Tolerance

CLASSICAL [Paleo] LIBERAL DEFINITION OF TOLERANCE:

Modern day “tolerance” is a bit different than previous days iterations. The “tolerance of old” assumed disagreement in its definition.

It basically said that two people have two views of the world, they can get together [hopefully amiably], and make their points vigorously, walk away either saying “I never thought about that,” or, “I still disagree but let’s meet up next week for pickle ball.”

This definition says you are tolerant by amiably disagreeing. Again, this historical tolerance accepted disagreement.

THE MODERN [Woke, Progressive, Left] ILLIBERAL DEFINITION OF TOLERANCE:

The new definition of tolerance rejects disagreement at the outset. This new form of tolerance says that if you disagree, you are INTOLERANT.

One of the keys to this view is the person who is saying another is intolerant for disagreeing, is not amiable. They are activists. They want all of society to think a certain way… or else.

NEW (6/7/2024) Democrats have already weaponized the justice system against conservatives and Donald Trump, and no a New York Democratic congressional candidate thinks that all MAGA supporters should be sent to a “re-education camp” following the 2024 election.

Paula Collins, the Democrat challenging Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), publicly announced her idea during a public Zoom townhall this week. 

“Even if we were to have a resounding blue wave come through, as many of us would like, putting it all back together again after we’ve gone through this MAGA nightmare and re-educating basically, which, that sounds like a rather, a re-education camp. I don’t think we really want call it that,” Collins said. “I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.” 

“This radical New York City Democrat Socialist who literally is renting a bed and breakfast room in NY-21 was caught on tape saying she wants to force Trump voters through ‘re-education camps,’” Alex DeGrasse, a senior advisor to Elise Stefanik, told Fox News Digital. “Everyone knows she will be defeated by Elise Stefanik by a historic margin.” 

Collins later attempted to clarify her comments.

“We currently have lawmakers, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, who mis-quote or mis-understand the law,” Collins told Fox News Digital. “Even if MAGA were to be resoundingly defeated, we would need to engage in widespread civics education, which both red and blue voters acknowledge has been slipping in recent years.” 

Yeah, okay.

Obviously, Collins is just one person and her views may not represent the entirety of the Democratic Party, but her statement underscores the troubling trend of how Democrats view people who disagree with them politically. ….

(PJ-MEDIA)

This is ACE of SPADES response to the above:

Had the Democrats not murdered Abraham Lincoln in 1865, perhaps he might have unleashed a terrible swift sword of justice on that party and burned its evil black heart out, which had done so much to defile and destroy the dream and promise of the American revolution, the results of which reverberate to this day with generations of wasted lives and potential.

They also posit that the “disagreeing” person is not just wrong, but in many ways evil. And to prove this they attack a sign around their neck that reads any number of these labels: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.).

This “new” tolerance is the outcome of what Allie Beth Stuckey calls “toxic empathy“, what Judge Bork called “illiberal egalitarianism.” Or what was in part, “political correctness,” what is also called “woke,” “social-justice,” “[Kendi’s] anti-racism,” “multi-culturalism,” all of it undefinable other than people taking political power through caste systems:

SOWELL

HAYEK

And voilà, this disagreeable person, is a troglodyte deserving of shunning from polite [so-called] society.

…..Technically, tolerance is an attitude of putting up with those with whom we differ. Tolerance presupposes there are differences and yet, in order to get along, we tolerate our opponents as fellow human beings, Americans and neighbors. We find ways to work together for the common good while still maintaining our differences.

But, with the death of trust, tolerance has gone from being a mature and honorable tension to being a binary state of war because trust has been evaporated from the equation. Let me explain: Historically, there have always been ethical binaries. That is, ethical pairs that were either/or. For example, something is either right or wrong, good or evil, black or white, up or down. But many ethical components are non-binary — think on a spectrum. For example, cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot. Throughout history, tolerance was non-binary. It was more needed when relating to those who differed greatly, less so with those more aligned with us.

But, today, the ethics of tolerance have become binary, either/or, and this has eliminated the basic meaning of tolerance altogether.

Today, love and hate are binary. If you don’t love something, if you don’t agree, don’t applaud, and don’t acknowledge ideas or behavior as ethically acceptable, then you are a hater. Consequently, there is no longer a sense of tolerance. The whole concept has been wiped from the page of society in our day. When it comes to our enemies, we don’t tolerate, we terminate.

