More Tolerance

The past weekend I read I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup. It’s a little scattered and a bit of a hard read, in my opinion, but it brings out a succinct point about tolerantism. The author, someone named Scott Alexander, unveils this hidden jewel. Beginning with G. K. Chesterton’s The Secret of Father Brown, Alexander points out that you can’t “forgive” something you don’t think is wrong. From there he moves to tolerance, showing that it is not meritorious to tolerate something with which you agree! He gives the following illustration:

The Emperor summons before him Bodhidharma and asks: “Master, I have been tolerant of innumerable gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, transgender people, and Jews. How many Virtue Points have I earned for my meritorious deeds?”

Bodhidharma answers: “None at all.”

The Emperor, somewhat put out, demands to know why.

Bodhidharma asks: “Well, what do you think of gay people?”

The Emperor answers: “What do you think I am, some kind of homophobic bigot? Of course I have nothing against gay people!”

And Bodhidharma answers: “Thus do you gain no merit by tolerating them!”

There is a lot to wade through, some of which I found extraneous and some with which I didn’t agree, but if you follow the rainbow you will find this pot of gold at the end.

But the best thing that could happen to this post is that it makes a lot of people, especially myself, figure out how to be more tolerant. Not in the “of course I’m tolerant, why shouldn’t I be?” sense of the Emperor in Part I. But in the sense of “being tolerant makes me see red, makes me sweat blood, but darn it I am going to be tolerant anyway.”

My point in highlighting this is this: much of what is called tolerance really isn’t, if Alexander is right (and I think he is concerning that). When we look we find many (most?) of those who are preaching tolerance are for tolerating people and ideas with which they already agree, and not anything that “makes them see red.” So is their highest ideal really anything at all?

Freedom of Speech or Freedom to Squelch

Our time-honored value of freedom of speech is now regularly offered up on the altar of tolerance. Freedom of speech is often replaced by the freedom to squelch. The first amendment restricts Congress from making a law “abridging the freedom of speech.” We understand that freedom of speech is not absolute, and can exclude that which is blatantly obscene or an incitement to harm others[i] – e.g. the proverbial “shouting fire in a crowded theater”. The framers of our Constitution held freedom of speech in high esteem, a value that promotes and protects the welfare of its citizenry. Behind binding Congress from abridging speech rests the value of individuals giving wide latitude to others to freely speak their minds. The free exchange of ideas is not only a fundamental right, but also a fundamental! Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy, promotes the free exchange of ideas, undergirds effective decision-making, and protects the minority from the majority.

The sway of this value is slowly shrinking – has been for quite some time. Unfortunately, our higher education system is a primary purveyor of vitiating the value of free speech. A recent Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) survey found that 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech. Another FIRE survey of the students found general lip-service for the concept of free speech that waned considerably in specific situations. FIRE Director of Communications Nico Perrino said, “This is troubling because it suggests a surface-level understanding of the free speech protections that underlie the First Amendment and an unwillingness to see them applied to the protection of expression some find offensive or objectionable.” The results play out daily in our society.

In Portland, Oregon, protesters – unable to get their way by stopping the invitation – disrupted the talk of author, scholar and feminism critic Christina Hoff Sommers “with chanting and loud music.” In February 2017, the University of California at Berkeley “canceled a speech by then-Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos due to fires, injuries, and vandalism caused by rioters. A month later at Vermont’s Middlebury College, a discussion featuring academic and writer Charles Murray was shut down mid-speech when a hostile mob drowned out Murray by chanting throughout his talk.”[ii]

At a recent California Democratic presidential candidates’ forum Kamala Harris’s appearance was interrupted by a protester who grabbed her microphone. Not only that, but when “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) took the stage at the California convention and called for national unity...Her comments didn’t go over very well with some people in the audience, who shouted her down by yelling ‘Impeach,’ referring to President Donald Trump.”

