The Intolerance of Tolerance

What does it mean to be tolerant? The dictionary defines tolerance as respect for opinions, beliefs, and practices that differ from your own. But in our polarized cultural climate, it has come to mean something else entirely. Greg Koukl, president of Stand to Reason, sorts it all out.

I never liked the phrasing, but Ayn Rand was on to something when she wrote about the “sanction of the victim”.

The Left persecutes people — white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and other categories as they desire. Those categories are persecuted because of a perceived “lack of tolerance”. That justifies victimizing people who are basically normal. But the persecution is not enough. It is vital that the victims Thank the oppressors, admit that they deserve to be persecuted, and give permission for additional punishments. You can see this is Liberal guilt, hatred of happy families, the praise for transsexuals, hatred of police, admiration for urban thugs, intolerance for Christians, protection for Muslims. It’s all upside down. Intolerant people punish the tolerant people and demand that the tolerant people sanction it — because tolerance is such an important virtue.

Actually, there is a book by Canadian D.A. Carson with the same title. I have it in my Logos Bible software library.

Carson also covers the subject of tolerance in his book from the 1990’s, The Gagging of God. This book is about post-modernism, in general, and how post-modernists have shuffled absolute truth out of academia.

Their arguments are self-defeating. According to liberals, there are no absolute truths so we must accept all worldviews which do not hold to absolute truth. Naturally, those worldviews which believe in an absolute truth are to be shunned; i.e., not tolerated.

Such a worldview is self-defeating because they have to promote it as absolutely true.

Greg is wrong. Tolerance means that those we disagree with are allowed to live in our society, no more. Intolerance means that we cannot abide certain things, people, or viewpoints and remove them from society. The result is the same as Greg’s in that the Left is intolerant. The Left believes that all who disagree should be killed or at least not permitted to participate in society, and do not follow through with that determination simply because they don’t have the guns. The disagreers do.

South Park did it first, in the episode, “The Death Camp of Tolerance.”

If you are offended by REALLY bad taste and offensive material, you might want to skip to the next message:

Synopsis:

Mr. Garrison tries to get himself fired from his new position as fourth-grade teacher so he can sue the school for sexual discrimination and make millions. He shows the kids a “science experiment” in which he inserts the class pet — a gerbil named Lemmiwinks — into the anus of his lover, Mr. Slave.

When his students refuse to attend class anymore, they’re pronounced “intolerant” and sent off to Tolerance Camp, an Auschwitz-like prison where they’re taught (via food deprivation, hard labor, and arts and crafts) to respect others. To top it off, Mr. Garrison wins a Courageous Teacher award.

<< Snip a bunch more really offensive stuff >>

Realizing that their kids don’t hate homosexuals, just Mr. Garrison, the parents retrieve the boys from Tolerance Camp. Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave, who are judged to be intolerant of themselves, are sent in their place. But not before Mr. Slave coughs up Lemmiwinks. He has survived the trials of the gay man’s ass, and is declared “the Gerbil King.”

What I Learned Today:

“Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn’t mean you have to approve of it! If you had to like it, it’d be called the Museum of Acceptance! ‘Tolerate’ means you’re just putting up with it”

Mark

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