Say what? You’ve twisted my post into a pretzel and stuffed its head up its butt!
If there is no rational basis to hold an opinion, as in the case of “defense of marriage” bigotry, then it becomes entirely reasonable to presume that the advocate of such an opinion is operating out of bigotry. If by “tolerant” you mean that I will not try to silence such an opinion, well, yes, I’m tolerant. If you mean that I should offer such an opinion equal credence to mine own, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re kidding.
But we’re not talking about that, are we? Certainly I’m not. I’m not saying Berkeley should agree with the DoD or the Marines - just that pressuring recruiters to leave town didn’t seem very tolerant to me.
After all, young people from the area (which includes communities around Berkeley - these offices typically serve larger geographic areas) may choose to serve in the Marine Corps. Isn’t this their right, and shouldn’t this choice be tolerated?
If your case can be proven by providing one, ten or fifty situations where a person to the left of you acted in an “intolerant” manner, you are on solid ground. Presumably, by that reasoning, the foam-flecked rants of Mike Savage can be laid at your door. Beams, motes, that sort of thing.
I missed the part of your evidence that says they are being prevented from joining the Marines. Lord knows, the Marines need all the bodies they can lay their hands on these days, right? 'cept the affirmedly gay ones, of course.
You are right in all specifics, but IMHO your post misses the character of the forest by pointing at a few exceptional trees.
Speaking as one who was a Goldwater conservative at the time, I’ve long since reconsidered my youthful support of his 1964 campaign. Goldwater was clearly not bigoted, and held the philosophical principle you refer to. But not so surprisingly, other than his home state of Arizona, all the states that he won in that election were a crescent of five Deep South states. Their votes for Goldwater were not on account of any philosophical principle, unless one regards depriving Negroes of basic citizenship rights as a principle.
They were the forest; Goldwater was the exceptional tree.
Oh, please, share with us your other nuggets of wisdom, Aesop.
Do you really think that intolerant liberals are worse than intolerant conservatives? I hate to tax you by asking you for evidence, rather than drive-by one-liners, but maybe you could support your opinion instead of just offering it up as though it was the Pearl Greater than All His Tribe.
I really hate to sound like a broken record, but would some of you people mind terribly showing us the goods? Can you show us that liberals favor restricting liberty more often than conservatives do? (Expressing disapproval of an opinion isn’t a very worrisome form of intolerance; I’m more worried about the intolerance that manifests itself in restrictions of liberty.) Do you have evidence (by which I don’t mean ‘anecdotes’), or are we all just going to go by truthiness in this thread?
What are we to make of all the states that supported Johnson? Did they all just lurve the Vietnam War?
It is tough to generalize in this way, especially in a landslide election.
I seem to recall, too, you expressing the general principle that you won’t read people out of a movement even if you don’t agree with all of their views. I agree with that. But that means that when you run for office, racists will vote for you - and this will happen whether you’re a Democrat or Republican.
So what do you do? Smile, thank them for their vote, and then do what you were going to do in office anyway. In the case of Goldwater, that included lots of commendable things.
I’m not making any claim at all about conservatives. And by the way, I consider myself a liberal.
At the moment, all I have is anecdotes, which is why I was careful to lable my statement as my “general sense.”
But here’s an example: I own a historic rifle with a bayonette mount. However, when I moved to the state where I currently reside, I had to leave the bayonnette with a family member. Because with a bayonette, my rifle is considered to be an “assault weapon” and therefore illegal. To me, this is just silly. What kind of public hazzard is a bayonnette? When’s the last time that a drug gang mounted a bayonnette charge? In my opinion, anyone who supports this kind of restriction is intolerant. They want to ban something that is essentially harmless (and has certainly not been proven to be harmful) simply because they find it offensive.
And yet, most liberals I’ve met (and discussed the issue with) has supported these sorts of weapons laws. Even those who profess to value “tolerance.”
ETA: Obviously, I mean that a bayonnette is harmless in the sense that private possession of bayonnettes is not a public health hazard.
Well, I think we have ample evidence that bayonnettes are harmful. I would disagree that one in particular should be banned. However, in general I am in favor of restrictions on weapons for the sheer fact that I believe them to be detrimental to the larger right for others to live. It’s nothing more than weighing between competing rights for me. Otherwise, I like guns and think that they are pretty cool.
