Not sure if a Doper already threaded this article or not:
Almost a year ago, a Slate author (presumably a liberal,) penned an article “In Praise of Intolerance.” It’s long, so I’ll bullet-point the gist of it:
[ul]
[li]Liberals should be promoting “truth” rather than “tolerance.”[/li][li]“Tolerance” in and of itself isn’t a good thing by mere virtue of being tolerance.[/li][li]By promoting “tolerance,” liberals quickly opened themselves to accusations of hypocrisy, because there are many people or things that liberals do not or cannot tolerate.[/li][/ul]
There’s a lot more in the article, but I think this expresses a zeitgeist of the moment - something that was already in movement before Trump got elected, but accelerated greatly after Trump’s election - which is that I think that society is gradually ditching “tolerance” and more comfortably embracing open intolerance of one’s opponents. In the past, there would be a sort of “You say I am intolerant because I do not tolerate intolerance, but Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance says that we must crack down on intolerance in order to be tolerant” dance and song, but even that has gradually fallen by the wayside as more and more of society is openly embracing intolerance as a concept and becoming more comfortable with it as a skin.
Watch the Netflix Black Mirror series epsisode “Downfall”?..kinda played over the top humor wise thoug
Then watch the movie “The Circle”…Tom Hanks being a major actor but a minor role in the scheme of things…
THEN imagine a world where your point of view conflicts with most everybody else…
THAT is the problem IMO…all the social justice warriors of today assume at least two things…they are right…and when push comes to shove everybody else will see it.
Hypothetical…Facebook and internet social shaming to the nth degree existed in circa 1950ish. Did Civil rights come of age or was it squashed like a bug?
Its flaw, and the flaw of most conversations like this, lies in the fact that there exist multiple definitions of the word “tolerance,” each with its own set of inherent assumptions. And people tend to assume that everyone else has the same assumptions about it.
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I used to be a big believer in tolerance as a virtue, and spent many hours arguing the idea with conservatives. In the long run, I found the conservative position had superior arguments, and I conceded that their’s was the correct position. And now those same conservatives are all butthurt about it!
Certainly different people mean different things by the word “tolerance.” It might be useful to break down the concept this way:
[ul][li]Tolerance for what the other IS[/li][li]Tolerance for what the other BELIEVES[/li][li]Tolerance for what the other DOES[/ul][/li]
The third is, and should be, the most problematic for progressives. For example, it’s fine to tolerate your neighbor’s belief that vaccinations are harmful, but not necessarily to tolerate your neighbor’s activist efforts to stop all childhood vaccination.
“Intolerance” of those efforts might include publicizing facts on vaccination, or even running for office with a pledge to support childhood vaccination. Of course a progressive wouldn’t support “intolerance” that included violence or outlawing of free speech about the supposed harm done by vaccination.
But, yes: “intolerance” is appropriate when confronting certain types of actions.
This should not be read to say that I deny the concept of “TRVTH”. I just think it is important to distinguish fact from opinion, however well or ill informed.
It’s not at all an issue of mixing up definitions. It’s those who wish to be intolerant trying to expand the term to mean more than it does. Tolerance has never* meant “no matter what you say and do, we have to sit back and do nothing.” It is “if who you are or what you say and do does not affect me or people I care about, I don’t have any reason to get involved.”
As such, it is an underlying liberal principle. It’s what the “liberty” concept of liberalism is. People should have the freedom to act in any way that does not harm others.
Of course our opposition is going to take what we talk about and exaggerate it to the point that it sounds ridiculous. That’s what the opposition does. Changing what we talk about won’t change that.
*Don’t believe me? Find someone who says we should be tolerant of murderers, and let them get away with what they do. If this alternate definition of “tolerance” were true, it shouldn’t be hard to find. No, in reality, tolerance has never been about not trying to stop bad things or promote good things.
Look at the fast one Obama pulled a few years ago: he always said “freedom of worship,” never “freedom of religion.” His version means " We’ll tolerate stupid Christians going to their stupid buildings and saying stupid prayers to their stupid God for one hour on Sunday. But the instant they’re out of Church, they do what I say, or else! "
Well, I’m not a Christian and I’m not here to defend the religion. But I don’t think Jesus ever said that we should “tolerate” murderers in the sense of just letting them get on with it unimpeded. What I understood that story to mean was that forgiveness is available to all, no matter how heinous the sin. You just have to be genuinely repentant. And that forgiveness applies to your “afterlife” or whatever you want to call it - you still need to do your prison sentence here on Earth.
So I don’t think you can fairly say that Jesus wanted us to “tolerate” murderers.
I don’t see how this is going to make any difference in how the left operates. Before, it was ‘we can tolerate anything but hate speech, and hate speech is anything with which we disagree on race, gender, or politics, so we will try to shout you down.’
After, it will be ‘we are committed to the truth, and anything with which we disagree on race, gender, or politics isn’t the truth, so we will try to shout you down.’
It would work out better if the left actually had a monopoly on the truth, but they don’t.
I had a whole screed written about how one would have to be a complete fool to believe that “tolerance” as espoused by progressives means tolerance of all positions, even bigoted once. In short, if it did mean that, then calls for “tolerance” would be calls for passivity in the face of injustice – the exact opposite of a progressive position.
But I think in fact the author of the article recognizes that the “…then you should be tolerant of my bigotry” argument is a terrible one. The point isn’t that it’s a good argument; the point is that it’s easy to make the bad argument sounds good to the credulous, because “tolerance” is a rather poorly chosen word for expressing what progressives meant by it in the first place. As the author puts it:
If people said what they mean – basically, don’t be a bigot – then there’d be less room for bigots to deliberately misinterpret the message so as to sucker people into believing it’s a hypocritical one.
All that aside, I’ve never much cared for the term “tolerance” anyway. It makes it sound like the bigot’s sense of offense is legitimate, when it isn’t. Like if someone were to say “I don’t like that Alan is gay, but I’ll tolerate it. Or I don’t like that Michelle is black, but I’ll tolerate it.” That isn’t a noble sentiment; it’s just lowkey bigotry. You shouldn’t have to tolerate it.
Tolerance of your existence means I forbear from punching you in the head, unless I have a reasonable belief you’re just about to kill or seriously injure me. A fortiori, it means I forbear from shooting you, or rounding you up and sending you to a death camp, or similar activities.
That’s it. That’s the extent of tolerance. I can argue against you, I can scream at you when you’re trying to talk, I can call you the lowest form of being and loudly wish you would perish from all existence, and I am still tolerating you.
It’s common to extend tolerance to not only people but ideas, which requires we forbear from censorship. Note that many private institutions do not do this for a wide range of ideas. Similarly, tolerating ideas does not mean ideas cannot be criticized or called idiotic. This is apparently the hardest idea for some to grasp.
Finally, tolerance can be extended from people and ideas to activities, which is the most difficult tolerance of all, and one that the law explicitly denies to many activities, and private groups deny to many more.
My point is, “tolerance” is a very circumscribed term, and not one which implies acceptance or silence or a lack of response in general. Mainly, it comes down to not actively preventing someone or some thing from existing.
“The left is trying to shout us down!” is butthurt-conservative-snowflake-speak for “The left is daring to openly express contempt and ridicule of our opinions!”
No, it’s reasonable-person-speak for trying to shout them down, and prevent them from speaking at all thru threats and disruption, as happened at Middlebury and Berkeley and Georgetown.
As I have said elsewhere, the Left had better be careful what they wish for - they are likely to get it back twice as hard.