A disagreement over the public health and safety policy regarding an object is not intolerance. Intolerance would be to ban you from the state because of your beliefs about bayonnettes.
When we speak of intolerance, the first type that comes to mind is religious intolerance. Different groups derive different ethnic identities from different religious beliefs, customs, and tradtions, and then proceed to dislike and distrust one another, ususally with one being the more dominant in a society. The key point is that neither one is intellectually superior to the other, neither is clearly right or wrong.
Racism is intolerance over skin color, and of course there are no right or wrong skin colors, only different ones. And homosexuality is merely a different sexual orientation. Both of these issues too involve a dominant and a minority group.
But liberalism is not a religion or a race or a way of being “different”. It’s (among other things) an attack on the wrongfulness of various dominant groups that were once collectively known as “the establishment”. It’s about reform, not us-vs-them conflict.
I disagree. For example, I believe it would be intolerant to support a ban on the use or possession of electric vibrators.
Well, it is illegal to sell sex toys in Texas. There was a case recently where a woman who does Tupperware party-like sales events was busted by undercover cops for selling a vibrator.
Of course, it is the liberals who are behind this restriction of people’s private liberties. Fucking intolerant liberals. :rolleyes:
Oh really? Conservatives have been known to be intolerant of blacks, Jews, even Catholics, and are still highly intolerant of gays.
Who are the victims of intolerance by liberals, again?
I am highly intolerant of licorice, which is to candy what liver is to meat. Should I finally attain world domination, jack booted thugs will confiscate all licorice.
But I can still go to Luby’s and get my liver ‘n’ onions, right?
I’m very liberal, but that doesn’t stop me from being lactose intolerant.
Fucking milk products, coming up here and taking all our jobs. There ought to be a law!
Um, I hate to remind you of your history here, but the answer is - blacks, Jews, even Catholics, and gays.
Lots of Democrats not so long ago were quite liberal on lots of socioeconomic issues - and extremely hung up on race. Orval Faubus wasn’t a political conservative, and neither was William Fulbright. Neither were scads of others.
I remind you also that Al Sharpton was able to run for president despite a rather interesting anti-Semitic record.
Liberalism today self-identifies largely in terms of race and opposition to racism, but this certainly wasn’t always the case.
Why, yes, we have progressed nicely, thanks to the leadership of outstanding conservatives like ah, ummmmm…well, there were so many conservatives at the very forefront of the civil rights movement, I simply cannot think of them all. Help me out here, Moto, just the top ten, off the top of your head…
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I’m not sure what your point is. I think there are plenty of intolerant conservatives and intolerant liberals.
My point in this thread is that many people who plea for tolerance are themselves somewhat intolerant.
Yeppers. And you know what happened? The Dems decided to be the party of civil rights. Over the next decade or two, our racists either stopped being racists, or shut up about it, or went over to the other side. Your side. Which welcomed the ex-Dem racists with open arms. Nice of you guys to be so tolerant. :rolleyes:
“Able to run for president”?? I didn’t know reprehensible prejudices were a disability that could prevent one from running for president. Certainly hasn’t been a problem for Republicans. (See most recently Tancredo, T., who dropped out because he’d gotten most of the GOP field to out-Tancredo him. Couldn’t be a stronger contrast to the Dems when Sharpton ran.)
Sure. Many liberals are intolerant. I agree. I’m just not sure we needed three pages to come to such an obvious conclusion.
I knew Moto would at some point conflate Democrats and liberals, in contradiction to the OP, to try to suggest that liberals aren’t tolerant because of the history of Southern Democrats. I almost predicted it, in fact.
I was thinking about this thread on the way home. What I was struck by is the surprise I’ve felt. Who knew that conservatives need such validation and approval from liberals? “Waaaah! You don’t like our ideas and values! Waaaah! You don’t like us!”
If you need unconditional love, you better work that out with your mothers. You won’t get it from me.
ETA: As an example of my intolerance, I’d like to point out that “plea” is not a verb.
Well, I made essentially the same point in Post 86 and you demanded that I back up my claim. (Actually, there is a slight difference – in my post recent post, I referred to “many people,” while in Post 86, I referred to my “general sense.” Either way, I am willing to concede the possibility that there exist people who plea for tolerance who are in fact tolerant themselves. )
Man oh man…
First of all, liberalism is not defined as whatever Democrats were up to during a given political era. The Dixiecrats were about as un-liberal as you can get on matters of race. I maintain that the commitment to civil rights is the very cornerstone of liberalism.
But to cite a mere handful of controversial extremists as exemplars of liberalism is ridiculous. These are the exceptions that prove the rule. Do you really expect us to see a few remarks by the likes of Al Sharpton as balancing out the monstrous history of racism and anti-semitism on the right?
And anyway, liberalism is about constant re-evaluation and independent thinking. It is not subject to being defined by history and/or charismatic leadership to the extent that conservatism is. It’s liberal to say, “We were wrong”. It’s conservative to say, “We’re never wrong”.
Whoever said, “Not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” is less important than the principle itself.
Now I’m willing to agree that the average conservative these days is not very racist. But then again, that’s the un-conservative side of these individuals at last coming to fore, just the anti-semitism of Al Sharpton and some other blacks is part of their un-liberal side.
No, even Nancy Drew was racist if you go back far enough. But liberals seemed to wake up faster. No doubt JFK sent the National Guard in because Faubus amd that other well know liberal George Wallace had to be shown the lesson of their liberal ways. :rolleyes:
So you are saying that conservativism is inherently racist? :dubious: