Fwd: New kid in town

[sean <o2design@wsu.edu>]

Title: Fwd: New kid in town

Would visionaries say it is possible toŠ

- hate someone whose actions/view you tolerate/are tolerant of?

- love someone whose actions/view you do not tolerate/are not tolerant of?

>
>
> Dear visionaries,
>
> Carl Westberg asks what my point was, and despite the monkeyshines, I
> do have one. Tolerant liberals play a pea and shell game with words
> like tolerant. Just like everyone else in the world, tall and short,
> Republican and Democrat, left and right, Christian and pagan, such
> liberals tolerate certain things and do not tolerate others. Nothing
> remarkable here, just the way the world is. The distinguishing mark of
> any group is the standard that establishes what they tolerate
> and what they do not.
>
> And yet such liberals want to stand in the glow of a mythical
> universal tolerance, as though that were possible. When they are
> finally forced to bring their definition of tolerance down to a
> practical level, admitting that they are tolerant and intolerant in
> just the same identical way everybody else is, they start to show
> distinct signs of irritability. The last two posts from that quadrant
> have been positively snippy. Are liberals any more tolerant than
> others? Of course they are not. They are more tolerant of certain
> things, to be sure, just as we are more tolerant of others. They can
> handle gay pride parades better than I can. I can handle psalm singing
> better than they can. What separates us is the standard, not
> the tolerance. I have raised this question before, by the way.
>
> No virtue was every found in a transitive verb. When we throw an
> incomplete sentence out that says that "John tolerates
> blank" we do not yet know if he is a saint or a scoundrel.
> What does he tolerate? Ice cream? Child molesters? Noisy neighbors?
> Topless car washes? Indignant housewives? Neo-Nazis? When we come to
> praise or blame him, we are invoking a standard. And the standard that
> defines the possible virtues in tolerance cannot be tolerance
> itself.
>
> Here's a thought experiment. Suppose the local government school
> supporters come after us again in the spring, swinging another levy
> above their heads, all of them painted blue and yelling that eerie
> battle cry of theirs. Suppose we organize to stop their nefarious
> pillaging of our larders. What should we call such a group? On the
> principles hammered out by the liberals, we should call it something
> like Nice People United.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Douglas Wilson

--

Thanks,
s


        * * * * * * * *
        Sean Michael
        .dwg