Rich Lowry

It’s the most radical act President Joe Biden has undertaken that almost no one is talking about.

He issued an executive order last week to basically create a five-year plan for the implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion across a huge swath of government agencies.

In a push for so-called equity so shockingly far-reaching that, not so long ago, a “woke” diversity officer wouldn’t have attempted it at even the most progressive liberal arts college, Biden is pushing to make the federal government a frank instrument of a racialized radicalism.

Lest there be any mistake, Section 4 of the order is titled, “Embedding Equity into Government-wide Processes.” The administration’s policy, according to the order, is “to advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities.”

For the uninitiated, equity might sound benign, but it is different from traditional notions of equality. It involves tilting the playing field on the basis of race and other characteristics and seeking equal outcomes no matter what. It’s as if Biden has made the “anti-racist” writer Ibram X. Kendi the head of his Office of Personnel Management.

The new order, like so much of the left’s projects in 21st century America, is equally sinister and parodic.

The heads of federal departments and agencies are commanded to establish Agency Equity Teams within 30 days. This edict runs all the way from the most prestigious and powerful departments, such as Treasury and Defense, to NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Biden does not actually call for five-year plans in his latest order — it’s more urgent than that.

Agency heads will have to submit an annual “Equity Action Plan” to a newly created White House Steering Committee on Equity, which, if we want to continue the Soviet analogy, will be the DEI equivalent of Gosplan.

It is to be led by the assistant to the president for domestic policy, who is none other than controversial former Barack Obama official Susan Rice.

Agency heads, by the way, are ordered to “prioritize and incorporate strategies to advance equity” into “individual performance plans for senior executives.”

Indoctrination within the government will continue apace. the agency equity teams “shall support continued equity training and equity leadership development for staff across all levels of the agency’s workforce.”

There’s an amusing Orwellian rhetorical tic in the order’s references to “equity for all.” At one point the edict says that the “term ‘equity’ means the consistent and systematic treatment of all individuals in a fair, just, and impartial manner.”

It then goes on to list all the specific groups who deserve to be treated “equitably,” beginning with “Black, Latino, Indigenous and Native American, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander persons and other persons of color.”

All of this is insidious. The federal bureaucracy is already known for its Democratic leanings, so getting it to embrace the latest left-wing fashion shouldn’t be a heavy lift. Regardless, with a nomenklatura empowered from on high to insist on this priority, anyone who is not on board will be intimidated into staying silent, or simply leave for another job.

Obviously, some of the departments and agencies involved are enormously powerful, and their workings shouldn’t be skewed by ideology. Is the Department of Justice, for instance, supposed to try to adjust the FBI’s arrests to achieve greater demographic balance?

These entities aren’t private colleges that students are voluntarily attending, knowing that they are in for indoctrination. They are meant to serve the public at large. Biden is changing, or at least distorting their missions, and diverting some portion of their resources to a goal never authorized — or imagined — by Congress.

This shouldn’t stand. Every Republican running for president should promise to tear up this ideological infrastructure root and branch on day one.

It’s bad enough that the federal government is a blundering behemoth, but if Joe Biden gets his way, Leviathan is about to become thoroughly and determinedly “woke.”

Rich Lowry is a syndicated columnist.