The Insanity of Tolerance

The current cry of our culture is for tolerance. We need religious tolerance, sexual tolerance, political tolerance, and racial tolerance. We need to do away with intolerance and accept each other’s differences without being judgmental or narrow-minded. The idea is rooted in the basic premises of equality and individuality; all men are equal, and each is his own person. Further, this form of tolerance is not merely “The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.” It also includes something more, something akin to accepting the beliefs of others as valid. The opposite of tolerance, in this form, is hate. This tolerance is being taught in classrooms and touted as virtue. Those without this virtue are, obviously, bad people and need to be reconditioned or removed.

It takes only a moment, a self-statement, to recognize the root problem with this sort of tolerance. The self-statement would go something like this: “The one thing I can’t tolerate is intolerance.” Suddenly it becomes clear that this demand for tolerance is, in itself, intolerance. This is insanity: a demand for something, the existence of which negates its own existence. So let’s look a minute at what is at stake in the cry for tolerance.

There are two obvious examples I will use to illustrate the point. Let’s start with the obvious extreme of stupid intolerance. In this example, my favorite color is blue, and yours is red. I, however, being in power, am able to enforce my color scheme, and your red is outlawed. This is stupidity, intolerance taken to the inane. Color is clearly a matter of preference, without any roots in right or wrong, good or bad. The second example would be stupid tolerance. In this example, you’re a math teacher, and you have two students. One says, “2+2=4” and the second says, “2+2=5”. Tolerance, in its purest form, would dictate that you would have to allow both to be right. To exclude the second because he is “wrong” is “judgmental” and intolerant. Of course, truth is at stake in this case. To merely be tolerant of the second student would be to eliminate the truth that 2+2 isn’t 5. Not only is this student wrong, but to allow him to continue to think his view has equal validity would be a disservice to him and to those with whom he has contact.

What is at stake here, then, is truth. In matters of opinion, tolerance is necessary. To despise someone because their opinion differs is certainly despicable. People need to be taught to recognize differing opinions and be considerate of them. But what about matters of truth? Is it right or wise to be tolerant of that which is not true? Does tolerance mean that all views are to be considered valid merely because people hold them? Is not the question of truth a relevant question in matters of tolerance?