BoatBanter.com - I'm voting republican because...

On Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:36:13 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Sep 11, 4:15*pm, "Tom Gardner" wrote:
"hk" wrote in message

. ..

Rob Fraser wrote:
Well this is cruel but true- If the Republicans do win, She has a kid who
is retarded so there will technically still be a retard in the White
House.

There's no need for that sort of stuff.

And you expect??? from the fringe left?

Yes, the libs are accepting of everyone. They celebrate diversity and
all that.

Diversity in academia

"Diversity of viewpoints means a black marxist, a transgender marxist,
a feminist marxist and a gay marxist faculty member all sitting around
planning the protests to prevent a Conservative from speaking on
campus"

Diversity in general
" tolerance, like diversity" is defined as a group that includes a
black Marxist, a lesbian Marxist, a Latino Marxist, a transgender
Marxist, a feminist Marxist, a Native American Marxist, and so forth.
The one kind of diversity not tolerated is diversity of political
view or values."

Contemporary liberalism honors diversity and tolerance above all, but
what it calls by those names is different from what has been so called
in the past. Its diversity denigrates and excludes ordinary people,
and
its tolerance requires speech codes, quotas, and compulsory training
in
correct opinions and attitudes. Nor do current liberal totems and
tabus
have a clear connection with letting people live as they wish.
Prohibitions, both grand and petty, multiply. To outsiders the rules
often seem simply arbitrary: prayer is forbidden while instruction in
the use of condoms is required; smoking and furs are outrages,
abortion
and sodomy fundamental rights.
Many of these oddities can be explained by reference to the specific
understanding of tolerance held by contemporary liberals. "Tolerance"
is
traditionally understood procedurally, to mean letting people do what
they want. Contemporary liberals understand it substantively, to
require
equal respect as a fact of social life. These understandings are
radically inconsistent. As a political matter, procedural tolerance
calls for laissez-faire, while substantive tolerance requires
pervasive
administrative control of social life. A regime that adopts
substantive
tolerance as its goal must be intolerant procedurally because it must
control the attitudes people have toward each other, and any serious
attempt to do so will require means that are unforgiving and despotic.

The issue may be clarified by contrasting a libertarian state, one
that
holds to the traditional view, with one that favors the newer view. A
libertarian state is in one sense the most tolerant possible, but in
another does not care about the matter. You can do whatever you want
as
long as you do not violate certain clearly defined rights. As a
result,
a libertarian state is indifferent between tolerant and intolerant
ways
of life as long as the intolerance does not take the form of physical
attack or violation of property rights. It may in fact be quite
hospitable to intolerance. For example, such a state is structurally
unforgiving of certain weaknesses, because it has no public welfare
system, and that structural feature is likely to be reflected in
unforgiving social attitudes.

In contrast, the multicultural welfare state that contemporary
liberals
favor is intended to promote social tolerance in the sense of equal
respect. To do so, it must be intolerant of many ways of life that do
not directly injure or interfere with others. For example, laws
against
discrimination are intolerant of the ways of life called "racist,"
"sexist," "homophobic," and so on. They force people to associate with
others against their will, denying them the right to choose those with
whom they will live and work. Since sexual distinctions and religious
and ethnic loyalties permeate and organize the life of all societies,
the multicultural welfare state is in fact intolerant of all actual
ways
of life, and committed in the name of tolerance to transform them
radically through the use of force. The new tolerance thus means that
no
one except a few ideologues can live as he wants.

Ideally, substantive tolerance would require treatment of all ways of
life as equal in value. That is not possible, since there are
intolerant
ways of life, some aggressively so. It follows that only those ways of
life can be treated as equal that are acceptably tolerant of other
ways.
When two ways of life exclude each other, for example voluntary ethnic
separatism and universal inclusivity, the contemporary liberal state
must suppress one in favor of the other. Since contemporary liberalism
rejects the libertarian standard of requiring only respect for
property
and avoidance of physical aggression, the ways of life that are
acceptably tolerant are not those that leave others alone in the most
direct and obvious sense. On that view the ethnic separatists would
prevail, which they assuredly do not. Instead, a more substantive
criterion is applied.

The liberal criterion seems to be that a way of life is tolerant only
if
it accepts the view that one man is as good as another, and whatever a
man likes is good for him. Such a definition of "tolerant" seems
necessary to explain the way liberals use the word. On such a view all
ways of life are equally valuable because all persons and therefore
all
preferences are equal; to say that one way of life is better than
another is simply to say that those who like to live that way are
better
than others, and is in itself an intolerant act since what people say
forms the social environment in which all live. As a criterion for the
acceptability of ways of life, this definition is demanding to the
point
of what would ordinarily be called intolerance; it turns out that to
be
tolerant is to hold a very specific and rather unusual moral theory,
one
that considers persons objectively valuable but all else valuable only
subjectively. All those who hold moral theories that recognize
objective
substantive goods, for example all adherents of traditional religions,
are by definition "intolerant."

But if liberalism tolerates only a particular and highly contestable
moral theory that few people hold, how does it differ from theocratic
systems it has historically viewed as intolerant? It seems no more
tolerant to insist that we be drilled in the doctrine and casuistry of
inclusiveness than that of the Church. The procedural intolerance of a
political regime depends less on its basis in religion or otherwise
than
on the clarity of its ends, its dedication to achieving them, and the
strength and variety of the things it must overcome to do so. Liberals
are often very clear as to what they want, highly dedicated to their
ideals, and vividly conscious of the strength of the impulses, habits
and institutions that stand in the way of achieving them. Why expect
them to display tolerance as tolerance is traditionally conceived? A
council of civil rights lawyers may have no more forbearance than a
council of theologians. It is likely to have less, since its members
place more emphasis on the ability of those who happen to hold power
to
make of the world what they will.

More and more, the new tolerance is destroying the old. The modern
liberal state is no longer limited except in the sense that it is not
authorized to deviate from liberalism, and to be limited in that sense
is simply to be subject to control by an ideological elite. Respect
for
the views of the people is no longer a serious principle. Such an
outcome is paradoxical: liberalism began with worries about mixing
ultimate moral questions with politics, and a desire to limit
government
and make it responsible to the people. It has ended in a system that
cares nothing about such things.

Write the author, Jim Kalb, with any comments. Also, this essay, and
the
issues it deals with, can be discussed on our discussion board, Pro et
Contra. Your participation is welcome.

"As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince
someone
with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later
convinces himself."
David Friedman

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the
name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program
until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it
happened." -- Norman Thomas, American socialist