2. What Is Going On?
To speak of "the intolerance of tolerance" might strike some people as nothing more than arrant nonsense - an obscure oxymoron, perhaps, as meaningless as talk about the hotness of cold or the blackness of white. Tolerance currently occupies a very high place in Western culture, a bit like motherhood and apple pie in America in the early 1950s: it is considered rather gauche to question it. To hint, as my title does, that this tolerance might itself on occasion be intolerant is unlikely to win many friends. To put the matter in a slightly more sophisticated way, tolerance has become part of the Western "plausibility structure." As far as I know, the expression "plausibility structure" was coined by sociologist Peter L. Berger.' He uses it to refer to structures of thought widely and almost unquestioningly accepted throughout a particular culture. One of his derivative arguments is that in tight, monolithic cultures (e.g., Japan), the reigning plausibility structures may be enormously complex - that is, there may be many interlocking stances that are widely assumed and almost never questioned. By contrast, in a highly diverse culture like what dominates many nations in the Western world, the plausibility structures are necessarily more restricted, for the very good reason that there are fewer stances held in common.2 The plausibility structures that do remain, however, tend to be held with extra tenacity, almost as if people recognize that without such structures the culture will be in danger of flying apart. And tolerance, I am suggesting, is, in much of the Western world, part of this restricted but tenaciously held plausibility structure. To saunter into the public square and question it in some way or other not only is to tilt at windmills but is also culturally insensitive, lacking in good taste, boorish.
But I press on regardless, persuaded that the emperor has no clothes, or, at best, is sporting no more than Jockey shorts. The notion of tolerance is changing, and with the new definitions the shape of tolerance itself has changed. Although a few things can be said in favor of the newer definition, the sad reality is that this new, contemporary tolerance is intrinsically intolerant. It is blind to its own shortcomings because it erroneously thinks it holds the moral high ground; it cannot be questioned because it has become part of the West's plausibility structure. Worse, this new tolerance is socially dangerous and is certainly intellectually debilitating. Even the good that it wishes to achieve is better accomplished in other ways. Most of the rest of this chapter is devoted to unpacking and defending this thesis.
The Old Tolerance and the New
Let's begin with dictionaries. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the first meaning of the verb "to tolerate" is "To endure, sustain (pain or hardship)." That usage is becoming obsolete, but it still surfaces today when we say that a patient has a remarkable ability to tolerate pain. The second meaning: "To allow to exist or to be done or practised without authoritative interference or molestation; also gen. to allow, permit." Third: "To bear without repugnance; to allow intellectually, or in taste, sentiment, or principle; to put up with." Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is similar: "1. to allow; permit; not interfere with. 2. to recognize and respect (others' beliefs, practices, etc.) without necessarily agreeing or sympathizing. 3. to put up with; to bear; as, he tolerates his brother-in-law. 4. in medicine, to have tolerance for (a specified drug, etc.)." Even the computer-based dictionary Encarta includes in its list "ACCEPT EXISTENCE OF DIFFERENT VIEWS to recognize other people's right to have different beliefs or practices without an attempt to suppress them." So far so good: all these definitions are on the same page. When we turn to Encarta's treatment of the corresponding noun "tolerance," however, a subtle change appears: "1. ACCEPTANCE OF DIFFERENT VIEWS the accepting of the differing views of other people, e.g., in religious or political matters, and fairness toward the people who hold these different views."
This shift from "accepting the existence of different views" to "acceptance of different views," from recognizing other people's right to have different beliefs or practices to accepting the differingviews of other people, is subtle in form, but massive in substance.3 To accept that a different or opposing position exists and deserves the right to exist is one thing; to accept the position itself means that one is no longer opposing it. The new tolerance suggests that actually accepting another's position means believing that position to be true, or at least as true as your own. We move from allowing the free expression of contrary opinions to the acceptance of all opinions; we leap from permitting the articulation of beliefs and claims with which we do not agree to asserting that all beliefs and claims are equally valid. Thus we slide from the old tolerance to the new.
