The House Majority Leader, GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy has opened another crack in the Washington establishment by slamming the Democrats’ sacrosanct ideology of government-imposed, divide-and-rule diversity.

“We did not survive, grow, and become the most powerful civilization in human history because we were focused on our diversity,” he said in a short speech to celebrate the opening of a new religious freedom office at the Department of Health and Huan Services, adding:

It is not our differences that make us stronger. It is our unity despite our diversity—unity of past, of principles, and of purpose that brought us out of many into one.

That statement praises the unifying power of Americans’ classic ideals, and it junks President Barack Obama’s much-repeated claim that the nation is unified by a central government which ensures peace as it also promotes greater social and civic variety.

Throughout his eight-year tenure, Obama used lawsuits, laws and immigration government to fragment, split and shatter Americans’ shared cultural ideas, which include the preference for personal freedom and for a smaller government.

This federal imposition of divide-and-rule “diversity” on a coherent yet deeply varied society greatly aids the post-graduate progressive class which now runs the Democratic Party. They use their ideology of diversity to divorce themselves from their obligations to their fellow citizens, to claim social superiority over their fellow Americans, and to justify the mass immigration which provides them with cheap labor as it also undermines Americans’ civic rules and incomes. Progressives also use the damage to win votes for the big government party which promises to repair the damage which it causes by accelerating diversity.

That self-serving policy is strongly supported by many of the status-seeking post-graduates who run much of the nation’s media and high-tech companies. They gain status, prosper and grow rich as the government diversity policy deliberately imposes extra variety and civic complexity on a society that has successfully used a shared culture to manage a people’s competing desires for variety, freedom, and stability.

In 2016, for example, at the 15th anniversary of the jihadi attack on the Twin Towers, Obama declared that the nation’s diversity ensures unity under a centralized government:

That’s why it is so important today that we reaffirm our character as a nation—a people drawn from every corner of the world, every color, every religion, every background—bound by a creed as old as our founding, E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, we are one. For we know that our diversity—our patchwork heritage—is not a weakness; it is still, and always will be, one of our greatest strengths.

But McCarthy shows how Obama’s argument is topsy-turvy. McCarthy — who is a Californian — argues that Americans’ unity under a common culture allows for freedom and diversity:

What is beautiful about America is that from the soil of that unity, a great and peaceful variety has grown: a mixture of nationalities, of class, of expression, and most profoundly of religion. This type of nation of peace, prosperity, and community, and freedom can neither rise from the swamp nor be proclaimed from above. It demands a certain kind of people who stubbornly treat their fellow citizens—their neighbors—with respect. New offices, great words, or even new laws will have little effect unless every generation recommits to Americans’ ideals, embraces America’s past, and stands beside their fellow citizens for America’s future. If we do not, the kings and emperors of old will be proven right. The last great hope of freedom on this Earth will perish because we forgot who it was.

Understandably, McCarthy’s elevation of classic ideals above divide-and-rule diversity shocked some progressives:

The Democrats’ ideology of enforced diversity is intended to help progressives rule over the subsequent divides and chaotic society. Obama hinted at this repeatedly as he identified Americans’ cultural resistance to big government, for example, when he described Americans’ various religious beliefs as “sectarian.”

In a 2015 trip to India, whose extremely diverse society has few unifying cultural elements, Obama used Indian’s fierce and bloody Muslim vs. Hindu religious divides to justify more federal control over religion in the United States. He said:

In both our countries, in India and in America, our diversity is our strength. And we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines. And if we do that well, if America shows itself as an example of its diversity and yet the capacity to live together and work together in common effort, in common purpose … that is an example for every other country on Earth.

For McCarthy, Americans’ cultural unity allows freedom and diversity — but that unity is under increasing attack from the “orthodoxy” of diversity. He said:

We face today a time of rising religious persecution. It’s not violent. It’s not done in the name of God. But it is a new orthodoxy, and it is intolerant of dissent. Nuns have been forced to put aside their lives of service to the elderly and the sick and have to go to court, humbly requesting that they not be required to pay for practices that end the lives of children. In my own state of California, pregnancy centers devoted to saving lives are forced, against their deepest beliefs, to advertise for an abortion industry bankrolled by the state. Now, in the past, this department’s silent refusal to defend our rights sent a very clear message: ‘Now is not the time for freedom, it is time for you to conform’ … But our investigations, our new offices, and passing legislation are only a part of the renewal of our country, however necessary each one is. We, as a people, have to renew our nation every day. We did not create this great country, but by our daily choices and the choices of every person across this land, we either weaken our country or we make it stronger. If we don’t embrace the heroism of stewardship and preserve the freedom of all people to live in accordance with their faith, our unity is lost, and with that unity our peace, and with that peace, our diversity. But if we defend that freedom, answering the call of our country, America will remain the hope of all mankind and the closest the world has ever come to a brotherhood of man.

McCarthy’s comments are important, in part, because he may replace House Speaker Paul Ryan once Ryan retires. Also, McCarthy is one of the four congressional leaders working with GOP Sen. John Cornyn to draft an immigration reform. So far, that process has failed because the two GOP and two Democratic leaders are divided by their different approach to immigration, diversity, and culture.