(DAVID HEGG @THE SIGNAL — found and added today! 11/01/2023)

This form of “tolerance” has dangerous connotations in wanting to get people by coercion or force to think one way. Totalitarianism, or “total thought.”   This leads to programs like “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” – which are forcing “total thought,” what Tammy Bruce many years ago titled her book about her early encounters with it: “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds

Today, politicians are seriously floating ideas of “re-education camps.” As an example, here is Hillary Clinton speaking about Trump supporters:

“Because at some point, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen” (WALL STREET JOURNAL: “The Totalitarian Heart of Hillary Clinton: The 2016 Election Denier Calls For “Formal Deprogramming” Of Trump Supporters“)

The point made in the title of the Wall Street Journal article is that Hillary vehemently denied the election of 2016:

Remember, Democrats challenged more states electors in 2016 with the election of President Trump in 2020, which is that in 2017 Democrats challenged nine state’s electors and in 2021 Republicans challenged six state’s electors:

9 VS. 6

In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton‘s 227. During the joint session on January 6, 2017, seven House Democrats tried to object to electoral votes from multiple states.

According to a C-SPAN recording of the joint session that took place four years ago, the following House Democrats made objections:

  1. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) objected to Alabama’s votes.
  2. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) objected to Florida’s votes.
  3. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) objected to Georgia’s votes.
  4. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) objected to North Carolina’s votes.
  5. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) objected to the votes from North Carolina in addition to votes from South Carolina and Wisconsin. She also stood up and objected citing “massive voter suppression” after Mississippi’s votes were announced.
  6. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) brought up allegations of Russian interference in the election and malfunctioning voting machines when she objected following the announcement of Michigan’s votes.
  7. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) rose and said, “I do not wish to debate. I wish to ask ‘Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?'” after the announcement of Wyoming’s votes.

[….]

In 2017, House Democrats objected to votes from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Objections also were made after the announcement of votes from Mississippi, Michigan and Wyoming, adding up to nine states. None of the nine objections was considered because they lacked the signature of a senator.

[….]

In total, Republicans made objections to votes from six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. By the end of the joint session, Biden’s 306 electoral votes were certified, just as Trump’s votes had been certified in 2017….

(NEWSWEEK) | More at RPT)

You may think that the idea of reeducation camps in America is crazy. But diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are basically that. A tyrannical attack on thought. Even THE ATLANTIC knows it is an affront to freedom in their piece titled: “The Worst DEI Policy in Higher Education: At stake: the First Amendment rights and academic freedom of 61,000 professors who teach 1.9 million students”

Under the changes to California’s education code, all community-college employees will be evaluated in a way that places “significant emphasis” on “antiracist” and “DEIA competencies.” […] For professors, that means all will be judged, whether in hiring, promotion, or tenure decisions, on their embrace of controversial social-justice concepts as those concepts are understood and defined by state education bureaucrats

[….]

“Under the previous faculty contract, faculty were evaluated for their ‘demonstrated ability to successfully teach students from cultures other than one’s own,’” the FIRE lawsuit notes. “Under the DEIA Rules, however, they are now evaluated on their ‘demonstration of, or progress toward, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) related competencies and teaching and learning practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles.’” Before, professors were judged on whether they “successfully teach students.” Now they’ll be judged on whether they show progress toward abstract competencies that are theorized to help them successfully teach students.

That is a degradation, and Chancellor Christian should reverse course. Many First Amendment experts believe that the new guidelines will be found to violate the civil rights of faculty members. And even if they are upheld, their language and implementation suggestions are so incompetently drafted that even a leading proponent of equity-mindedness can’t quite endorse them as written. Whatever one thinks of social-justice ideology, there are far stronger versions of it.

This is the worst version of DEI.

Sick. But “conservatives are the fascists… got’chya.” (See my previous post regarding DEI: Free Speech Battles | California DEI Totalitarianism)

No reeducation camps for Democrats… just people who believe in traditional marriage, free thought and speech, those who think that being “color-blind” is the way to be. Etc., Etc.,

NEW (6/7/2024) Here is a clip from a somewhat decent ECONOMIST article… where they note the illiberal Left is all about power and caste systems:

classical liberals and illiberal progressives could hardly disagree more over how to bring these things about. For classical liberals, the precise direction of progress is unknowable. It must be spontaneous and from the bottom up—and it depends on the separation of powers, so that nobody nor any group is able to exert lasting control. By contrast the illiberal left put their own power at the centre of things, because they are sure real progress is possible only after they have first seen to it that racial, sexual and other hierarchies are dismantled.

