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When Tolerance Trumps Principle
By David C.ParksWe
were invited to dinner with friends and extended family. Wonderful
company. Good food. Stimulating intellects. All was well...until the
conversation brushed up against two "untouchables" in a Southern home:
religion and politics. As the exchange heated and civility gave way to
raw emotion, a timid family Democrat
pleaded for tolerance,
entreated both sides to lay down their verbal firearms, and then
abandoned the dinner table in search of safe harbor and warm, fuzzy house cats.
Relishing the beef tenderloin, I pondered the assets and liabilities of a tolerant society. Someone can think, say, or do anything, and others cannot question his thoughts, statements, or actions; but then, he cannot question anyone else's, either. The upside ends there.

Relishing the beef tenderloin, I pondered the assets and liabilities of a tolerant society. Someone can think, say, or do anything, and others cannot question his thoughts, statements, or actions; but then, he cannot question anyone else's, either. The upside ends there.
By
definition, tolerance renders us impotent. Requiring passivity, it
negates action. An ordered, lawful, moral, and virtuous life -- as an
individual, city, state, or nation -- necessitates constant and
intentional effort, often offending lesser angels of our personal or
societal nature. In a letter to Mercy Warren in April 1776, John Adams
wrote: "Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private
[virtue], and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." Study
of our human nature confirms that left unbridled, it does not tend
toward order or virtue. Human nature gravitates to chaos. Rather than
right a troubled world, tolerance allows it to turn upside-down. At
some point, we must choose, and fight boldly for, the principles that
govern us.

Tolerance requires that we ignore "the law of non-contradiction." The online Stanford University
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) explains that "opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time" and suggests that Aristotle
believed that "the principle of non-contradiction [is] a principle of
scientific inquiry, reasoning, and communication that we cannot do
without." In a world of social and political tolerance, we do not
inquire, we do not reason, we do not communicate...we do not
respect...we tolerate.

Until
both parties put aside agendas and assent to truth, legislative and
political process based on tolerance of each other's beliefs is futile
and laughable...or at least it would be, were the consequences not so
serious.
The result is a wasteland of abandoned principles.
Tolerance is the pry bar by which the modern liberal moves boundaries.
Robert H. Bork, in his introduction of Slouching Towards Gomorrah
(1997), cites the Durkheim Constant: "Emile Durkheim, a founder of
sociology, posited that there is a limit to the amount of deviant
behavior any community can 'afford to recognize.'" As behavior worsens,
the community adjusts standards so that conduct once thought
reprehensible is gradually thought to be normal. However, Mr. Bork
conjectures that the limits to deviant behavior have expanded in both
directions, so that what was deviant is now considered normal, and what
was moral is thought puritanical or extremist and therefore irrelevant.
Modern liberalism makes every effort to redefine or blur (whichever is more expedient) both boundaries of the acceptable norm and label opponents as "intolerant."
The
controversy over the definition of marriage serves as an example of
expansion of both boundaries. On the one hand, homosexuality was viewed
as deviant behavior in the first two thirds of the 20th
century. By the end, national politics encouraged the acceptance of gay
lifestyles. On the other hand, a normal marriage has always brought to
mind one man and one woman. Now progressives claim that the definition
is too narrow and should include gay unions. To think otherwise in
their view discloses intolerance and a homophobic prejudice.
In
the name of polite statesmanship, conservatives have allowed the
infringements and withdrawn traditional discernment and thereby
relinquished boundaries on both sides of that vague line of normalcy.
Mr. Bork summarizes: "So unrelenting is the assault on our
sensibilities that many of us grow numb, finding resignation to be the
rational, adaptive response to an environment that is increasingly
polluted and apparently beyond our control."
The
liberal says that "ignorance leads to intolerance." In fact, tolerance
leads to ignorance. Bork recounts the liberal's dilemma, quoting W.H.
Auden: "Emancipated from traditional beliefs of a closed society ... he
[the liberal] has found no source or principle of direction to replace
them ... liberalism is at a loss to know how to handle him, for the
only thing liberalism knows to offer is more [liberalism] ... and that
is his trouble." With no mental exercise of discernment, rationale, or
principle required, tolerance dulls the intellect and implies that we
should deny our natural sensibilities while we renounce our
discernments. Tolerance presumes that we ignore our capacity to
determine and act upon right from wrong, truth from falsehood, or good
from evil. Tolerance denies intelligence.
When
we allow tolerance to trump principles, we become the allegorical crab
in the stewpot. The chef slips the crab into a large pot of water at
room temperature. Every few minutes he turns up the heat a few degrees,
until the crab, roused from his stupor too late, acquiesces to the
inevitable boil and winds up supper for those who would benefit from
his stupidity.
Respect
is the missing virtue. Respect requires us to move beyond
transgressions and differences, accept the author of poor belief and
action, and in the process, initiate change. Tolerance identifies the
person and belief as one and the same. Respect recognizes their
differences and embraces the person when his belief or action may be
wrong. Tolerance is a very bland substitute for respect, and people
despair to see our nation settle for the lesser.
Should
our sensibilities stop at every discussion of ideology and consider all
equal and worthy of embrace, even when they are not? As our country was
established on Judeo-Christian principles, can the system allow for
juxtaposed value systems and still be effective? Do we abandon virtues
citing moral failures? Can we no longer discern right from wrong?
We
scratch our heads and wonder, "How did we get to this point?" Perhaps
we would be wise to recognize that borders, boundaries, and
limitations, whether literal or figurative, geographical, political, or
moral, serve to protect us and ensure a valuable legacy. In the words
of the celebrated poet Robert Frost from Mending Wall,
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall that wants it down."
Perhaps the neighbor better understood the pending consequences of
vanishing boundaries with his reply:
"Good fences make good neighbors."

