LPA Foundation
Advisor Victor Davis Hanson

Advisor Victor Davis Hanson — LPA Foundation

View all Articles by Victor Davis Hanson

Diversity: History’s Pathway to Chaos

August 26, 2016

Emphasizing diversity has been the pitfall, not the strength, of nations throughout history.

The Roman Empire worked as long as Iberians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls and myriad other African, Asian and European communities spoke Latin, cherished habeas corpus and saw being Roman as preferable to identifying with their own particular tribe. By the fifth century, diversity had won out but would soon prove a fatal liability.

Rome disintegrated when it became unable to assimilate new influxes of northern European tribes. Newcomers had no intention of giving up their Gothic, Hunnish or Vandal identities.

The propaganda of history's multicultural empires -- the Ottoman, the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian, the British and the Soviet -- was never the strength of their diversity. To avoid chaos, their governments bragged about the religious, ideological or royal advantages of unity, not diversity.

Read the full article at RealClearPolitics.com: Diversity: History's Pathway to Chaos

Issue Categories : American Exceptionalism