to not burst out laughing at my mother’s freak-out over the long-haired hippie freaks. I, having no cultural point of reference other than what I saw in the immediate, thought it was quite awesome. It wouldn’t be until decades later that I became a Grateful Dead aficionado, though. But I digress. 

Another area where my parents differed came in matters of race. While my mother was quite tight-lipped on the matter, her family was anything but, and it was not pretty. My father was the most tolerant person I have ever known, someone who proactively put into practice Martin Luther King Jr.’s oft-used and sadly sometimes abused declaration regarding content of character, not skin color, as the determining factor in evaluating one another.

My father, in his young man days out and about Indianapolis, had no hesitancy entering the “wrong” parts of town for a drink and camaraderie. To him, color was never a determining factor regarding friendship. To my father, Martin Luther King Jr. was a man to be admired. He would have had no tolerance for the Charlie Kirks of this world, regardless of political agreement. My father was a man of integrity.

Integrity demands honesty within and regarding oneself. It disregards kneejerk reactionism and pat answers. Integrity is unafraid of reflection and critique. It welcomes the cleansing fire, the winnowing of wheat from the chaff to pursue what is truly worthy. Integrity understands that standing before the flag and kneeling before the cross involves authentically doing these things in deed and not trite sloganeering.

This is why the contemporary left struggles with Dr. King’s ideals. The contemporary left cannot admit to shared humanity or brotherhood, for to achieve these things means abandoning the notion of smug superiority that permeates its entire operational structure. It cannot embrace a notion of shared humanity and the universal need for salvation, for it believes itself to be superior to all who do not wholly embrace its views and the implementation of same as humanity’s sole hope. 

The contemporary left is incapable of seeing beyond skin color. Even as it marinates itself in the outward trappings of white guilt and fragility, its actions and attitudes declare its belief in its superiority to minorities who are but helpless victims in need of white liberals’ guiding hand and generous doling out of taxpayer dollars to get through life. 

Modern liberalism makes no demand on anyone for personal accountability, for it accepts none as it is utterly convinced it is in no need of same due to its gleaming perfection. It has blinded itself to its fundamental paradox of believing humanity, or at least its conservative and moderate portions, is beyond redemption. At the same time, it itself, individually and collectively, has no need of same. Modern liberalism believes that with proper embracing of groupthink and policy, every person can become a little god. Their god is false and far too small.

Regardless of how leftists pout and preen, authentic conservatives neither believe in nor practice exclusion. They acknowledge the truth, namely how people exclude themselves from advancing in life via poor behavior and life choices. The person unwilling to make an honest living by learning a trade and doing the required work for gainful employment has no one to blame but himself or herself. The unwed woman with multiple children by multiple partners has no one to blame but herself. These are not color things. These are character things. Sloth is colorblind.

There can only be advancement once an individual acknowledges his or her need for improvement and stops making excuses or seeking alibis instead of achievement. The DEI of diversity, equity, and inclusion is mythology designed to line the pockets of those who preach self-righteous babble. True DEI — discipline, example, and integrity — will never be popular, for it demands these things from oneself instead of begging for an undeserved handout. But it is the only definition of DEI worth anything.