OPINION

Burning the Heretics

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James Damore, a Google employee with a Ph.D. from Harvard, penned a memo that cost him his job. Damore wrote that Google, in trying to advance diversity internally, needed to do it in different ways. One would never know that from the media's coverage of his memo.

It was a "controversial anti-diversity memo," one tech reporter wrote of James Damore's memo. Another described it as "sexist." Others referred to it as an "anti-diversity screed" or an "anti-diversity manifesto."

At MSNBC, Katy Tur described Damore's memo as "essentially ... saying that there shouldn't be this big effort underway to make sure that the workplace is diverse because women and men just don't have the same set of skills." Brooke Baldwin at CNN said the memo boiled down to James Damore saying "I don't really like women anywhere near a computer." Another CNN anchor said Damore "slammed his female coworkers."

Had these reporters bothered reading Damore's memo, they would know their characterizations of Damore's memo grossly distorted his intent and the plain text of his memo. "I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices," Damore wrote in his memo.

Among the discriminatory practices Damore cited, Google offers various classes and opportunities that are race or gender specific. It is true, generally, Damore accurately noted, that there are more women than men who dislike participating in aggressive salary negotiations. But there are some men who also have that problem. Damore suggested finding all the people who have that problem and helping them, not just women.

"Women on average are more cooperative" than men, Damore wrote. In order to bring more women into software programming, Damore suggested Google "allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive." "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things," Damore accurately noted. "We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration," he suggested.

Damore, of course, lost his job. His CEO accused him of crossing "the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." In fact, all of Damore's statements were based on scientific research from the very evolutionary scientists the left love to cite. But Damore made the fatal mistake of actually trying to help.

Many on the political left already know the gender gap is mischaracterized. It exists because of life choices. Many women take time off work to be with their children or they reduce hours to have a better balance between home and work than men. Advocates of closing the gender gap like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren have always maintained gender pay gaps in their offices for those very reasons. It is not the product of willful discrimination.

The left in America exists to perpetuate outrage and keep victims permanently victimized. They are not actually interested in helping because to actually improve someone's situation would remove a person from the pool of victims that gives the left its power. Sadly, the American media is participating in this. There was no attempt to give Damore a fair hearing in the press. He was anti-diversity and sexist despite writing a 10-page memo on how to boost the numbers of women and minorities at Google. The saddest part is that in reading Damore's memo, one really comes away with the sense the poor fool actually thought he would be helping.

"Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence." Damore began his memo with those words. He was proven right. He lost his job because of it.

Now ask yourself, given what we have seen of Google's culture, how likely it would be that its leftwing employees start making it harder and harder to find alternative ideas on the internet? How likely is it that they will bury Christian and conservative viewpoints? And how likely is it that the media would ever report any of this fairly?