I (strongly) agree with you on the dangers of intellectual monoculture.

But what is the point of caveating calls for “reason, compassion, equality, and other enlightened principles” with an appreciation of diversity? Are we in danger of a “monoculture” of reason? Should I be worried about abuses of “compassion”? Those are problems I’d like to have!

Is it really so important to encourage people who don’t believe in reason? People who don’t believe in compassion? People who don’t believe in equality? At this point in time, you can count me out.

Once the atheist monoculture takes over and starts stagnating, then maybe I’ll gain a greater appreciation for unreason and cruelty and indifference and “unenlightened principles.” But not yet.

And if you’ve never met anyone who uses “think for yourself” to mean “everyone should think the same way” you’ve never met an objectivist.

I have a chapter on them in my book!

The value of encouraging diversity is that it’s an antidote to the empirical fact of group-think, and intellectual monocultures are open to a wide range of abuse.

So something like this might be better: “Without losing sight of the dangers of intellectual monoculture, I will encourage others to appreciate the value of reason, compassion, equality, and other enlightened principles that make the world a better and safer place for humanity, now and in the future. I will actively fight against anyone who uses ‘think for yourself’ to mean ‘everyone should think the same way’, and will encourage logically coherent and empirically justified criticism of my own conclusions and those of others.”

And if you’ve never met anyone who uses “think for yourself” to mean “everyone should think the same way” you’ve never met an objectivist.

But what’s probably at work here is the desire to strike a social balance. Unbending adherence to principles (even demonstrably better ones) disinclines people who feel they have differing opinions from making common cause with you against the problem you hope to face. By being more accomodating, you can gain greater prestige from wider swathes of fellow tribe-members. Sure, you wouldn’t want to simply get along with everyone; the offensively-wrong must be told they are wrong, and that they will not have their way. But absolute values in either direction seem simplistic, the hallmarks of superstitious and childish thinking. The goal might best be served by compromise.

So, it commonly happens that they sacrifice some degree of logic-strength to gain a (perceived) greater degree of group-strength.