I’m heading out of town for the weekend, but I wanted to share an article from First Things before I leave. George Cardinal Pell writes about ‘intolerant tolerance‘, which is a subject I have found very interesting.
Many on the political left claim the mantle of ‘tolerance’ and predicate many of their political and moral stances upon being ‘tolerant’ of others. Gay rights and gay marriage issues are often couched in these terms, for example, and we right-wingers are oft’ labeled as being ‘intolerant’ because we have different opinions on this and other issues.
What is interesting though is that tolerance means accepting others opinions even if you disagree with them. I am ‘tolerant’ when I support and defend the rights of (as an example) anti-war protesters to march on Washington, even when I disagree with them. This, however, doesn’t go both ways these days. Left-wingers would be ‘tolerant’ to support and defend my rights to march for what I believe in too, but if I were to march against abortion or against the legalization of gay marriage I’d be labeled a misogynist, homophobic, hate-monger unworthy of speaking in the public square (and soon I might be subject to arrest for ‘hate speech’).
We must be tolerant of others’ Constitutionally protected liberty to live, speak, practice their religion, bear arms, and so on without fear of repercussion. If we, as a society, don’t protect these core, enumerated human rights, then we have truly lost the republic and our liberty.