The problem of what "tolerance" means is in fact more difficult than these few comments on dictionary entries might suggest. For in contemporary usage, both meanings continue in popular use, and often it is unclear what the speaker or writer means. For instance, "She is a very tolerant person": does this mean she gladly puts up with a lot of opinions with which she disagrees, or that she thinks all opinions are equally valid? A Muslim cleric says, "We do not tolerate other religions": does this mean that, according to this cleric, Muslims do not think that other religions should be permitted to exist, or that Muslims cannot agree that other religions are as valid as Islam? A Christian pastor declares, "Christians gladly tolerate other religions": does this mean, according to the pastor, that Christians gladly insist that other religions have as much right to exist as Christianity does, or that Christians gladly assert that all religions are equally valid? "You Christians are so intolerant," someone asserts: does this mean that Christians wish all positions contrary to their own were extirpated, or that Christians insist thatJesus is the onlyway to God? The former is patently untrue; the latter is certainly true (at least, if Christians are trying to be faithful to the Bible): Christians do think that Jesus is the only way to God. But does that make them intolerant? In the former sense of "intolerant," not at all; the fact remains, however, that any sort of exclusive truth claim is widely viewed as a sign of gross intolerance. But the latter depends absolutely on the second meaning of "tolerance."
Other distinctions can be usefully introduced. Go back to the assertion "Christians gladly tolerate other religions." Let us assume for a moment that the first meaning of "tolerate" is in view - i.e., Christians gladly insist that other religions have as much right to exist as their own, however much those same Christians may think the other religions are deeply mistaken in some respects. Even this more classical understanding of "tolerate" and "tolerance" leaves room for a certain amount of vagueness. Does the statement envisage legal tolerance? In that case, it is affirming that Christians gladly fight for the equal standing before the law of all religious minorities.4 Of course, from a Christian perspective, this is a temporary arrangement that lasts only until Christ returns. It is a way of saying that in this fallen and broken world order, in this time of massive idolatry, in this age of theological and religious confusion, God has so ordered things that conflict, idolatry, confrontation, and wildly disparate systems of thought, even about God himself, persist. In the new heaven and the new earth, God's desires will not be contested but will be the object of worshiping delight. For the time being, however, Caesar (read: government) has the responsibility to preserve social order in a chaotic world. Although Caesar remains under God's providential sovereignty, nevertheless there is a difference between God and Caesar - and Jesus himself has told us to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.-' It will not be like that in the new heaven and the new earth. Thus even this legal tolerance, which Christians should surely defend, belongs to the present, to the time when the kingdom of God has dawned but has not yet been consummated, or (to say it the way theologians do) to this age of inaugurated but not yet final eschatology.
Of course, in the right context the same sentence, "Christians gladly tolerate other religions," might suggest, not legal tolerance, but social tolerance: that is, in a multicultural society, people of different religions should mix together without slights and condescension, for all people have been made in the image of God and all will give an account to him on the last day. Of all people, Christians ought to know that they are not one whit socially superior to others. They talk about a great Savior, but they are not to think of themselves as a great people. So social tolerance should be encouraged.
Yet another distinction demands brief mention. Someone might assert that the God of the Bible, even under the terms of the new covenant, does not hold up tolerance as a virtue: if men and women do not repent and by conversion come under the Lordship of Christ, they perish. Certainly the God of the Bible does not hold up tol erance in the second sense as a virtue. Yet is not God's patience and forbearance in delaying Christ's return a form of tolerance, intended to lead people to repentance (Romans 2:4)? Hence the distinction: bad ideas and bad actions are tolerated (in the first sense), reluctantly and with bold articulation of what makes them bad, while the people who hold those bad ideas or perform those bad actions are tolerated (again, in the first sense) without any sense of begrudging reluctance, but in the hope that they will come to repentance and faith. Tolerance toward persons, in this sense, is surely a great virtue to be nurtured and cultivated.
These and other distinctions need to be thought through a little more; they will be picked up later in this book. At the moment it is more urgent to explore more thoroughly how widely different the old tolerance and the new tolerance really are.