Meanwhile in Washington, DC, a Theater cancelled Kristy Swanson and Dean Cain’s pro-Trump performance over ‘threats of violence’. “...the Mead Theater notified the producers of FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers that they would no longer participate in the production due to concerns over ‘threats of violence’.” Though the threats of violence were likely real, there was also concern that the “Theater withdrew the event…in…an attempt to squash the content of FBI Lovebirds: UnderCovers and what it reveals about the anti-Trump forces in the government…They just don’t want the truth out there… the theatrical establishment is really afraid of the way we are using Verbatim Theater, which utilizes only the actual words and texts from Strzok and Page…The intolerant left can’t challenge the actual, verbatim text.”

In a mix of abridging freedom of speech and freedom of religion, a Bible Study battle has gone Federal after a Christian couple was threatened with eviction. The Evergreens at Smith Run, a senior community in Fredericksburg, Virginia, seemingly cannot tolerate a Bible study in the living quarters of its residents and have threatened octogenarians Ken and Liv Hauge with eviction if they do not cease and desist!

A common thread in much anti-free speech rhetoric is to claim the opposed speech violates the rights of others/someone. The courts have weighed in on many cases, attempting to distinguish between speech that is controversial and offensive versus speech that is dangerous and harms others. Speech does not violate your or my rights just because we don’t like it. The zenith of free speech is vigorously defending the rights of speech that you don’t like! The nadir is “we support free speech – just not your free speech.”

Other anti-free speech advocates no longer feign intellectual opposition, but use the heckler’s veto of brute force.[iii] If we have the strength of numbers to shout you down or shut you down – we will!

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[i] Even then, courts do not always agree what constitutes these actions of obscenity or harm.

[ii] In the aftermath, protestors damaged Murray’s car as he tried to leave, and put Professor Allison Stanger in a neck brace after “one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck.” Having not learned their lesson – or having learned the wrong lesson – Middlebury College cancelled a talk by conservative European politician Ryszard Legutko of Poland “for safety purposes.” The correlation in the heckler’s veto seems to not be left-side or right-side political views, but unresolved anger. Hecklers from the right shouted down California attorney general Xavier Becerra at Whittier College in 2017, apparently because of California’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over DACA. Protestors on either side of the ideological spectrum resort to this low when they believe it suits their purpose.

[iii] Another iteration of this tactic features using the power of the purse to bully one with opposing views into submission.

Who’s the Villain?

Who’s the Villain? According to Joshua Villines, “Fundamentalism.” “I identify fundamentalism as, by any functional definition,[i] a force for evil in the world… pernicious and deceptive… That fundamentalism…is evil is…beyond debate for educated people” and so on.

This so-called Baptist (if he is still so-called) is one whom I ran across in the past who vociferously denied basic truths of the Bible. I had not heard anything from him in years, until someone called attention to his blog posts. Such an one thinks fundamentalism and fundamentalists are evil. To him anyone who believes that the Bible is a real, rational, and reliable document is a fundamentalist. Further, the literal interpretation of Fundamentalism is caricatured as something silly rather than an historical-grammatical approach to understanding the writings of the Bible.[ii] He is the real villain. I’m not joshing. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

Despite his railings against fundamentalism, his straw-men arguments, and his use of Truett Cathy as a foil for his rant, Villines is at least honest about his view of tolerance – something many tolerance and diversity advocates try to hide in the shadows.[iii] He writes, “As a social liberal, I have never argued that tolerance is, in and of itself, a positive value.” This is the true underbelly of the so-called tolerance movement. He further states, “Not all beliefs are equally valid or deserve equal ‘tolerance’.”[iv] Immediately following this, though, he makes another strawman gaffe, “Just because someone believes something does not mean it should be exempt from critical analysis or logical inquiry.” It is he who wants to “exempt” certain views from critical analysis or logical inquiry – to place them directly on the scrapheap of failed ideas without analysis or inquiry because they are presumptively deemed “rooted in ignorance, superstition, or bigotry.” He and I can agree, “not all ideas are equally valid.” However, he wants to determine some things are not “equally valid” based on his preconceptions without analysis or inquiry.[v] He plainly states, “Fundamentalism…deserves a place at the same table where all irrational and destructive behaviors are consigned, but it does not deserve a place at the table with healthy, mature approaches to faith.” Freedom of speech advocates personally hold certain preconceptions as well at tolerantists like Villines. Nevertheless, freedom of speech exceeds so-called tolerance, giving all ideas a place at the table with the exhortation “May the best idea win.” You see, tolerantists are not satisfied to hold personal beliefs that some ideas are not equally valid – they want to bring down the long arm of government on their side without critical analysis or logical inquiry. Squash!

