Accuracy in Academia’s next author’s night speaker, the former head of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, sees a danger in America’s emphasis on diversity.
“To be sure, we are wonderfully diverse—in race, gender, sexual orientation, geography, incomes, national origins, livelihoods and so many other ways,” William Barclay Allen said recently in Indianapolis. “Yet none of these explain what makes us Americans.”
“Our diversities do not constitute a national character, simply because neither singly nor altogether do they sum up a political quotient in light of which we live a distinctive political existence.” A professor emeritus at Michigan State University, Dr. Allen is also a former member of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“President Obama famously insisted that there is no ‘red America; no blue America; only one America.,’” Dr. Allen said at the Philadelphia Society’s regional meeting in Indianapolis in October “Unfortunately, the one America he invoked was a blank slate on which he sought to inscribe a character foreign to our true national character, the national character George Washington urged us to develop.”
“That character, Washington said, would let ‘an attention to the chearfull performance of their proper business, as Individuals, and as members of Society, be earnestly inculcated on the Citizens of America, then will they strengthen the hands of Government, and be happy under its protection: every one will enjoy the fruit of his labours; every one will enjoy his own acquisitions without molestation and without danger.’”
Dr. Allen is the editor of George Washington: A Collection and the author of George Washington: America’s First Progressive. “This is an incredibly gifted man who is incredibly modest about his accomplishments,” AIA executive director Mal Kline said of Dr. Allen. “Really, if we listen to him we might figure out how to save Western Civilization.”
Dr. Allen will speak at the next AIA author’s night which takes place on:
Monday, November 16, 2015 6-8 PM
The Van Andel Center
The Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Ave., NE
Washington, D. C.
There is no cost to the event but we do need a head count for food. Please R. S. V. P. by Eventbrite or by calling (202)364-4401, ext. 112.
