That's not how toleration works. Toleration is a decision to accept something you dislike in order to obtain benefits, especially peaceful co-existence. That is why religious toleration came to be. It came to be in order to end the religious wars.
If there's no penalty for intolerance, there is no reason to tolerate things that you despise. These folks know they're already protected by the PC culture they're mocking. They know it can't really turn on them. It just has to hope they'll someday agree to be the allies the PC hope they'll become.
Allies against me and you, of course. That's ironic, since I long ago adopted Hondo's rule:
"[A] long time ago, I made me a rule. I let people do what they want to do."You might think that this rule opens you to abuse from the abusive, but as you can see it tends to work out if backed up with the right spirit.
Problem we've got is that nobody is willing to let people suffer the consequences of doing what they decided they wanted to do.
When I was a young man I wondered the same thing, how a group that had been treated badly could in turn treat others badly when they had the chance. I have come to the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Some groups treat others badly when they have the whip hand, others are less likely to (though everyone seems to do it some.)
ReplyDeleteYou make a very important point, and one that I think a lot of people miss.
ReplyDeleteI look back now on the 'old' men and ladies of my youth who weren't afraid to tell a young whippersnapper they didn't know to behave, and in no uncertain terms. You could be a punk, but they'd see to it there would be at least verbal reprimand as a consequence. I realize now that I'm older and we as a society have largely moved beyond feeling it's ok to correct someone else's kids that it was a better way- They had the courage to set things right with a stranger child and the social permission to exercise it, and we had some respect for our elders on account of their age alone, however we may have grumbled or spoke of them amongst ourselves.
ReplyDeleteConsequence is the only way to even have rules.