An Old Whig in action – and perhaps a new blogger

Sean Gabb will tonight be speaking at a debate – “This House Believes Promoting Diversity Causes Discrimination” is what he will be arguing – organised by the Local Government Association. (Sorry, I realise now that he didn’t say where this would be.) He has been circulating the proposed text of his speech to other Libertarian Alliance people, and I can therefore (and with his permission, given by phone this afternoon) tell you the kind of thing he’ll be saying:

I will begin by questioning the notion of diversity. What does it mean? As commonly used, it means that we should work for the sort of society in which every organisation, public and private, is filled with representative numbers of women, black people, homosexuals, and the handicapped. Anything with less than representative numbers of these and other groups is to be investigated on the grounds that it is probably discriminating. In describing the ideal society according to this view of diversity, the old sneer about jobs for black, one-legged lesbians is not that unfair.

Now, this is a diversity of sorts. But it is not the diversity that really exists when not as carefully managed and constrained as a bonsai tree. This is the diversity that concentrates on superficial differences between individuals. When it comes to matters of opinion, there is no diversity. Everyone is expected – in public, at least – to endorse the kind of opinions that would not be out of place in a Guardian editorial. Let there be diversity of belief – let someone say the number of black people in this country has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished; or that America is the Great Satan, and got a jolly good hiding in New York last year, and should mind its ps and qs over the Middle East in future if it wants to avoid more of the same; or that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, and aids is only the beginning of God’s punishment for their abominations – let anyone deviate from the Guardian line on any issue dear to the promoters of diversity, and there is an end of talk about diversity. The cry will go up for sackings from employment, for police and security service harassment, and of course for censorship laws with criminal sanctions attached. Promoters of diversity as the word is commonly used are inclined to tolerate only the diversity of which they approve. Where they do not approve, they will happily manufacture excuses for hate crime laws as arbitrary and soon perhaps as draconian as the religious laws of Elizabeth I.

That, I suspect, is the diversity promoted by the Local Government Association. …

Sean tells me that he intends soon to write a report of how this all went, in his Free Life Commentaries series, hopefully tomorrow. During our conversation this afternoon, I also heard myself urging Sean Gabb to start his own blog. I believe Sean is a blogging natural. He already produces a steady stream of (by blog standards) longish essays. But, as his Free Life “Editorial Jottings” have long proved, he also has it in him to produce numerous shorter pieces that will throw a most entertaining light on the present, and the past. He could call the combined operation something like “A Old Whig”. That’s what he is.

Were Sean to do a blog, I believe that he would bring with him into the blogosphere his already large email readership for his Free Life Commentaries. Many of these readers are presumably already blog-aware, but I’m fairly sure than many of them aren’t, so the blogosphere would gain them, as well as Sean himself of course. I believe he would lose no readers, and could even slice out the big set-pieces to distribute in the old war, for those unwilling to follow him into the new medium. And once set up as a blogger, I believe Sean would attract a vast new throng of readers.

Sean was not unreceptive to this idea. I think it may happen, perhaps some time after Christmas.

Up until now, Sean has ignored the blogosphere. He didn’t have a problem, and didn’t need a solution. But now, he does have a problem. He has an expensive new house to support. He can’t always find the time to do those big pieces he’d like to do. But he would be able to fit in many smaller pieces, in among his other duties. And of course some would magically lengthen themselves, having only begun as jottings.

Once again, the fact that you can have a blog and have a life is the decisive fact here, that is to say I hope it will be. I’ll keep you posted. Don’t hold your breath, but, any month no …