Northern State Universitya talk by Jon Schaff, a man about town
I’ve been asked to talk on the subject of “The Intolerance of Tolerance.” I’m not exactly sure what that means. Does it mean that some people are intolerant of tolerance? Or does it mean that tolerance itself can become intolerant. Political philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote that we were a very tolerant people until we started to pursue tolerance as a definite objective. I think that this is largely true. One can see this in 17th century English philosopher John Locke’s famous, “Letter Concerning Toleration,” which is an intricate argument about how we shouldn’t tolerate some religion views, especially Catholicism and atheism, though he can’t really explain why we shouldn’t tolerate the atheists. But we do hear much about tolerance in our day. Tolerance is seen as the antidote to “hate.” Perhaps more typically tolerance is preached, and I think preached is the right word, as the cure for what is labeled “judgmentalism.” What I want to do tonight is first, define the word tolerance, and then defend the necessity of making moral judgment, in part by defending the idea of public morality.
The first task is to define the term. We are told often that we need to be more tolerant of other opinions, other lifestyles, etc, so as not to be judgmental or to “impose our opinions on others.” So what does it truly mean to be “tolerant?” Maybe some of you have had some experience with those small little creatures I like to call children. You might have children of your own, or you have nieces and nephews, or you baby-sit, or you have had some other job where you work with children. Now I don’t want to shock you, but children can be truly awful little creatures. I know this is surprising to you, because you may have gone to the re-release of E.T. recently and you believe that children are always lovely innocent waifs who like stuffed animals and are kind to lost aliens. But one would have to be sand poundingly ignorant or Steven Speilberg to believe that. Children misbehave all the time. But if you have some experience with small children, let me ask you this; do you correct children every time they misbehave? Do you discipline them every time they do something that they ought not? You don’t, do you? Why not? Well, there are some perfectly good explanations for this. If we correct children every time they are in technical violation of good behavior, we’d end up pestering them mercilessly. Sometimes you just let kids be kids, which is also sometimes very ugly. This is for the sanity of parents too. They can’t always be correcting every little thing or they’d go nuts. Sometimes, as you all know from common sense if not experience, it is better to let things slide. Now, does that mean that the misbehavior is good? No. Is it even indifferent? No. It is bad. To state it in the most obvious manner, it is wrong to do wrong. The behavior is wrong, but we don’t punish it. This is tolerance. We tolerate what is bad in the name of some greater good. We speak of being able to tolerate physical pain, or bad weather. These are bad things.
But this isn’t what is usually meant in common discourse by tolerance. What we are being asked is not to be patient with that which is wrong. We are usually being asked to be indifferent towards a thing, to withhold judgment. Or we may even be asked to accept a thing as an actual good. In the common language when people say we must be more tolerant what they often mean is we need to be more permissive, meaning what is wanted is our permission, our sanction, regarding a belief or action which has traditionally been held to be, to one extent or another, wrong. The perversion of a perfectly good word, tolerance, has been realized so as to take away our capacity for moral judgment and the right of us as citizens to act on that judgment.
Those who most strenuously push so-called tolerance like to take the position of neutrality, believing it to be the morally objective position. See they aren’t really taking sides, we are lead to believe, they are simply being neutral. But neutrality itself is a value-laden position. Take, for example, Pepsi and Coke. Now some people are Pepsi people, and some people are Coke people. If, say, we are a room of Coca-Cola people we don’t denounce the Pepsi people as somehow being our moral inferiors. We don’t try to convince the Pepsi people that they have chosen badly and they’d be happier if they drank Coke. Why? Because the difference between Pepsi and Coke is literally one of taste. We can’t say that one is better than another. So we withhold judgment. But what about issues involving human life? Human sexuality? The Family? Can one really be neutral about the value of the various ways humans express themselves sexually? Perhaps. But that itself carries important moral baggage. The unwillingness to say that some forms of sexual expression are better than others is a moral position with important consequences. Sexuality is not soda pop. Neutrality can be a clever disguise for indifference. And indifference towards important social and moral questions is itself a moral position. It is not neutral. The same could be said for a variety of important social and moral issues that concern the public. Are all choices that human beings can make really equal? Is the life of sobriety equal to the life dedicated to drug use? The moral egalitarianism inherent in the cult of tolerance is a result of moral laziness; an unwillingness to assess one way of life as better than another.
There are two justifications for the religion of tolerance. The first says that what is important is human choice. Our decisions aren’t really valuable unless they are decided free of outside influence. Now, all Americans value autonomy and respect individual rights, but is it so clear that individual choice should, in every case, trump certain socially beneficial goods such as decency, discipline, trustworthiness, self-control? And are the choices for drug use, pornography, or casual sex the products of a rationally thinking mind, or are they more the impulses of our lower appetites? Think about it. Isn’t the choice for casual sex usually a product of lust, the desire to satisfy our selfish sexual impulses? When people choose to do drugs, isn’t it more likely that it is out of a fear of not fitting in with a certain crowd than a product of intricate well reasoned thought? We have to ask ourselves, in the words of Harry Clor, “How much of my well being is invested in pursuing my own way, and how much is invested in the development of universal virtues such as intelligence, courage, self-control, sociability, love?” True individually comes from discipline, not simply reacting to the impulses of our will. Discipline requires that demands be made on us, not simply that the constraints on us are removed.