This difference in method has profound implications. Classical liberals believe in setting fair initial conditions and letting events unfold through competition—by, say, eliminating corporate monopolies, opening up guilds, radically reforming taxation and making education accessible with vouchers. 

[….]

Progressives of the old school remain champions of free speech. But illiberal progressives think that equity requires the field to be tilted against those who are privileged and reactionary. That means restricting their freedom of speech, using a caste system of victimhood in which those on top must defer to those with a greater claim to restorative justice. It also involves making an example of supposed reactionaries, by punishing them when they say something that is taken to make someone who is less privileged feel unsafe. The results are calling-out, cancellation and no-platforming.

Milton Friedman once said that the “society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither”. He was right. Illiberal progressives think they have a blueprint for freeing oppressed groups. In reality theirs is a formula for the oppression of individuals—and, in that, it is not so very different from the plans of the populist right. In their different ways both extremes put power before process, ends before means and the interests of the group before the freedom of the individual.

Mark Duplass Re-Educated In the Left’s Camp

Has the Hate Trump crowd lost its mind? Is there any precedence for the intensity of their hatred? Mark Duplass, a Hollywood actor who recommended Ben Shapiro be included in listening to the other side gets re-educated by his Leftist friends. Dennis Prager opines well on this recent bullying of Mark Duplass by Leftists. Again, Mr. Duplass merely suggested to open up to listening to the other-side… and the Left went nuts!

Why?

Dennis is right… because if they hear us, they see their edifice fall. And many convert.

The topic of Trump acting or being like a NAZI, or traitor, or whatever has been stated in various ways… but a legal analyst combined them all in a string: “MSNBC Legal Expert: Helsinki Summit Is JUST LIKE Kristallnacht, Pearl Harbor…” (NEWSBUSTERS)

NATIONAL REVIEW has a great article entitled: “The Sliming of Ben Shapiro”

Re-Education Camps and Censorship “Chic” in the UK

Powerline has this story of government run media being used to guide the public towards a certain conclusion.Pravda

Salon.com (yes, I know) is celebrating that the BBC has decided to go full Pravda on us and cease allowing “climate deniers” on the air.  Well, it is a government-run media establishment.  But that would be the same BBC that refused to allow Churchill to broadcast his “appeasement denial” views back in the 1930s.  Yup, same slimy people.

Anyway, quoth a jubilant Salon:

Good news for viewers of BBC News: you’ll no longer be subjected to the unhinged ravings of climate deniers and other members of the anti-science fringe. . .  Were every network to start doing what the BBC is, their unfounded opinions would cease to be heard, Bill Nye wouldn’t have to keep debating them, and maybe, just maybe, they’d all just go away.

Esquire Magazine goes further in it’s diatribe of censorship that prove there is a totalitarian in every leftist waiting to get out, something Powerline missed, by-the-way:

The BBC Forbids Idiots On The Topic Of Science: No longer must Bill Nye debate the ignorant, at least in the U.K.

[….]

BBC journalists must now attend seminars with academics and scientists who educate on what constitutes popular and marginal opinions.

Perpetuating ignorance for the sake of entertainment is not only getting boring, but is actively dangerous. US media companies should take note. American media makes political bipartisanship a game of spin and false controversy, which—as Jon Stewart will tell you—can inflict a lot of very real pain….

Yes, re-education camps… you read it right. Scientism on the march in the name of secularism. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge, would be proud, as would others. Even the HHS is defining media in the immigration battle, this from The Corner:

– No recording devices will be allowed
– No questions will be allowed during the tour
– No interacting with staff and children at the shelter
– We ask that your questions be provided via email or phone after the tour to Kenneth Wolfe
– HHS ACF public affairs will provide answers to your follow up questions as quickly as possible
– We will provide photos of the facility after the tour
– There will be no on-site interviews by HHS staff before or after the tour, all inquiries go to Kenneth Wolfe

To continue… while the BBC stops debate on climate, the UK starts to talk seriously about the normality of pedophilia. CNN notes just how bad it is for the BBC in this regard:

Gay Patriot notes the following:


An increasingly vocal and open group of prominent British Academics is claiming that paedophilia is a perfectly normal and natural thing.

“Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.”

The presentation in question was presented at an academic conference at Cambridge University in the UK,  where other topics included: “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis,” and “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.”

And — like every other horror of the current ear — this has its roots in the sexual liberation movement of the 1970′s.

With the Pill, the legalisation of homosexuality and shrinking taboos against premarital sex, the Seventies was an era of quite sudden sexual emancipation. Many liberals, of course, saw through PIE’s cynical rhetoric of “child lib”. But to others on the Left, sex by or with children was just another repressive boundary to be swept away – and some of the most important backing came from academia. [Emphasis added]

Hey, “Love is Love,” right?… 


Malcolm Muggeridge (a British journalist, author, satirist, media personality, soldier-spy and, in his later years, a Catholic convert and writer) said it best:

“If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.” 

  • Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 32.

The Kiss of Tolerance = “Tolerance” Camps for Dissenters

Gay Patriot has a great short commentary that led to me inserting the above video:

A player for the Miami Dolphins has been fined, suspended, and sentenced to Tolerance Camp for sending an unsupportive tweet upon the occasion of Michael Sam’s drafting and the PDA that followed.

[….]

Also, NBC’s Matt Lauer drives home the point that it doesn’t matter what a player does on the field, but who he goes to bed with at night that the MFM care about by calling for more gay Affirmative Action in the NFL. (Once again citing the tiresome “Right side of history” cliche leftists use because, apparently, being a leftist gives you the power of precognition to know how History is going to work out.)

“The big picture here in terms of the NFL, is this a sea change or is this a one-off? Is this the league moving to the right side of history? Which by the way, they really can’t do unless more players come forward.”

Powerline as well wades into the thick of the topic with this great commentary on the whole matter:

I wrote here about the selection by the St. Louis Rams of Michael Sam, an openly gay football player. The selection brought widespread praise including, predictably enough, from President Obama.

But at least one football player, Don Jones of the Miami Dolphins, reacted negatively — probably not to the selection itself, but rather to the exuberant kisses on the lips that Sam exchanged with his boyfriend while the cameras were rolling.

Jones tweeted “OMG” and “horrible.” For this expression of opinion, Jones has been duly punished. The Dolphins have denounced and fined him, and have barred him from team activities until he attends and completes “educational training.” Jones has issued an abject apology.

The Dolphins, of course, are still trying to overcome the adverse publicity generated by the Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin “bullying” affair. But I suspect they would have come down hard on Jones regardless. The NFL — a thoroughly authoritarian operation that hardly allows players to celebrate touchdowns — is determined to crush any public expression of disapproval relating to Sam by anyone associated with the league.

Doing so will help the NFL’s image with the PC crowd and the gay community. Whether it will help Sam is another matter.

Jones probably isn’t the only NFL player who considered Sam’s very public wet kiss “horrible.” And more than a few players probably will resent seeing a fellow player silenced and shamed for expressing a sentiment they share or at least understand. That resentment might well manifest itself in resentment of Sam beyond the probably slight amount he would have experienced due to his sexual orientation.

Not much is sacred in a sports locker room or on the field. Attempts by the NFL to make Michael Sam a sacred cow may prove counterproductive.

Sam himself says he wants to be treated like a football player, not a gay football player. Football players are teased constantly for whatever it is they plausibly can be teased about. No speech code protects them. This is especially true of rookies.

[….]

Hot Air wonders what will happen if the Rams cut Michael Sam, not an uncommon fate for a player selected so late in the draft. The question answers itself: the Rams will be lambasted as “homophobic” and the NFL will suffer a black eye.

[….]

…Sterling engaged in a personal conversation that he did not intend to be made public. Were his comments offensive? Sure. Mostly, they were weird. But Sterling never meant to shove them into anyone’s face. Contrast this with the Sam kiss: why were television cameras present to record it in the first place? Did ESPN televise the reactions of any other 7th round draft choices? I don’t think so. The cameras were waiting for Sam to get the call only because he is gay, and the television networks want to promote the cause of homosexual equivalence. Is it unreasonable to infer that the kiss was televised precisely so that some individuals like Jones would take offense, and then be made into a lesson for the rest of us?

…read it all…

ALL Tweets from TWITCHY!

Meaning of Irony: Anti-Bullying Crusader Curses Christian Children and Bashes GOP ~ UPDATED: Conservative Gay Groups Demand Apology!

