Christopher Ruddy
Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004

It is true that America is great because of our diversity.

Diversity is a fact of life in America, so much so that it’s the butt of jokes. When Hillary suggested Mahatma Ghandi owns a gas station in Missouri, it drew a laugh.

But conservatives and liberals differ on the significance of diversity.

For conservatives, America is a great nation because out of many people, we have become one people. Our national motto, printed in Latin on our national currency: "E Pluribus Unum" – "From many, one."

But for liberals, diversity is an end in itself. It was no accident that liberal Al Gore once translated the national motto as "Out of one, many."

Similarly, former New York Mayor David Dinkins use to speak of America as a "mosaic." Of course, a mosaic has no central theme, no equal temper. A mosaic is tied together by glue or stitching or something that can break apart easily.

I believe that America "the mosaic" cannot survive as a nation.

We must be united in something more than "diversity" – in things that bind us, the same things that have bound us for more than two centuries: Our language, ethics, culture and values.

America is different from almost every other nation that exists in the world today, and almost every other nation in history.

We are not an ethnic nation. We are not even bound by a single religion. Our history so far is short, and our continued existence is less than certain. Abraham Lincoln put it best when he said that America was a "great experiment."

Simply explained, we are a civic nation. Our civil society is rooted in the idea that all humans are equal before the Creator and that our government is derived from the will of the people, who are sovereign.

These truths should be self-evident, as the founders suggested. Instead, they are often muddled – by notions such as "diversity."

I have discovered that liberals who strive for diversity in ethnicity often have little interest in the active expression of diversity as an ideal.

For example, self-professed liberals don’t like diversity of opinion.

Case in point: Recently, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes told Broadcasting and Cable magazine that he doesn’t know of a woman who is anti-abortion working in a New York newsroom.

Obviously, there are such women. But they also are smart enough to keep their mouths shut. They know the penalty for free thinking in a "liberal" newsroom; shunning, pariah status, no promotion, maybe even job loss.

Let’s face it – liberalism today (which I contrast with the sincere liberalism of Adlai Stevenson) often equates to an intellectual fascism.

Several years ago I was on a fact-finding trip to another country with a professor from Yale. The host of the trip told me that the professor was politically conservative, but had to keep it a deep secret. Otherwise, the host explained, his career in academia would be over.

Ironically, Yale is one of our country’s most prestigious "liberal" universities.

Now let’s contrast how conservatives view diversity.

NewsMax has been labeled conservative.

Yet we were among the first to publish the syndicated column of Hillary Clinton when she served as first lady.

I received very few complaints from our readers about Hillary’s column. (Hillary, who clearly knows we have been quite critical of her husband, could have told her syndicator not to allow us to publish the column. To her credit, she allowed us to run her column prominently on our site.)

NewsMax also proudly publishes the column of the former Democrat mayor of New York, Edward I. Koch.

Koch likes to say he is a "liberal with reason." It is an accurate assessment. It is also fair to say that Ed Koch is a liberal open to other points of view. Koch is one of those Adlai Stevenson liberals, but he is rare.

Sadly, many liberals (How many? Too many) today are not open-minded. This, I believe, is at the root of CNN’s ratings woes and the reason the Democrats seem to be in such a shambles nationally.

NewsMax is not afraid to publish liberal and contrarian voices.

Since we began publishing the column of author Tammy Bruce, we have received plenty of praise from our readers. Many don’t agree with Bruce on all of the issues. Still, most agree she is honest and fair.

Tammy is a lesbian, feminist and former president of the very liberal National Organization for Women’s Los Angeles chapter.

Tammy was drummed out of the "liberal" NOW’s chapter. Her crime? She disagreed with NOW’s failure to criticize Bill Clinton on issues of sexual harassment.

In publishing Hillary, Koch and Bruce, NewsMax is not endorsing their views. We simply agree to disagree. We simply state that America is a land of diversity and that as Americans we are not afraid of differing opinions.

Our "conservative" readers don’t seem to be afraid of views that oppose their own. What they – and I – fear is a world that makes certain viewpoints unacceptable and the people who hold them anathema.

This struggle for a diversity of opinion may not be a new one. Thomas Jefferson warned in his First Inaugural Address that the American nation could not "countenance a political intolerance."

The great Virginian assured us that we have nothing to worry about in views that differ from our own, as even "error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

Editor's note:
Hear John Wayne, "Why I love America" – Click here