The first step in the leftist strategy to erode the foundation of the United States is to undermine excellence.

Ever since the Olympics way back in ancient Greece, excellence has been showcased with athletics. Woke forces are determined to undermine that tradition and, in doing so, Western tradition at large.

The National Hockey League has decided to play along. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not.

According to Fox News, the NHL posted an ad on LinkedIn promoting a job fair event in Florida. The event, called the "Pathway to Hockey Summit," is scheduled for February during the NHL All-Star weekend in Fort Lauderdale. The event seeks to help "diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey."

The post read, "Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability. Veterans are also welcome and encouraged to attend."

What? No straight white men allowed? That doesn't sound fair.

Once DeSantis' office caught wind of the event, it put out a statement blasting the NHL.

"Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida," press secretary Bryan Griffin said, according to Fox.

"We do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity."

Griffin wasn't finished. He also stated that the NHL should "immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit."

The NHL, caught with its pants down, quickly backtracked. It deleted the post on Friday and claimed the original wording was "not accurate."

So it was just a simple mistake, kind of like a typo? Do they think anybody will buy that?

An NHL spokesperson said, "The Pathway to Hockey Summit is an informational and networking event designed to encourage all individuals to consider a career in our game -- and, in particular, alert those who might not be familiar with hockey to the opportunities it offers."

In other words, in the name of equity (read: imposed diversity), being excellent or potentially excelling in the future is not as important as one's race, gender or sexual orientation. This leads inevitably to mediocrity. It's a sure sign of cultural decline.

When employees are hired based not on their past performance and future potential but out of some amorphous sense of social justice, the NHL and those like it are undermining their own viability.

Why would they do something so counterproductive? Look what happened to Disney under woke rule. Does the NHL know it is doing the bidding of wokesters who want nothing less than the end of excellence in order to destroy the Western tradition?

Florida's not having it. More red states should follow its lead.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.