[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          DIVERSITY; TOLERANCE

  Mr. BOREN. Madam President, a college classmate of mine, Phil 
Johnson, has just written a very interesting and instructive article on 
the challenges of diversity and the need for tolerance in our society. 
It was recently published in the journal Telecommunications, a 
publication of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry. I am 
pleased to share it with my colleagues.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

      Multiculturalism: Its Promise and Challenge to Committee T1

                           (By Phil Johnson)

       It is obvious that Diversity, Multiculturalism, or whatever 
     politically correct term is in vogue, is a part of our daily 
     lives--at home, in the work environment, in the greater 
     society. And it is equally obvious that these pluralisms have 
     been embraced, rightly I think, by Committee T1 and have 
     added to the decade of success for Committee T1.
       But I also think that a pre-condition, not well understood 
     and not brought to conscious recognition, lie at the basis of 
     this success. This pre-condition is a value, shared across 
     the pluralities, to bring different views to debate and to 
     find, through compromise, a place where, not optimal perhaps, 
     consensus can be reached for a time. The shared belief that 
     this scenario can occur is a testament of faith to the 
     founding fathers of Committee T1 and to the company members 
     and representatives of those members who live this belief 
     day-to-day.
       Perhaps seeing ``Schindler's List'' recently reminded me 
     that Drucker's ``Tyranny of the Minority'' are silent for 
     only a moment and, because of the pluralism we jointly 
     support, we of Committee T1 always need to be at the ready to 
     respond. These are the people of an ideology, and it is the 
     consequences of an ideology that we must deal with. Those 
     circumstances where we forget our common moorings in our 
     accumulated, common humanity are always ready to present 
     issues for us.
       The issue--the opposite of Burke's circumstances--is that 
     when timeless dogmas are allowed to run unconnected in time 
     (or, to the accumulated experience and contending currents of 
     humanity) an ideology encourages murder as easily as 
     encourages claim of nobility. But the experience in the world 
     and ours in T1 say that not all options are equally likely 
     and, in fact, our reason for being is the development of 
     reason as to why certain path(s) are preferable.
       Why does any ideology tend to be authoritarian? Perhaps it 
     is that any system of ideas that consciously purifies itself 
     to previous context and claims to contain all value must also 
     wish for complete control. Any scheme for regulating life 
     that systematically asserts that it is internally and 
     systematically complete must logically will to exercise its 
     power completely, or its claims for itself are invalid. This 
     self-righteousness is a function of this inferred self-
     perceived completeness. And, as I have mentioned earlier in 
     these newsletters, these closed systems seduce us as being 
     attractive because they are simple. I say that they are 
     simple only because they are manipulations and evasions of 
     the contradictory, gray, complex reality of the plurality of 
     Committee T1 (and the larger society). And those who operate 
     such systems are compelling because they are never in doubt.
       This, I think, underlies the reason why organizations use 
     process to develop. Use of process, so common and yet so 
     taken for granted within Committee T1 and elsewhere, allows 
     solutions to develop in a plurality where, as Alex Bickal put 
     it, ``Where values are provisionally held, are tested and 
     evolve within the legal order--derived from the morality of 
     the process, which is the morality of consent.''
       This commitment to believing in process does in no way mean 
     that one does not hold dear beliefs in equality, in social 
     justice, in the reward of merit and in freedom itself. One 
     must have convictions, but also must be willing to submit 
     these beliefs to the testing and tumult of the process. What 
     binds us together as free women and men--as Americans--is a 
     shared faith in those processes by which we evolve and test 
     our several beliefs and traditions. Fear the self-inflicted 
     blindness of self-righteousness and find truth in that 
     construct where means and process live.
       ``Circumstances . . . give in reality to every political 
     principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. 
     The circumstances are what render every civil and political 
     scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.''--Edmund Burke, 
     ``Reflections on the Revolution.''

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