Seeing something fishy in DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), a clever caller to the Dennis Prager Show conveyed a better way to say the acronym: Do Everything Intelligently. Isn’t that common sense? Sadly, nonsense is becoming more common.

Admitted to a hospital for an emergency in another state, a friend of mine had to have his blood drawn, but the person assigned to him couldn’t do it. Later, a replacement eventually got the job done. When my friend inquired about the matter with the doctor, he said that the hospital policy guided by DEI creates problems for proper care of the patients. My friend then inquired, “You don’t have the same issues with more serious care, do you?” Noticing no one looking over his shoulder, the doctor muttered how surgeries have been muddled due to DEI.

What’s more important in health care: competency or diversity? My friend got a strong dose of diversity and he is not impressed with the slogan saying, “Diversity is our strength.” Thankfully, he had a doctor who did everything intelligently.

With lives at stake, DEI gets worse! After the killer fire in Maui, it came out that the official in charge of resource usage focused on “water equity” rather than responding promptly to a raging inferno. Do you think he’s devoted to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or to Do Everything Intelligently?

Just before the start of the school year, New York’s Attorney General Latisha James and Commissioner of Education Betty Rosa jointly issued a DEI memorandum. Reading like a top-down cultural Marxist policy mandate, it’s admirable anti-bullying content contaminated by identity politics concocts a “woke-a-cola” of unscientific, divisive, and anti-biblical ingredients for those in government-run schools to swallow. We all aim for being considerate, hospitable and respectful, but when decrees against bullying blend in with the “political fentanyl” of cultural Marxism, somebody better say something.

Does the DEI mandate from Albany lead students to think intelligently or like the bungling “water equity” buffoonery in Hawaii?

“Democrats Complain That Illegal Immigrants Are Destroying Their Sanctuary Cities” headlined America’s paper of satire, the Babylon Bee. All kidding aside, chaos, insecurity and disorder from NYC now knocking on our county’s doorsteps do not come from doing everything intelligently, but from those forcing the consequences of their diverse, equitable and inclusive insanity on us.

Do Everything Intelligently and Diversity Equity Inclusion cannot equally co-exist. One eventually must bow to the other. Some opt to choose diversity over intelligence. If you want excellence in health care, education, business and immigration policy, intelligence is superior to diversity.

Doing everything intelligently facilitates thinking for yourself. Diversity Equity and Inclusion condition you for Orwellian group think. Prioritizing diversity over intelligence sets up people to be dupes, not thinkers. Intelligence is not all we need, but it sure beats diversity. By itself, intelligence can be used for good or evil purposes, but situated in the wisdom of the God of the Bible, both intelligence and diversity find their proper place.

Dei in Latin means God, but in English, DEI appears like an idol of cultural Marxism.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.