Sharpening the Contrast between the Old Tolerance and the New
Under the older view of tolerance, a person might be judged tolerant if, while holding strong views, he or she insisted that others had the right to dissent from those views and argue their own cases. This view of tolerance is in line with the famous utterance often (if erroneously) assigned to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.116 This older view of tolerance makes three assumptions: (1) there is objective truth out there, and it is our duty to pursue that truth; (2) the various parties in a dispute think that they know what the truth of the matter is, even though they disagree sharply, each party thinking the other is wrong; (3) nevertheless they hold that the best chance of uncovering the truth of the matter, or the best chance of persuading most people with reason and not with coercion, is by the unhindered exchange of ideas, no matter how wrongheaded some of those ideas seem. This third assumption demands that all sides insist that their opponents must not be silenced or crushed. Free inquiry may eventually bring the truth out; it is likely to convince the greatest number of people. Phlogiston (an imaginary substance that chemists once thought to cause combustion) will be exposed, and oxygen will win; Newtonian mechanics will be bested, and Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics will both have their say.
A parable made famous by a slightly earlier thinker, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), nicely illustrates this perspective.' Lessing sets the parable in the twelfth century during the Third Crusade. The setting is critical to understanding what Lessing was trying to establish by his parable. This setting is a conversation among three characters, each of whom represents one of the world's three monotheistic religions: Saladin, the Muslim sultan; Nathan the Wise, a Jew; and a Christian Knight Templar. Saladin says to Nathan, "You are so wise; now tell me, I entreat, what human faith, what theological law hath struck you as the truest and the best?"9 Instead of answering directly, Nathan tells his parable. A man owned an opal ring of superlative beauty and extraordinary, not to say magical, powers. Whoever wore it was beloved by God and by human beings. He had received it from his father, who had received it from his, and so on - it had been passed down from generation to generation, from time immemorial. The man with the ring had three sons, each of whom he loved equally, and to each of whom he promised, at one time or another, that he would give the ring. Approaching death, the man realized, of course, that he could not make good on his promises, so he secretly asked a master jeweler to make two perfect copies of the ring. The jeweler did such a magnificent job that the rings were physically indistinguishable, even though only one had the magical powers. Now on his deathbed, the man called each of his sons individually to his side and gave him a ring. The man died, and only then did his sons discover that each of the sons had a ring. They began to argue about which one now possessed the original magic ring. In the play, Nathan the Wise describes their bickering and comments:
io. Lessing, Nathan the Wise, 249.
Wanting to resolve their dispute, the brothers ask a wise judge to settle the issue, but his ruling refuses to discriminate:
ii. Lessing, Nathan the Wise, 252-53.
The judge urges the brothers to abandon their quest to determine which ring is the magic original. Each brother should instead accept his ring as if it were the original and in that conviction live a life of moral goodness. This would bring honor both to their father and to God.
Lessing's parable resonated with his eighteenth-century Enlightenment readers. The three great monotheistic religions were so similar that each group should happily go on thinking that their religion was the true one, and focus on lives of virtue and goodness, free of nasty dogmatism, the dogmatism that was blamed for the bloody wars of the previous century. What was called for, in other words, was religious tolerance. There is no harm in believing that your monotheistic religion is best, provided you live a good life and let others think that their religion is best.
Small wonder the parable retains its appeal to readers in the twenty-first century. People today are no less skeptical about claims to exclusive religious truth than were Lessing's readers. They will be inclined to thinkwell of a religion if it produces morally respectable and religiously tolerant adherents. Today, of course, the parable would have to be revised: instead of three rings, we would need dozens of them, if not hundreds, to symbolize the mutual acceptability of the many religious options, whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or nontheistic. And, of course, we could not concede today, as Lessing could, that one of the rings really is the original.