Truth should never be afraid to battle face-to-face with falsehood; neither should it shield itself from inquiry hiding behind governmental coattails!

Psalm 119:151 Thou art near, O Lord; and all thy commandments are truth.

John 8:32, 36 and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free...If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

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[i] According to enOxfordDictionaries, fundamentalism is a “form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.” I am OK with that basic definition. Villines’ blog rant makes it clear that (1) he is talking about Christian fundamentalism, and (2) he does not understand the concept of “literal interpretation of scripture.” In its simplest form, Christian fundamentalism emphasizes five fundamental points of faith (as clarified by the 1895 Niagara Bible Conference, in the face of the rise of modernism and liberalism): (1) the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures; (2) the deity of Jesus Christ; (3) the virgin birth of Jesus Christ; (4) the substitutionary blood atonement of Christ for sins; and (5) the physical resurrection and bodily return to Christ. These elements were being denied then, and are usually denied by professors like Joshua Villines now. I hold these five fundamentals, but “Fundamentalist” is not my preferred self-descriptor. I am a Baptist. Many Fundamentalist are adrift on the sea of bad ecclesiology.

[ii] This type of literal interpretation easily and “literally” accepts figures of speech as figures of speech, symbols as symbols, etc., no matter how silly some silly person wants to make them look while pretending fundamentalists do not know how to do this. Thomas Ice described the problem this way:  “‘wooden literalism,’ which they now label as simply literalism...is assumed by them to be a naïve, sophomoric understanding of biblical literature. Many have answered these claims and tried to set the record straight, but they are increasingly falling upon the deaf ears of opponents who simply refuse to listen,” then quotes Bernard Ramm, “The program of literal interpretation of Scripture does not overlook the figures of speech, the symbols, the types, the allegories that as a matter of fact are to be found in Holy Scripture. It is not a blind letterism nor a wooden literalism as is so often the accusation.”

[iii] Roberto C. Treviño, San Antonio city councilman, said “Everyone has a place here, and everyone should feel welcome” – but that only applies to those he wants to have a place and feel welcome. Rider University, whose Center for Diversity and Inclusion says they welcome “all forms of identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, national origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, ability, age, marital status and socioeconomic status” proved that to be “true” – but only up until they find religious beliefs that they don’t welcome! Read HERE and HERE.

[iv] According to Dictionary.com, “tolerance is a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one’s own; freedom from bigotry.” The practical societal application of tolerance usually implies someone is superior and in a position to tolerate an inferior – and that the “superior” will decide whether the “inferior” will be “tolerated.” Those who most vociferously preach tolerance often do not have much tolerance for those who do not see things their way. Stefano Gabbana said of singer Elton John, “You preach understanding. You preach tolerance. And then you put the knife in? All because someone else doesn’t see things your way?” John proposed a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana fashions because he disliked and disagreed with comments they made about in vitro fertilization and homosexual’s adopting.

[v] Notice that Villines view must be correct and others must “earn” a place: “If an idea can be substantiated with logical consistency, then it has earned the opportunity for tolerance.” Such a view as his might try to hide, but must be exposed as setting itself up as the standard by which other views “earn” the right to be tolerated. The fact is – his is the real view of tolerantists, despite how often they falsely assert such platitudes as “everyone should feel welcome.”

Haters gonna hate

Cinderella

* New 'Cinderella' Film Sparks Backlash

"Who doesn’t love Cinderella? Millions, it turns out." Though millions have loved and learned from the fairy tale Cinderella, many find fault with it themes, or supposed ones -- "girls are taught to be pushovers, do all the housework and that their problems will disappear if they’re hot enough to land a rich husband;" "her Fairy Godmother...waited years to improve Cinderella’s life in any way, instead of helping her out when her parents died, or when her step family forced her into slavery;" "Depicting a female who appears utterly helpless until a male swoops in and rescues her from all of her troubles sends a troubling message;” "It’s much healthier for girls to recognize their own problem-solving skills, rather than look to boys as the solution."

