Valuing Openness to Diversity of Standards Means Preferentially Pushing Towards Ever Lower Standards II

From an interview entitled:
As the Bell Curves
By Charles Murray and Daniel Seligman
(Originally published in The National Review, December 8, 1997) "Look at the military performance of women. A military officer came into my office some months ago [...] "We're killing people,'' he said, referring to the degradation of entrance requirements and training standards for combat pilots -- a degradation carried out so that enough women could get through. How many journalists in major U.S. papers have been willing to write that story straightforwardly? When the problem of female combat performance is mentioned at all, it is with an "on the one hand, on the other hand'' presentation, even though one side has all the data and the other side is only an attitude."[end of excerpt quoting Charles Murray] JB comments: Why does this keep happening, unless it is because those who would uphold standards which are not to be diversified through randomization by substituting protected-class status, continually fail to respond effectively to the smears from the anti-merit activists? It is by now, really necessary for upholders of standards to respond NOT defensively, disclaiming that they are motivated by hatred of some group; but to go after those who try to smear them, saying: there are no rational arguments for what you want, that's why you have to use smears instead. There are always constituencies for anti-merit policies, but it is they who should be on the defensive. The situation is extreme and has been for many years now, as is shown by the willingness of the government to risk lives, and equipment costing tens of millions apiece, just because some of them want to diversify away from those they hate, and others fail to put the smear-mongers in their place, using the accusatory insinuations against the upholders of standards as an opportunity to reveal that there are no sensible arguments for what can only be pushed through with insults. A government that allows its own propaganda and internally-directed power-greed to compromise its military capacities at the top levels has got a very serious problem. An example of the extreme case would be the Khmer Rouge regime allowing its power relative to potential invaders to fall almost to zero, as they pursued the far reaches of power-greed internally, and allowed propaganda principles of egalitarianism to handicap them to an amazingly far degree.