Dylan, in “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” said
The case Moto brought up is clearly about being intolerant of an organization which discriminates. It’s not the only case in Berkeley. They won’t give a discount at the pier to the Sea Scouts because of the position of the Boy Scouts on gays. The head of the Sea Scouts (in Berkeley, not nationally) sends around these “polls” saying that this position discriminates against his faith. (This putz has recently been picked up on child molestation charges, deliciously ironic, don’t you think?)
I’m sure you can find countless examples of liberals being intolerant of the KKK, Nazis, and Fred Phelps. Got any examples of organizational intolerance against non-discriminatory groups?
Just making an observation of the difference between “not harmful” and “unlikely to be used to harm others.” It’s a bit like saying a nuclear missile is “not harmful” because no Americans have been killed by one in the last 20 years.
It’s not relevant to my larger point, so ignore it if you are distracted by it.
Classifying a historic rifle with a bayonette as an assault weapon is just silly. But I think that’s more an issue of “personal liberty” than of “tolerance”. Although I guess it depends on how you define the two. (To me, there’s a distinction between “things you own” and more personally defining traits like your race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Although maybe I’m underestimating how much that gun is a part of your personal identity.)
But lets be honest: When liberals say Republicans aren’t “tolerant”, they’re mostly talking about tolerance for specific groups. Gays, atheists, etc. Republicans are arguably more tolerant of Christian fundamentalists, gun owners, etc.
Mostly, liberals saying “We’re tolerant” is a code word for “We support equal rights for gays and don’t want you pushing your religious beliefs on us.” But politics is full of such code words, and I’m not sure why this one is any worse than any other.
I was alive then, and old enough to read the newspaper. The war wasn’t a major issue in 1964. Goldwater did believe in those principles, and did not use them to cover up bigotry. But if you listened to the mainstream of Southern opinion at the time, they used the “freedom of association” to justify discrimination and segregation. I don’t know if the Republican politicians deliberately pushed this to get Southern white votes, or if it happened by accident, but it happened. Just so you don’t think I’m saying only Republicans did this, the 1964 Democratic Convention had major battles between integrated and all white delegate slates from the South.
Well, I obviously meant that bayonnettes are harmless in the latter sense.
That would be true only if nuclear weapons were cheaply, legally, and freely available to Americans for the last 20 years and nobody had been killed by one.
Agree or not, it is illegal to discriminate against gays as a matter of politics in Berkeley. I’d bet that any such rule against the Marines would get overturned by the courts, but that’s irrelevant. I also have missed the jammers that prevent ads for the Armed Services being beamed into town on TV and radio. Plus, Berkeley isn’t all that big. I’m sure anyone wishing to join the Marines can easily arrange a ride into Oakland.
As for recruiters lying - that shouldn’t be news. Military recruiters for Alexander probably lied. The wording is intolerant, I agree, but we’ve already admitted that some liberals are intolerant of intolerance.
I don’t see why one needs to draw such a distinction. Suppose the Muskogee town counsel banned women from wearing miniskirts. Or banned men from wearing leather pants (except in connection with a rodeo, of course!). Wouldn’t that be seen as “intolerant” in a lot of quarters?
Sure, “tolerance” is frequently (but not always) just another principled-sounding justification for a particular set of prejudices.
It isn’t necessarily worse or better. It just happens to be the topic for this thread.
To me, tolerance refers to differences between people, and differences between people’s behaviors to the extent that they aren’t harmful to others.
For instance, if a guy wants to wander around in public wearing a dress and hose, regarding that as no skin off my nose is an example of tolerance; refusing to allow it is an example of intolerance. If a guy wants to wander around in public, kicking passersby in the 'nads, refusing to put up with that isn’t an example of intolerance.
I’d extend the notion of tolerance to the realm of ideas in a more limited fashion. Tolerance of different ideas means allowing people to freely express them on their own dime - but not necessarily on mine. Tolerance of different ideas means being willing to give a hearing to different ideas, within the commonsense limitations of time and experience: if I’ve already heard a particular idea many times before, tolerance doesn’t require that I give it yet one more hearing. If I’ve heard ideas from a particular source on a fair number of occasions, and they’ve generally lacked merit, tolerance doesn’t require that I keep listening to what that source has to say. Nor does tolerance require that I listen to someone’s idea when I’d really rather be doing something else entirely: we all have lives to live.