The origins of the Cinderella story as we know it appear in the French fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault in 1697 (and the brothers Grimm probably have a hand in it somewhere). It is a "persecuted heroine" theme, in which the heroine finds happiness after years of abuse and neglect. No use hating on that. However it happens, isn’t it a good thing to find happiness and success after years of problems or abuse?

Dolce and Gabbana

* Elton John stirs up feud

Being homosexual and a former couple did not spare fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana from the vitriol for not toeing the party line. They spoke against artificial insemination and for the traditional family as one thing that "must not be changed." Afterward, a cacophony of celebrities lashed out against the two in familiar fashion -- from boycotting their designs to burning them. Gabbana said of singer Elton John, "You preach understanding. You preach tolerance. And then you put the knife in? All because someone else doesn’t see things your way?"

I kinda hate to keep plucking this same string. But others such as Dolce and Gabbana also notice that those who most vociferously preach tolerance often don't have much tolerance for those who don't see things their way.

So much for tolerance

"Intolerance in the name of tolerance is hypocrisy." -- Marco Rubio

* Army Punishes Chaplain For Discussing His Personal Faith During Suicide Prevention Training -- "It is outrageous that an Army chaplain would have his career threatened because he cared so much about his soldiers that he opened up to them about his personal struggles..."
* Atlanta Fire Chief Suspended Without Pay for Calling Homosexuality 'Sexual Perversion' in Book About Christian Values -- "Cochran, who first served as fire chief in 2008, began the month-long suspension this week and city officials are said to be considering further disciplinary action."
* International Human Trafficking Conference Cancelled Because Organizer is Christian Abortion Opponent -- "...three days before the beginning of the conference, the conference was cancelled because ...Mrs. Ruth Nordström...had defended a midwife in a freedom of conscience issue."
* Red Cross volunteer, 71, axed over gay marriage protest -- "The church-going pensioner received his dismissal letter after holding a one-man protest outside his local cathedral."
* Trinity Western grad 'attacked' for being Christian in job rejection -- "Bethany Paquette claims her application to work in Canada's North for Amaruk Wilderness Corp was rejected because she's Christian."

The intolerant tolerants do not tolerate any kind of discrimination except the kind of discrimination that they like to tolerate. The above are examples of the intolerant tolerant. In succumbing to the viewpoint that every viewpoint is legitimate, every viewpoint becomes legitimate except the viewpoint that will not admit that every viewpoint is legitimate.

All the above are examples linked I have noticed on the internet recently. They are posted for your viewing pleasure. That does not mean that I feel the same about each incident. For example (most of you probably won't agree, but) I believe that a private employer like Amaruk Wilderness Corporation should be able to refuse to hire someone who is Christian if they don't want to hire them for that reason. They nevertheless seem to be hypocrites who think that only their kind of viewpoint discrimination is legitimate and certainly not the views of Trinity Western College and its students. It appears that they enjoyed being extremely obnoxious about the rejection. Interestingly, they retreated to a position "solely based on the fact that she did not meet the minimum requirements" to be hired by them!

On the other hand, if government entities such as a city or the Army are going to be viewpoint neutral, that neutrality should extend to defend the views of Kelvin Cochran and Joe Lawhorn, as well as their detractors.

So much for tolerance. So, instead, how about protection of speech and viewpoints that we don't like and cannot tolerate? (For more information, please see the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.)

We love thee, tolerance

...unless we have to tolerate the intolerant.

Yes, those on the left wing that seem to honor tolerance above all values just can't tolerate those they view as intolerant. According to STLToday.com, when Washington University announced it would award an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly (president and founder of Eagle Forum), several WU law professors called on the university to rescind that decision. In addition, some students publicized their intent to turn their backs to the stage when Schlafly is honored. For more read Schlafly controversy proves her continuing relevance. Despite the protest and some weasel words from WU, they evidently tolerated both Schafly and the protestors and did what they had decided to do.