Should the tolerant tolerate intolerance?

Some people seem to believe that tolerance means tolerating everything, even The Fundamentalist's Westboro-Baptist-Church-style homophobia or racism, or claim that they're being discriminated against when stores say things like "happy holidays," because it disregards the beliefs of those who are negative towards non-Christians.

But the reason that tolerant people don't tolerate those groups, is because those groups are antithetical to the whole idea of tolerance: accepting that people should not receive worse treatment than others based on race, class, sex, or creed. Claiming that the tolerant should tolerate intolerance is like claiming that you should have the liberty to take away others' liberties.

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

Second-order tolerance ≠ first-order tolerance. Seems simple enough to me.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

I am extremely intolerant of intolerance, especially on religious grounds.

@ Tzetze: Second order vs. First order tolerance = ?

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

First order things apply to not-that-thing. For example, first order rationality is rationality when you don't consider rationality itself. In the same way, tolerance in general is first-order, but tolerance of intolerance is self-referential in a way and thus second-order.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

How are we defining "intolerance"?

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

^ I'm going by the metric "anything other than being an equal opportunity asshole". Or its inverse converse "being an equal opportunity <insert proper adjective here for someone who's the reverse of an asshole>".

edited 28th Dec '10 5:10:05 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

In my opinion, intolerance = giving one race, class, creed, or sex worse treatment than another in a situation where race, class, creed, or sex is irrelevant.

edited 28th Dec '10 7:29:31 PM by LeighSabio

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

Intolerance is exactly what it sounds like. Not tolerating something, and usually that "something" is race, gender, class, sexality etc. If you don't like (and openly disapprove of) asians/women/immigrants/gays/whatever as a matter of principle, you're being intolerant.

Everything is best in moderation.

What is the alternative to "tolerating intolerance"? Banning any viewpoint that doesn't coincide with the majority definition of "tolerance"?

Besides, what business is it of the "tolerant" what others do with their own time and private property/resources?

If by "not tolerating intolerance" we mean "telling people we'll put them in jail for saying things they honestly believe" (or pretend to honestly believe, at any rate), then hell no, I'm not going to treat a racist as a criminal. (Not unless they actually hurt someone, anyways—but how many of them are just blowing off steam or telling themselves they can't be losers if there are people who're inferior to them? And even if they are true believers, I hold beliefs that many people would consider as stupid as theirs.)

edited 28th Dec '10 8:46:29 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

You wouldn't need to be asking this question if not for this silly terminology and the equivocation it leads to.

The "whole idea of tolerance" to which you refer already has a much less confusing name— egalitarianism. Likewise, groups antithetical to "the whole idea of tolerance" also have a less confusing name— bigots, or anti-egalitarians.

The fact of the matter is that in layspeak, "tolerance" has a variety of definitions, at least one of which— "the ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislikes or disagrees with"— can be legitimately used to refer to tolerance for bigotry.

So, to rephrase your question, should egalitarians tolerate bigotry/anti-egalitarianism? Not unless egalitarianism conflicts with something they value more highly. Personally, while I support egalitarianism in various ways, freedom of speech is much more important to me, so while I oppose things like job/housing/adoption discrimination and attempts to ban gay marriage, I also oppose the suppression of "hate speech", "obscenity", and speech deemed "offensive".

edited 28th Dec '10 9:57:38 PM by Tongpu

well "intolerance" is a bit of a thought terminating cliche, someone can be intolerant of milk after all.

edited 28th Dec '10 11:13:05 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Great reply from Tongpu there. To expand your question and use Tongpu's definitions: should egalitarian/non-bigoted people tolerate all forms of bigotry no matter how large? No. Some forms of bigotry include incitement to genocide and it should be stopped way before then.

Can you really call yourself tolerant if you are intolerant of intolerance? Yes, if by tolerant you mean you are against bigotry.

Agree with betaalpha. Tolerating intolerance could lead to tolerance being lost to unreasonable causes. Paving way for bigotry to conduct genocide.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Intolerance in itself I can tolerate. Tolerating something does not mean that you should approve it, after all. You can still consider certain people bigoted jerks, but respect their right to be bigoted jerks. But most intolerant actions end up hurting innocent eople, and this, of course, is not something that should go unchallenged. And contrary to a somewhat popular opinion, tolerance never included acceptance of behaviour that actually harms others, so that does not particularly matters.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I could accept if all the bigoted jerks just sit around doing nothing. However, if they produce stuffs that could influence others to commit something unlawful, I don't think they should be left alone. Then there are those bigoted jerks who are also a politician seeking support through intolerance of the voters.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Is it me or has tongpu brightened up recently?

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

I've always been bright. But I've spent most of my time here in a relatively dim subforum.

Don't think of it in terms of tolerating ideologies, ideologies are a dime a dozen. The thing we decide to tolerate or not are actions. In this case, the action of 'making a person/group feel separate and less valued (or more valued, for that matter) as a human being due to factor X" is the action we, by definition, don't tolerate in order to call ourselves tolerant. X being of course eye color or race or sexual orientation or other feature that is not relevant to character judgment.

But tolerating the existence of bigots. Of course we do. I even tolerate free speech in their case, as long as it doesn't come to harassment or "that [expletive] lives at so-and-so address and comes home at 5:15 pm". It's a simple argument of needing an example; we require something we can point to and tell our children "See, this is what hatred and stupidity look like".

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I remember when there was all the controversy about that Muslim man who said that women without veils were like uncovered meat. My teacher said to the class, "This is why you never, ever get rid of free speech. How else are you supposed to tell who the nutters are?"

Be not afraid...

Your teacher deserves

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I hope your class stood up and applauded your teacher. I know I would.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I think that by using the word Intolerance as opposed to Tolerance you're setting yourself up for an unnecessary contradiction later on down the road. It's not that you're intolerant of intolerance: it's that you're intolerant of certain specific things. The intolerance of other specific things is just on that list-but intolerance of intolerance is not itself on the list.

Set theory is probably better explained by Tze Tze though. Self-reference is a highway to contradiction.

Actually, he already did.

edited 30th Dec '10 10:58:01 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

@ Tongpu: That actually makes sense. I guess my definition wasn't exactly one that denoted tolerance so much as egalitarianism.

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.