Beyond tolerance?
John Derbyshire has written an important piece about the culture war in this country or, more precisely, how conservatives are losing it. The piece was prompted by a Peggy Noonan op-ed in the Opinion Journal in which she took the self-contratulatory position that "we have gone beyond tolerance in America; we have arrived at affection and sympathy and mutual respect. It has been beautiful to see, and I have seen it in my lifetime." Noonan is referring of course to the admirable progress America has made in the area of civil rights. But, as Derbyshire shows, she is ignoring the fact that "only some of us have 'gone beyond tolerance' to 'sympathy and mutual respect.'" In fact, the new "tolerance" runs in only one direction -- in favor of designated victim groups and their members. Such tolerance is a zero-sum game, in which the toleration of some means lack of toleration for others. As Derbyshire explains:
"If I were a black American, I could go around calling my white fellow-citizens 'devils' and my Jewish fellow-citizens 'bloodsuckers,' and no-one would give it a moment’s thought. I should very likely be offered a job at a prestigious university, or made poet laureate of New Jersey, or urged to run for President. If I were a feminist, I could write a book arguing that all my male fellow-citizens are rapists, and be sure that it would be respectfully reviewed in all the quality broadsheet newspapers. If I were a homosexual, I could shriek 'bigot!' at any person who had the temerity to point out that my sexual activities had helped to spread a horrid plague, and I would be applauded for doing so, and the temerarious person would be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. If I were an atheist, I could make a movie alleging that Christ had sexual intercourse with Mary Magdalene, or a play about Christ practicing sodomy with his disciples, and the reviewers would all swoon with delight. If I were an illegal immigrant, or a person who makes a cash profit from illegal immigration, I could freely slander as 'nativist' or 'racist' or 'anti-immigrant' anyone who dared to point out that I ought to be arrested and/or deported, and all right-thinking people would cheer me on."
Derbyshire concludes, and I agree, that "if 'we have gone beyond tolerance in America,' we have gone beyond it into a land of sneering and obscurantist in-tolerance on the part of our elites and their favored minorities, towards all traditional and customary values and practices, and all objective inquiry into human nature." This is hardly a "beautiful thing to see."
