Why the Left's Vision of Equity Is Flawed | Douglas Murray

the issue of meritocracy in um in America and the wider West at the moment is a fascinating issue because we're totally torn on it let me attempt to sort of mend part of that tear in the following phrase you'll know the the idea of straw Manning uh uh if you don't know the idea of straw Manning you should see my recent debate with Malcolm Gladwell in Canada where he gave a superb master class in what it is it's a straw man an opponent's argument um I want to do the opposite of that on the issue of meritoxin Steel Man the argument what is what is the argument that we could actually agree on as the issue in meritocracy in a society like ours in America and I would say that it's something like this that nobody should be held back from attaining whatever it is that they can attain bite into their virtues and achievements simply because of some characteristic over which they have no say something like that may not be perfect it's something like that that we're we're aiming for that the idea of a meritocracy is nothing should hold you back if you have the capabilities to fulfill your goals so um if you have the capacity to be on the board of a company you shouldn't not be on the board because you're gay or because you're a woman or because you're from ethnic minority the interesting thing about this is I think we have almost total unanimity in a society like America about that question if you look at the polls almost nobody doesn't agree with the aim as I've just set it out that nothing should hold you back if you have the capability simply because of something which you have no say over the problem about this is and one of the reasons why America in particular is so confused about the issue of maritoxy in the 21st century is because left and right have arrived at very different ideas of how to address this question now there's a critique of the rights attitude but let me roughly lay out what I see as the rights attitude the rights attitude on this question is something like this it's a gradualist approach and this has an enormous amount to be said for it we've heard from educationalists and others and we will do later today the gradualist approach is that if we set up if not the optimal conditions at least as optimal conditions as we can set up then this society in which people can achieve and flourish whatever their own characteristics whatever they've started from will will occur um to my mind it Remains the best answer however there is a critique of it and the critique largely comes from the left says it's complacent and among other things it takes too long so in recent years the left again particularly America has been busying itself away with its own attempt to address this question sometimes in good faith very often not and its answer of course is equity its answer is we will not reach that point of meritocratic goal unless we actually live in a country in which by the way only High status professions can be demonstrated to show Equity so for instance we will base our ideas on a whole set of Industries and accomplishments on Hollywood brilliant take the least representative part of society in which people only Advance because they're attractive very rarely because of their intelligence take that bit of society roll it out complain that this female actress only got 20 million poor thing where the male actor got 25 million and claimed that no one will be free unless this multi-millionaire s gets the same salary as the Top Gun actor or whatever another example is boards I mentioned them earlier people in America now on the meritocratic issue are obsessed with boards most people in America of course do not spend their lives sitting on company boards um there was a recent uh uh as vivekan I'm sure address there was recent uh legislation a few years ago in California which insisted that companies if they were going to be publicly registered in California had to have certain representation on the board from certain minorities and there are certain ethnic minorities they insisted must be on them including Pacific Islanders oh and also trans people um and I got a friend of mine I'm not a math guy I'm a no-nothing Humanities type and um but I got a math friend of mine to Crunch the numbers on this and we worked out that if the number of companies in California remained what they are now which doesn't seem likely um but were that to happen if you are a Pacific Islander who lives in California or a trans person who lives in California you should clear your diary for the 2020s you you are going to be dashing from board meeting to board meeting you're going to be doing the petroleum companies in the morning you're going to have to be doing every University in the afternoon it's just it's going to be no fun but the point is that we have weirdly decided that these things like like as I say high status professions board membership are the things that that unless we get 50 or more female representational boards nobody in America is free unless we get precisely the number of African Americans on the board or preferably higher nobody is free et cetera et cetera what are some of the things you lose in this just one of the things you lose of course is any focus on non-high status professions absolutely nobody on the American left so far as I know is bothered by the fact that most of the people who laid tarmac on the roads and the highways of America are men almost nobody is demanding more trans Road layers almost nobody is demanding more female workers on pylons to to fix when the electricity cables all go and and risk their lives doing that almost nobody argues that it's only the high status professions and this tells us something I think very revealing about what we actually are prioritizing in modern America now what should we be doing um it seems to me and I I've been writing about this recently it seems to me that we are a great risk in America in particular at the moment of falling into what in the Middle Ages was known as acidi acid was a condition that um writers including Chaucer and Dante and others wrote about it was about a sort of listlessness and in the Middle Ages SCD was recognized to be very dangerous for an individual and utterly fatal for a society that is the question of what we should be doing was effectively unaddressed now I was I'm not checking my text messages I promise um I was very interested in a poll Wall Street Journal carried out earlier this week which some of you I'm sure will have seen who speaks to this issue of acidity um just in the last 25 years last quarter of a century living memory for all of us the number of Americans who said that patriotism was quote very important to them fell from 70 percent seven zero percent to 38 percent number of people who said that religion was very important to them fell from 62 percent to just 27. um the number of Americans who believe the tolerance is an important virtue fell from 80 percent four years ago to just 58 today four years four years to lose that number of Americans who believe in the idea of Tolerance I would submit that when we address issues like meritocracy we on the right have to bear in mind the following single thing and I'll finish with that before handing over to Vivek we have to recognize that the left has offered a totalistic explanation for human behavior totalistic explanation that as I say you will not be free until all of these odd things we've selected show representation you must fight and you must struggle and you must strive and you must insult and you must degrade and you must cut people off in your lives and much more that's something to do that's something to do it is an extremely ugly thing to do but it's something to do and we on the right it seems to me need to spend much more of our time not simply picking apart what the left is saying that we should do but providing answers of Our Own saying this is what it would look like to have a successful life in the 21st century this is what the aim should be you shouldn't be playing the games left has invited you to play totally unwinnable games you should be doing the following things that seems to me and maybe we can get on to this to be an aspiration worth struggling for in this century thank you

Channel: National Review

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Keywords: douglas murray, equity vs equality, equality of outcome, equity, equality, national review, national review ideas summit, meritocracy, meritocracy meaning, meritocracy debate, meritocracy explained, douglas murray equity, douglas murray meritocracy, douglas murray debate, douglas murray speech, equality vs equity, ideas summit

Id: ZVAN7l2bJbE

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023