If you think “diversity is our strength,” then the Biden Administration must be the strongest administration in human history.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the worst press spokesman since Baghdad Bob, made the point in her press briefing Thursday:

Yes, and we’ve seen and are suffering from the failures of picking a cabinet based on “equity,” where one’s race, sex, and/or what sexual orientation they are is the main hiring factor. 🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/4AHbAG20ER

— Rebecca Downs (@RebeccaRoseGold) February 23, 2023

Is it any wonder that the United States is in such a funk? The Democrats have been their own Kool-Aid, and the results are a country that is suffering from terminal incompetence.

“Diversity is our strength” is such a stupid sentiment. There is nothing wrong with diversity–especially diversity of viewpoints, experience, skill, and backgrounds. A well-chosen team that isn’t homogenous will likely be more successful than one where everybody agrees all the time and is incapable of getting out of their bubble.

On the other hand, while diversity can be a good thing, it is hardly the most important thing. And anybody who defines diversity as simply tossing together a bunch of minorities into a room as a strength is a total moron.

Fill a boardroom with a Black Yalie, a White Yalie, a lesbian Yalie, and a Hispanic Yalie and you have a room full of Yalies. None of whom, likely, could tell you how to run the Department of Transportation. You have a uniformly incompetent group of over-credentialed under-experienced yahoos who love each other because they all were in Skull and Bones when they were at Yale.

Of course, if you are a Democrat you might wonder: “what if we threw in a transgendered Harvard grad? Would that increase diversity?”

Diversity by itself is neither a strength nor a weakness, without knowing exactly what it means and how it can help in any particular situation. Democrats will tell you that their “diverse” administration looks more like America than any previous one–which, even by demographic standards is ridiculous. There are more transgendered people in the Biden Administration than in the state of Idaho.

The Biden Administration looks as much “like America” as the local drag show resembles my Catholic church.

More importantly, anybody working in the White House almost by definition is not an average Joe, whatever their race or sexuality. They have more in common with each other than with any average person in the country. Drop Karine Jean-Pierre into the south side of Chicago and she would stick out like a sore thumb.

Most importantly, though, even genuine diversity is only a strength if it enhances, rather than detracts from social trust. “Diversity” should mean a range of people with different viewpoints and experiences, but a common language and the ability to empathize with each other. If people can’t relate on a basic level the group isn’t usefully “diverse;” it is balkanized.

Lose too much social trust and your society falls apart, which is why having a common language is so important. If people cannot talk, they cannot relate to one another. Social trust is the glue that binds society together, and flooding the zone with people who seem utterly alien to our community erodes social trust.

That’s why the crisis at the southern border is so troublesome. It’s not just the welfare costs, the housing crunch, and all the obvious problems; it’s the erosion of social trust that happens when a flood of new people can’t be easily integrated into the larger society. Functioning societies have common cultures.

Not uniform cultures. But we need to recognize each other as similar enough to be an “us.” We may be Republicans, Democrats, Blacks, or Whites, but we are all Americans.

Once that is gone–and it is eroding fast–“diversity” will be our weakness.