the uncomfortable students need to learn tolerance.
Permit me a few thoughts on the issue of tolerance. This post is not intended as a systematic treatise on tolerance. Rather just some thoughts on a frequently misunderstood concept that some have called the only “virtue” left in our neo-pagan society.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines Tolerance and toleration:
Toleration — from the Latin tolerare: to put up with, countenance or suffer — generally refers to the conditional acceptance of or non-interference with beliefs, actions or practices that one considers to be wrong but still “tolerable,” such that they should not be prohibited or constrained. [1]
It goes on to make a distinction that is often lost today:
[I]t is essential for the concept of toleration that the tolerated beliefs or practices are considered to be objectionable and in an important sense wrong or bad. If this objection component (cf. King 1976, 44-54) is missing, we do not speak of “toleration” but of “indifference” or “affirmation.” [2]
In effect tolerance involves putting up with something we consider wrong or displeasing but not so wrong that we must move to constrain it. Tolerance does NOT mean we approve of something as good. This essential point is often glossed over by those who often demand that tolerance mean approval, and that to disapprove of something makes one “intolerant.
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I don't think that's what the leftists have in mind…