(*Language Warning*)

Via Gateway Pundit:

*Watch all the kids get up and leave* Bully for Them!

UPDATED!

From Libertarian Republican:

Conservative/libertarian Gay group demands apology from Republican-hating Gay activist Dan Savage

…Here’s a taste of his remarks:

“We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people — the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation,” Savage said.

“We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.”

He also attacked Newt Gingrich’s wife Callista with an especially caustic comment:

“The Bible says if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death,” Savage told the students. “Callista Gingrich still lives.”

Attacks Christians as prudes; no mention of Islam

As Joe Newby at the Spokane Examiner reminds us, Savage once said on Bill Maher’s HBO show that he wished all Republicans were “fucking dead.”

In reaction, Jimmy LaSalvia, president of GOProud issued this immediate statement:

“Dan Savage should apologize for his comments and should apologize to the high school students in attendance whom he called ‘pansy-asses,’” LaSalvia said.

It is ironic that someone whose claim to fame is fighting bullying would resort to bullying tactics in attacking high school students who were offended by his outrageous remarks.”

Savage did not mention Islam or the Koran once in his speech.

Ironically though, he implied Christians were stoning those who failed a moral test:

“There is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding nights if they’re not virgins — at least not yet,” he said. “We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.”

A Few Thoughts from Gay Patriot:

If it gets better, why is Dan Savage so bitter?

As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy asses.”

The speaker was Dan Savage, founder of the “It Gets Better” project, an anti-bullying campaign that has reached more than 40 million viewers with contributors ranging from President Obama to Hollywood stars. Savage also writes a sex advice column called “Savage Love.”

. . . .

Savage was supposed to be delivering a speech about anti-bullying at the National High School Journalism Conference sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association. But it turned into an episode of Christian-bashing.

(Via Instapundit*)

Why does Dan Savage harbor so much hatred?  Gay organizations, especially GLAAD, should condemn Mr. Savage for his mean-spirited rhetoric and make clear that he does not speak for gay people. He certainly doesn’t speak for me — and I would dare say most of this blog’s readers, including some of our liberal ones. We should expect gay speakers at such fora to show the same respect for Christianity as we would like Christians to show for gays.

[….]

Released in the last hour… GOPROUD condemns Dan Savage.

Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud Executive Director – “Dan Savage’s outrageous anti-Christian tirade hurts – not helps – the fight for gay rights in this country.”

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, GOProud – a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights, condemned a speech given by left wing gay activist Dan Savage. “Dan Savage’s outrageous anti-Christian tirade hurts – not helps – the fight for gay rights in this country,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud Executive Director. “There is nothing incompatible between being a Christian and believing that all people should be treated equally, and Dan Savage’s attacks on Christianity only fuel those on the extremist fringe who oppose gay rights.”

“Dan Savage should apologize for his comments and should apologize to the high school students in attendance who he called ‘pansy-asses,’” continued LaSalvia. “It is ironic that someone whose claim to fame is fighting bullying would resort to bullying tactics in attacking high school students who were offended by his outrageous remarks.”

“GOProud works with people of faith every single day – gay and straight. We believe strongly that people of faith should be treated with respect,” concluded LaSalvia.

Bravo ~ Bruce (GayPatriot)

 

The White house supports and fundraisers for this anti-bullying, bully — Via Breitbart.com:

The Obama Administration has placed significant support behind the so-called It Gets Better Project. The White House has devoted a specific section of the WhiteHouse.gov website to the Project. President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and many other administration officials have cut videos on behalf of the Project.

Now, the message of the Project is worthwhile. The organization is designed to protect children from bullying; its suggested pledge states:

Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are. I pledge to spread this message to my friends, family and neighbors. I’ll speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work. I’ll provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that “It Gets Better.

There’s only one problem: the organization is headed by one Dan Savage.

This is the same Dan Savage who spoke at the National High School Journalism Conference last week, where he ripped into the Bible and called religious students “pansy-assed” for walking out on him.

But there’s much more to Dan Savage than just anti-religious bullying. He’s one of the biggest bullies on the planet. And he’s the point person the White House specifically chose – and fundraised for – in order to push their anti-bullying agenda.

Now, it’s not as though the White House was ignorant of the fact that the It Gets Better Project is run by Savage.

…read more…