The second justification for suspension of judgment is that of equality. This is a pretty insidious claim because Americans really love equality. This view holds that I have the right to have my life choices treated equally regardless of the social effects of my choices. Well, what if a significant minority of people regularly took drugs, consumed pornography, and regularly visited prostitutes? Could such a society survive for long? Must our love of equality turn into a social suicide pact? In his influential essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan argues that society can only handle so much deviancy, so as more and more anti-social behavior takes place, we have to redefine as “normal” some things that we used to consider deviant. This can become a vicious cycle, at the end of which the most awful things might have to be labeled as “normal.” We do value the concept of equal respect, but this in one good among many. While recognizing our common humanity, we do treat people differently than we treat animals, this does not mean that we can’t recognize varying degrees of excellence or bestow esteem on some ways of life and not others.
What we largely have here is a question of what is a public concern and what is merely private. This is a false dichotomy. Our choice need not be between selfish individualism and soul-destroying collectivism. While we have great respect for the individual in our society, the public has its own legitimate rights that go beyond “we can do anything we want as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.” Believing in self-government we have to recognize that some characteristics are more conducive to self-government than others. In short, in order to have self-government we need to be able to govern our own appetites.
Some of you may be familiar with the ancient story of Gyges, who found a ring of invisibility; no this isn’t a Lord of the Rings story. Gyges proceeded to commit all sorts of unspeakable acts, knowing he could not be caught. In The Republic, Plato uses this story to illustrate the need for proper education to buttress social norms. If any of us had the ring of Gyges, some of us would choose well, but most of us probably would not. Social habituation is important to creating decent people and a decent community. How many people really sit down and consider all their moral beliefs from the bottom up, exploring all sides to all issues and then coming to some decision? Answer: Nobody. What if we had a whole society composed of individuals seeking virtue with no guidance whatsoever? Imagine a world of five year olds with no adult supervision. As Hobbes says of the state of nature, life would be nasty, brutish, and short. Some might rise above society, but many more would fall far below as people acted on their lowest impulses rather than what is most noble about humanity. Society is sustained by custom and tradition. Walter Berns argues in his recent book, Making Patriots, that patriotism is not something that simply appears naturally. It is something to be cultivated. Isn’t this what educations is? Agri-culture is the cultivation of the soil. Education is the cultivation of the soul. We call an educated person a cultured person. In the words of Leo Strauss, “Liberal education reminds those members of mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness. . . The Greeks had a beautiful word for “vulgarity”; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.” C.S. Lewis puts the problem this way. “Without aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. The head rules the heart through the chest.” And as Lewis famously wrote, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid geldings be fruitful.” We have rules of behavior to make social intercourse easier and by which we can regulate behavior. In some civilizations belching at the table is considered a compliment. In our society it is considered rude. One might look at this and say, “It is merely convention that is guiding you.” Well, yes, I suppose. But decent human life requires conventions and the ability to defend them. I should hasten to add that some of our thorniest moral questions are NOT merely matters of convention, but the idea of public morality strongly endorses the importance of conventions for social harmony. Surely our actions respond to social pressure. In the late 80s and early 90s, when the government took part in a massive ad campaign against drug use, you might remember “this is your brain on drugs” commercials, the nation saw a 70% decline in drug use. In the 1990s, the fight against drug use became less important to the powers that be. Bill Clinton himself spoke to the nation’s youth on MTV, saying that if he had it over again he would have inhaled. Not surprisingly, drug use increased among young people in the 1990s.
We are, as George W. Bush said in his inaugural speech, citizens not subjects. A subject, as in “the king’s subjects,” is merely acted upon by the powers that be. He is subject to authority. The citizen is active. The citizen must be publicly spirited. The citizen must have concerns outside his narrow self-interest. He must be concerned with the public good as well as with his own private gain. As President Bush has put it, “Prosperity without purpose is simple materialism.” Why would we leave a person, for instance, to the life of drug use, and just say, “As long as it doesn’t harm me, what do I care.” Well, first of all, you have to live with people who are drug abusers, and so it does harm you. But even if it didn’t, would you simply stand by passively while a neighbor sank into drug use, or some other harmful habit? You all know the story: And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
A Christian loves his neighbor. He doesn’t say, “Do what ever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt me.” Christ called his apostles, and he calls us, to be fishers of men. For the apostles this culminated in the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they went out to the world to spread the Gospel.
How are we to go about judging? Like most things, it is best to follow the example of Christ. Christ very seldom lost his temper or was argumentative, even with those pesky Pharisees. Christ mostly challenged people through parables, like the parable of the Good Samaritan. Ignatius Loyola puts it this way: “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable way to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he might be saved.”
Socrates taught that wisdom starts with admitting that you know nothing. Scripture says that wisdom starts with fear of the Lord. What both of these statements have in common is they speak of humility. When we confront bad ideas or misguided individuals we need to remain humble in our own opinions. Our cable TV culture tends to reward shouting and confrontation as a means of discourse. The Christian, I think, should choose the quieter path. The best way to change the hearts of others is by example. You know the Scripture: Do not point out the sliver in your neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in your own. By living a Christian lives ourselves we give witness that true happiness lies not in worldly things, but in the faith that Jesus Christ died for our sins that we may live. It is our duty, then, to give honor the Christ by living as he lived, and loving as he loved.
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