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February 23, 2006
Tolerance and Survival
This morning, Instapundit linked to a joint WaPo essay by Bill Bennett and Alan Dershowitz (!!!), on the implications of the press' failure, by and large, to run the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. I was going to comment on it, particularly this bit, but had to go to work:
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."
Bennett and Dershowitz point out the hypocrisy, but my beef was with the twisted thinking that makes "tolerance" an Enlightenment value — no, the ultimate Enlightenment value. I had, in my head, a long and intricate argument detailing how I've come, over the past 5-10 years, to believe that multiculturalism, collectivism, and victimology combine to create a Western suicide pact, and how our cultural institutions — schools, media, entertainment and politics in particular — embrace these doctrines so firmly as to make an actual belief in Western Enlightenment values, particularly those of the English Enlightenment which form the basis of the American idea, not merely heresy, but sin. (The seven deadly sins of the Left are intolerance, racism, misogyny, homophobia, "fundamentalism" [Judeo-Christian faith deeply held], individualism, and capitalism, but they all boil down to standing up for Western values against dehumanizing or inhuman values, masquerading as "diversity".) But what is the point of writing all out when Jeff Goldstein has already said it, and better?
Go read.
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Comments
"Tolerance" is an enlightenment value -- John Locke wrote a letter on it. It just doesn't mean what some people think it means. It means recognizing the other person's right to do, say, or believe whatever they want so long as they're not harming anyone. It doesn't mean indulging his every whim and accomodating his demands.
Posted by: Matt McIntosh at February 23, 2006 5:44 PM
What good are such values when these two are still keeping their heads in the sand.
The entire USA is living a fictious life. There is nothing but rife cronyism in reporting and history.
David Nollmeyer
Bishop CA
Posted by: David Nollmeyer at February 23, 2006 6:18 PM
Matt, tolerance is an Enlightenment value, agreed, as it is requisite for individual rights to survive. I did not mean tolerance, but "tolerance", as defined by the multiculturalists, which largely means that tolerance extends to every behavior, no matter how vile the act, except when committed by white males, in which case tolerance is impossible no matter how benign the act.
David, it is pretty clear that a lot of the world is living in one or another fantasy. But it's not the entire USA, or even the entire Muslim world, just large swathes of them. In the case of the US, the reason is that we have unparalleled peace (at home) and prosperity here. In the case of the Muslim world, for half a century everything that they do has been explained away by the West, leading to the natural Arab paranoia coupled with a superiority complex, the end result being the fantasy that jihadis can act against the West and the West will not react. Of course, judging by the press, the jihadis might be right.
Posted by: MamaLynx ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.caerdroia.org/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 23, 2006 7:40 PM
Oops, that comment was from me. Steph was signed in on typekey and I didn't realize it.
Posted by: Jeff Medcalf at February 23, 2006 7:43 PM