Tolerance and the Left: The Root of Madfloridian’s Madness
ByMadfloridian is a journal writer at the Democratic Underground. His recent post accuses prominant conservatives of hate and the desire to eliminate those people they disagree with. We disssent.
There’s no reason to nitpick the details of the Madfloridian’s post. The source of his error comes early when he cites sociological analysis from a recently released liberal tome named “Elimination:”
“But more particularly, both episodes reflect a trend that has manifested itself with increasing intensity in the past decade: the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement. Rather than engaging in a dialogue over political and cultural issues, one side simply dehumanizes its opponents and suggests, and at times demands, their excision. This tendency is almost singularly peculiar to the American Right.”
This quote (and the rest of Madfloridian’s post) illustrate that many of our friends on the organized Left simply don’t understand the notion of tolerance and individual dignity that underlies the thinking of most traditionalists, Christians, and social conservatives.
We’d refer them to Russel Kirk’s American Cause or Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind or C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man for longer discussions of old school tolerance, but here’s the way we understand the boundaries of tolerance around Daily Uprising:
It is okay to assert our beliefs and argue that others should adopt them. In fact, although it might be counter-productive and anti-persuasive, we can rant about the stupidity of our opponents and rail against their beliefs in an attempt to persuade them or we can just shout our own views for the sheer beauty and independence of giving expression to our beliefs. This can, at times, be rude, but it is not intolerance.
What we cannot do is deny the dignity of another’s individuality by forcing them to agree with us. We don’t want to change our opponents through physical force or “disappear them” in any way whatsoever. The moment we begin to use force to try to change men so that they act in accordance with our beliefs instead of theirs is the moment we deny their individual dignity. Saying that another person must follow our will instead of their own or cease to exist denies their equality as creations of God and their individuality as human beings. It should be absolutely repugnant to conservatives and libertarians.
This might seem obvious to the Daily Uprising crowd. After all, conservatives don’t just oppose excessive government because free markets mean more and better stuff, they do so because they cannot abide by the intolerance of a government that attempts to change people or force them to act contrary to their own will. Here’s what might not be so obvious to you: This point is not at all clear to the organized-Left.
Many in the organized-Left have a different idea of tolerance altogether. Here’s the gist in a nutshell: It is wrong to say that your ideas or beliefs are better than someone else’s. That kind of confidence, in and of itself, is intolerance. It’s even worse if you try to persuade someone else that they should adopt your way of thinking. That is super-intolerant.
We think that this confuses rudeness or self-righteousness with intolerance. Why the confusion? Mostly because many people who adopt this view of tolerance don’t believe in the inviolable negative rights of man we discussed earlier. Many modern American liberals believe that if smart people — like Barack Obama and his staff of czars — know better than you do about whether you should be able to buy food with transfat or how much of the fruits of your labor should be given to reduce the threat of “global warming,” they can and should be able to use force in order to compel you to act as if you agree with them.
We suspect that Madfloridian reaches his conclusions by similarly throwing out the fact that protection of individual dignity and natural rights is a key tenent of conservativism and then noticing that conservatives online and offline often speak very strongly about the superiority of their views. If a liberal who believes in compelling action through government spoke that way, they might just be talking about government doing something to “fix their opponents,” but conservatives are just emphasizing the strength of their convictions or trying to persuade.
So, if you’d like, you can read Madfloridian’s post. What you’ll find is a listing of examples of strong beliefs expressed strongly. Unfortunately for Madfloridian’s credibility, many of the supposedly damning quotes aren’t quotes at all but someone’s paraphrasing of what someone else said. Frankly, if you are going to accuse someone of hate, you probably need to cite the exact words that illustrate the hate. The haters inclu
