Tolerance

This has been on my mind a lot lately. Issues like tolerance and freedom of speech. For one, they've been coming up in the paper. An example I read recently is of a comedian who had two lesbians come into his act and start - his words paraphrased - basically making out with each other right there in the audience, and bashing him. So he bashed them right back, which seems a standard thing for comedians to do. I mean, if you let everyone stand up and yell at you, it's not your stage anymore, it's just a bunch of people yelling. I won't go into the language he used, but he told them some pretty rude things, just as they had told him some rude things.

The outcome? They're taking him to court. And he could be ordered not to make lesbian or gay jokes ever again in any comedy he does if they win.

How is this free speech? Pick a friend. Any friend. Then randomly be like "so, do you believe in free speech?" Well, DUH. If anyone knows an individual who honestly does not believe in free speech, I'd be very interested to know. But while yes, this is a right, that we are free to say and think whatever we want and express our opinions about any given person - guys, it's a two-way street. If you believe in free speech, people are also allowed to bash you just however they like, and you need to grin and bear it, not go running to a court because your feelings are hurt or you feel insulted. Guess what: That's part of life. Deal with it.

And this brings me to tolerance. From my dictionary application (I love that thing):

tolerance |ˈtäl(ə)rəns|
noun
1 the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with : the tolerance of corruption | an advocate of religious tolerance.

So, sounds good, right? Yeah, let's all love each other and get along and be one big happy family. But the world doesn't work like that. What the tolerance movement seems to be telling us is that we are not allowed freedom of speech. We are not allowed to think thoughts or speak words that have the potential to make someone else feel insulted. We're not allowed to have a moral problem with homosexuality - that's homophobia. We're not allowed to evangelize our religion, because that's 'shoving our beliefs on others'. What tolerance says is that we need to live in a box that people build for us.

And really? I'd love it if the world was made up of people who could graciously and tactfully express their problems - heck, if we hadn't messed up at the beginning of time, there would BE a perfect world. But there isn't. Use the example of communism. It works on paper. It works very well on paper. It should work in society. Does it? No. It doesn't. If we were all perfect, communism would work flawlessly. It's the same with tolerance - if we were all perfect, it would be fine. But no matter what, there will always be someone who is INtolerant. And that person is going to bash you however they like whenever they like.

Tolerance says you need to sit there and nod calmly and smile.

I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into a specific situation, but many times, primarily on the internet, I have seen people preach about tolerance and sing its praises and how oh-the-world-would-be-a-better-place-if-everyone-were-only-tolerant. These same people are generally preaching about this in a specific context - either berating someone who seems intolerant or wailing about the intolerance of the world in general. Logically, if you were really tolerant, you would tolerate my intolerance, yes?

None of us will. None of us will sit there and smile at someone who is bashing us - and this is why we have freedom of speech. Take your pick. Either everyone can express their opinions and hurt just as many feelings as they please, but have the freedom of expression; or everyone can huddle in a little box society creates for them and squeak every time they come close to being politically incorrect. Personally, I can deal with a few feelings hurt. I take the former.


"I'm on my last page, and my circles have gotten progressively less perfect since the first page."
"Really? Mine have just been consistently mediocre."