During a speech on September 7th to students at the University of Illinois, former president Barack Obama said, "the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party." Once more, the Democrats are attempting to get away with their signature political gambit -- blaming their opponents for what they themselves have done.

The most successful accomplishment of the Democrats is what author Mark Levin calls the “balkanization” of society, or what Obama himself referred to as “division and resentment and paranoia.” Using their perverted version of “diversity,” the Democratic Party -- under the leadership of Obama -- fomented division and hatred after promising just the opposite. Instead of making everyone feel they are part of a unified American social structure, the Obama presidency played into the leftist strategy of “divide and conquer.”

The Democrats use diversity to exploit discontented elements in American society and to invalidate the individual. Mark Levin explains:

“It assigns [the individual] a group identity based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, income, etc., to highlight differences within the masses. It then exacerbates old rivalries and disputes or it incites new ones.”

The Left’s objective, Levin says, is to “collapse the existing society” by dividing the people against themselves. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama explains diversity in terms of vote getting:

“It’s a part of the Democratic Party’s campaign strategy to divide Americans based on skin pigmentation and to try to collect the votes of everybody who is a non-white.”

When you look behind the curtain, diversity is discriminatory. “Diversity in today’s America,” says Scott Greer in No Campus for White Men, “simply means having fewer whites around.” The left, says author Ben Shapiro, wants to portray America as “an incurable mass of bigoted whites.” The basis for diversity policy is that certain groups are encouraged to identify themselves as victims of white people. According to African-American author Thomas Sowell, people on the Left like to say, “I am a victim. Therefore, if you do not give in to my demands… you are a hate-filled, evil person.”

To progressives, diversity has nothing to do with equality as defined by Dr. Martin Luther King. Instead, they prefer George Orwell’s suggestion that (in a totalitarian society) “some animals are more equal than others.” The left’s version of diversity means that we must give special privileges to certain protected classes of people so they can acquire control over the system at the expense of the majority. I call this the “tyranny of the minority.”

Ironically, where you have obedience to diversity, there is no diversity of thought. People who demand attention to diversity really are against viewpoint diversity, also known as free speech. Diversity means “it is great to look different as long as you think the way I do.” Diversity is completely at odds with American values.

So how dare Obama lecture us about the politics of division? After eight years of the Obama presidency, race relations are worse than ever. Obama’s comments in case after case -- lies and distortions -- stoked the fires of racial discord and added to the racial divide. This is ironic because so many Americans -- black and white -- fully expected that the election of a black president would usher in a period of racial accord. No such luck.

In urging his University of Illinois audience to vote Democratic, Obama had the gall to argue that, “Our democracy depends on it.” More hypocrisy from our 44^th president. Showing his contempt for the Constitution, Obama did everything he could to expand the power of government at the expense of individual liberty. He strove to “destroy America’s essence,” says American Thinker, “that commitment to liberty that makes her unique in this world.”

Donald Trump, in sharp contrast, cherishes the values that Obama holds in contempt. Trump’s commitment is to the foundational principles of the Constitution. He rejects minority identity politics. He wants to unify the country in its own self-interest. Trump’s objective is to drain the Washington swamp that benefited from Obama’s legion of illegal executive orders.

The final straw in Obama’s speech was his insistence that we need to restore “honesty and decency” in government. Here are his words:

“We do not… use the criminal justice system as a cudgel to punish our political opponents, or to explicitly call on the attorney general to protect members of our own party from prosecution because an election happens to be coming up.”

How can Obama make a statement like that after his administration weaponized the IRS against conservative opponents, and after his attorney general and FBI conspired to protect Hillary Clinton from the justice she so richly deserved? Well, I guess this is what we should expect from the man who promised, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

Ed Brodow is a political commentator, negotiation expert, and author of seven books including his latest, Tyranny of the Minority: How the Left is Destroying America.