Diversity, Conformity, and Conscience in Contemporary America

America is a nation that celebrates diversity and freedom of conscience. Yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, democratic times often demand conformity. Nowadays, conformity might be enforced in the name of diversity itself, and go so far as to infringe on the rights of conscience, expression, association, and religious freedom. Americans have recently been confronted by this paradox in various ways, from federal health care mandates, to campus speech codes, to consumer boycotts, to public intimidation, to vexatious litigation, to private corporations dismissing employees for expressing certain political views. In this book, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to examine the manner and extent to which conformity is demanded by contemporary American law and social practice. Contributors also consider the long-term results of such demands for conformity for the health—and even survival—of a constitutional republic.

Today we live in a world of Orwellian Newspeak, where diversity means uniformity and thought crimes abound. In a splendid series of essays by well-respected conservatives, Brad Watson exposes the hypocrisy of contemporary liberalism and its refusal to tolerate different beliefs., This wonderful volume could not have come at a more opportune moment. Many people today (myself included) are confounded at how a public culture that - in theory -- is supremely committed to the values of "diversity" and individual autonomy, could be so intolerant in reality. Bradley Watson's authors solve that puzzle. They identify and describe the conformist tendencies in modern "diversity" ideology, and they do so from a nearly perfect range of perspectives. Out of Many is a tour de force, a series of spot-on analyses of the spirit of the age as it manifests itself on campus and in the public square, with superb essays on the American founding and the American tradition of public thought included to add for critical perspective. The book is not only for specialists and students, however. Any engaged American would profit by reading it., “The Diverse Identities of America” are well on their way to replacing the United States. What will the completion of this cultural revolution mean for our country’s traditional political ideals, moral convictions and religious beliefs? Are there feasible counterrevolutionary strategies that might still avoid their erasure? In Diversity, Conformity and Conscience in Contemporary America some of the nation’s most far-seeing scholars grapple with these agonizing questions.

Bradley C. S. Watson is professor of politics and Philip M. McKenna chair in American and western political thought at Saint Vincent College.