In some ways, of course, Lessing's parable is not very satisfying. To make the parable "work," at least three rather ridiculous stances have been incorporated into the story. (1) The god-figure in the parable, the man with the magic ring, foolishly promises the ring to each of his three sons, even though he knows full well he cannot make good on his multiple promises. Far from loving his three sons equally, he is presented as a weak fool who makes impossible promises. This is not an incidental detail in the story; it is an essential component that sets up why the father goes to the trouble of deceiving at least two of his sons with fake rings. So has God made impossible and mutually conflicting promises to his disparate sons, ostensibly loving all of them so much he ends up lying to them? (2) The entire parable presupposes that we, the readers, know what God has done. Far from fostering a benign tolerance on the ground that we cannot know which ring is the original, this tolerance is in reality grounded in the dogmatic certainty that God himself has produced fake rings because he cannot bear to disappoint any of his sons. In other words, the story "works" only because the reader has this outsider's knowledge of what God has done. Far from advocating a certain kind of epistemological restraint grounded in our ignorance of what God is like, the parable assumes the reader knows exactly what God is like: he is the kind of father who happily creates counterfeit rings to keep his boys happy and in the dark. (3) Equally implausible in the story is the way in which the fake rings are physically indistinguishable from the genuine original, yet lacking in the original's power. If over time the original does not produce distinctive blessings owing to its magical properties, its magic is so weak as to be irrelevant. The counterfeits, in other words, are not only good copies physically, but they seem to work as well as the original provided each son thinks the copy is the original. In other words, we are taken away from a powerful religion that actually transforms people to multiple religions where it does not matter all that much whether one of them is truly powerful or not: what matters is that its defenders think it is powerful. The same problem faces the account of the dialogue between Timothy and the Muslim caliph of Baghdad about A.D. 800 - an account that Philip Jenkins has made popular:
Consider the story told by Timothy, a patriarch of the Nestorian church. Around Boo, he engaged in a famous debate with the Muslim caliph in Baghdad, a discussion marked by reason and civility on both sides. Imagine, Timothy said, that we are all in a dark house, and someone throws a precious pearl in the midst of a pile of ordinary stones. Everyone scrabbles for the pearl, and some think they've found it, but nobody can be sure until day breaks.
Once again, there is a precious pearl, but only one precious pearl. Under this narrative, the dawning light will expose the stones for what they are.
Still, even though Lessing's parable is riddled with conceptual problems, one understands how it made a powerful appeal in his day and continues to resonate with many readers in our postmodern world.
In one respect, however, Lessing's parable is not very contemporary. Both Mill and Lessing thought that there is objective truth out there (after all, there is at least one magic ring!), but their rationalist and secular presuppositions drove them to infer that at least in some domains the truth is not accessible. One can think that something or other is true, and argue the case, but if one cannot prove that this something is true in a manner that conforms to the verification standards of public science, the wisest stance is benign tolerance.
In other words, the older view of tolerance held either that truth is objective and can be known, and that the best way to uncover it is bold tolerance of those who disagree, since sooner or later the truth will win out; or that while truth can be known in some domains, it probably cannot be known in other domains, and that the wisest and least malignant course in such cases is benign tolerance grounded in the superior knowledge that recognizes our limitations. By contrast, the new tolerance argues that there is no one view that is exclusively true. Strong opinions are nothing more than strong preferences for a particular version of reality, each version equally true. Lessing wanted people to be tolerant because, according to him, we cannot be sure which ring is the magic one - but he did not deny that there is a magic ring. The new approach to tolerance argues that all the rings are equally magic. That means the reason for being tolerant is not that we cannot know which ring is magic, nor that this is the best way to find out which ring is magic, but rather that since all the rings are equally magic or non-magic it is irresponsible to suggest that any of the rings is merely a clever imitation without magical power. We must be tolerant, not because we cannot distinguish the right path from the wrong path, but because all paths are equally right.
