Todd, writing in November 2003 in response to my thoughts on "tolerance": “All we can really expect, if we want to live together, is that we can coexist amid disagreement. The best way to do that is to encourage tolerance not as an ideal, but as a necessary compromise that let's us have freedom of thought and the ability to live as we wish so long as that lifestyle doesn't prevent others from doing the same. I know that's pretty libertarian of me, but I also think it's the only realistic way to live in a time when thawed antiquarian freaks roam the earth.”
tolerance
Lance Arthur: “Tolerance is an ugly, horrid, hateful word. Tolerance means, "I tolerate you." It means that I am allowed to continue to believe the wrong, ignorant, backwards lies I have always been told about you but that I can manage to sit here across the table from you and not take my steak knife and plunge it into your heart”
Joe on the "wall of tolerance": “why should the views of some be "tolerated" differently from the views of others? What I fear, and this is a fear felt by many with the advocacy of "hate crime" laws, is that such attempted control of actions leads to controls of thought. Physically assaulting a person is an evil thing and the person who commits such an act must be punished. But no one should have their thought process questioned when they decide who's beliefs should be tolerated and who's shouldn't. One of the prices we have to pay for living in a free society is that we must be willing to tolerate the often-unpopular views of those with whom we vehemently disagree.”
See also:
Lorne Gunter: “Not a single news source I have found has sought to refute Spencer's claims about homosexuality -- not one. All have merely seen fit to denounce him for daring to express such beliefs, which have been variously described as "appalling," "outrageous," "antediluvian," "dangerous," "ignorant," "bigoted," un-Canadian and a host of other names.”
I had the same problem seeing the reaction to Spencer on the news. When I saw Spencer's quotes splashed across the screen, I laughed out loud thinking "man, people like that still exist?" but a gay rights activist was visibly and audibly appalled. There's no need to distance myself from Spencer, because I've never liked the Reform/Canadian Alliance/whatever-they-call-themselves-now (except possibly on foreign policy, but they have domestic policy all wrong), but distancing myself too far makes it look like I take whatever those assholes say seriously. I'm surprised this is as big a story as it is. I mean, haven't we gotten to the point where we expect that kind of thing from them now? Point is, there's such thing as being reflexively intolerant like the Reform/Alliance/whatever party, but is being reflexively tolerant (or, more accurately, reflexively intolerant of intolerance) much better?
Discussing TheYeti's viewpoint, Jay has some thoughts on tolerance:
I think that tolerance is not a good thing for a different reason: If I "tolerate" homosexuals in my community then what I am really doing is saying, "I Hate You and would persecute you if I could, but because I 'tolerate' you I will contain my rage and not do anything about it." It is a way of allowing hatred to fester rather than dealing with it head on. "The sin is in the thought, not the act."
People describe Canada as a "tolerant" nation, which says something not only about Canada but the people describing the country. Tolerating something, as Jay suggests, means that we think something is abnormal and wrong but either we don't have the energy to oppose it or there are forces constraining us from opposing it. There are things I tolerate amongst my friends—like certain people's behaviour towards people other than me, something I don't have the right to be upset about in the first place—because bringing up the subject comes at the cost of the friendship. (A true friend would bring it up, you say? Well, in my experience, bringing it up oft loses both sanity and friend.) Tolerance means putting up with something that you look upon with disdain because the cost of making a fuss is greater than shutting up.
Tolerance also brings up the specter of "zero-tolerance". A recent article in The New York Times discusses zero-tolerance policies at schools, and zero-tolerance policies are something I need to develop an opinion on if I'm ever going to become an educator. We constantly hear news stories about students doing provocative (though not exactly revolutionary) things, and school administrators suspending them for those things. Although this may tend to contradict my view on tolerance as expressed above, it's occuring to me more and more that the concept of "zero-tolerance" is the problem and not the solution.