If you begin with this newview of tolerance, and then elevate this view to the supreme position in the hierarchy of moral virtues, the supreme sin is intolerance. The trouble is that such intolerance, like the new tolerance, also takes on a new definition. Intolerance is no longer a refusal to allow contrary opinions to say their piece in public, but must be understood to be any questioning or contradicting the view that all opinions are equal in value, that all worldviews have equal worth, that all stances are equallyvalid. To question such postmodern axioms is by definition intolerant.13 For such questioning there is no tolerance whatsoever, for it is classed as intolerance and must therefore be condemned. It has become the supreme vice.
The importance of the distinction between the older view of tolerance and this more recent view cannot easily be exaggerated. I do not think that my summary of the new view of tolerance is exaggerated. In a much-quoted line, Leslie Armour, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Ottawa, writes, "Our idea is that to be a virtuous citizen is to be one who tolerates everything except intolerance."14 The United Nations Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (1995) asserts, "Tolerance ... involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism." But why? Might one not hold a certain dogma to be correct, to hold it absolutely, while insisting that others have the right to hold conflicting things to be dogmatically true? Indeed, does not the assertion "Tolerance ... involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism" sound a little, well, dogmatic and absolute? Thomas A. Helmbock, executive vice president of the national Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, writes, "The definition of the new tolerance is that every individual's beliefs, values, lifestyle, and perception of truth claims are equal.... There is no hierarchy of truth. Your beliefs and my beliefs are equal, and all truth is relative."15 If, however, the new tolerance evaluates all values and beliefs as positions worthy of respect, one may reasonably ask if this includes Nazism, Stalinism, and child sacrifice - or, for that matter, the respective stances of the Ku Klux Klan and other assorted ethnic supremacist groups.
In the next chapter I collect a sample of current developments along these lines. For the moment, it is enough to observe that under the aegis of this new tolerance, no absolutism is permitted, except for the absolute prohibition of absolutism. Tolerance rules, except that there must be no tolerance for those who disagree with this peculiar definition of tolerance. As S. D. Gaede puts it:
Gaede's shrewd insight prompts three further clarifications that pave the way for discussion in later chapters.
First, both the old tolerance and the new have obvious limits. The old tolerance, for instance, will happily allow, say, Islam to be preached in a Western country that is minimally Muslim. It may go so far as to allow militant Islam to be preached, even while it detests the message. But obviously it will not allow militant Muslims to blow up people and buildings: there will be repercussions, and the violence will not be tolerated. In due course those who advocate such violent actions may also find their freedom to speak curtailed. Again, the old tolerance will allow those who advocate euthanasia to propagate their views, even though most of those who defend the old tolerance think euthanasia is morally wrong. As long as laws about euthanasia stand on the books, however, they will prosecute those who practice it; they may even prosecute those who conspire to commit euthanasia in a particular instance (as opposed to advocating the practice in general terms). Similarly, the new tolerance might well prove very tolerant of all religions, but would worry about any religion that thinks it has some sort of exclusive path to salvation, and would certainly be opposed to any religion that advocates bombing its opponents.
Both the old tolerance and the new tolerance may actually share some limits: both, for instance, may tolerate the defense of homosexuality (though perhaps more in the first group will dislike what is being defended, while more in the second group will think homosexuality is harmless and may be a good thing), and both may even tolerate the advocacy (but not the practice) of pedophilia (because it judges the practice to be wrong). In other words, most in both camps will draw the line at the actual practice of pedophilia, or at the distribution of pedophilial pornography, not least because of the damage it does. So both the old tolerance and the new will use the specter of the person who falsely cries "Fire!" in a crowded theater as an example of where freedom of speech must be limited, where tolerance must not prevail. By and large, however, they do not think of tolerance in quite the same way (as we have seen), and very often they do not draw the limits of tolerance, however understood, in quite the same place.
More importantly, if Gaede's insight, referred to above, is right, the old tolerance draws its limits on the basis of substantive arguments about truth, goodness, doing harm, and protecting society and its victims, while the new tolerance draws its limits on the basis of what it judges to be intolerant, which has become the supreme vice. Advocates of the new tolerance often find no more scalding epithet to hurl at those with whom they disagree than "intolerant" and related categories: bigoted, narrow-minded, ignorant, and so forth. Advocates of the old tolerance rarely charge their opponents with intolerance (although that is exactly what this book is doing!); rather, their epithets are shaped by their perception of the evil that cannot be tol crated (so defenders of euthanasia are committing murder, suicide bombers are terrorists, and so forth).
The fact that the new tolerance is most prone to label all of its opponents intolerant leads to a second reflection. The charge of intolerance has come to wield enormous power in much of Western culture - at least as much as the charge of "communist" during the McCarthy years. It functions as a "defeater A defeater belief is a belief that defeats other beliefs - i.e., if you hold a defeater belief to be true (whether it is true or not is irrelevant), you cannot possibly hold certain other beliefs to be true: the defeater belief rules certain other beliefs out of court and thus defeats them. For instance, if you believe that there is no one way to salvation and that those who think there is only one way to salvation are ignorant and intolerant, then voices that insist Islam is the only way, or that Jesus is the only way, will not be credible to you: you will dismiss their beliefs as ignorant and intolerant, nicely defeated by your own belief that there cannot possibly be only one way to salvation. Your belief has defeated theirs.
So if a Christian articulates a well-thought-out exposition of who Jesus is and what he has done, including how his cross and resurrection constitute the only way bywhich human beings can be reconciled to God, the person who holds the defeater belief I've just described may listen with some intellectual interest but readily dismiss everything you say without much thought. Put together several such defeater beliefs and make them widely popular, and you have created an implausibility structure: opposing beliefs are thought so implausible as to be scarcelyworth listeningto, let alone compelling or convincing.
Put these last two reflections together and the scope of the challenge becomes daunting and alarming. The new tolerance tends to avoid serious engagement over difficult moral issues, analyzing almost every issue on the one axis tolerant/intolerant, excluding all others from the pantheon of the virtuous who do not align with this axis. Perhaps the saddest blind spot of all in this stance is the failure to recognize just how culturally driven this particular defeater belief is. For instance, in the Middle East almost no one holds to the belief that all religions are of equal value; few dispute the postulate that there is only one way. What that way is, of course, is disputed. Advocates of the new tolerance are inclined to look down on the assorted cultures of the Middle East, holding that if the people in that region were all as "tolerant" as the advocates of the new tolerance themselves, peace would reign triumphant. Meanwhile many citizens of the Middle East view the advocates of the new tolerance as effete people who hold nothing precious but material possessions, who cannot think deeply about right and wrong, about truth and error, let alone about God. Too few on both sides ponder how one might build a culture in which people may strongly disagree with one another over fundamentals and still tolerate the opponents because they are human beings made in the image of God.
Third, granted that both the old tolerance and the new set limits to tolerance, not for a moment am I suggesting that the old tolerance always got things right while the new tolerance always gets things wrong. I am old enough to remember when in many parts of this country African Americans could not sit in the front of the bus: it was not tolerated. If, arguably, we are so politically correct today that we worry beyond reason about offending anyone, developing endless circumlocutions (e.g., "hearing impaired") for perfectly good expressions (e.g., "deaf"), the flip side is that it is a relief to observe that words like "chink," "spic," "wop," and "gook" have been thinned out. Prejudice never entirely disappears, of course, and we are wise to heed ongoing warnings against it.18 Now, however, the warnings against such stereotypical prejudice are delivered with such massive condescension, and across so many arenas, that new forms of prejudice spring up like dandelions in a wild field. It is what James Kalb nicely calls "inquisitorial tolerance."19 Bernard Goldberg puts the problem bluntly:
Here's the problem, as far as I'm concerned: Over the years, as we became less closed-minded and more tolerant of all the right things, like civil rights, somehow, we became indiscriminately tolerant. "You're so judgmental" became a major-league put-down in Anything Goes America - as if being judgmental of crap in the culture is a bad thing.20
Before probing these matters more deeply, it is worth reminding ourselves how widespread the problem is (chap. 2) and reflecting a little on the checkered history of tolerance (chap. 3).