The two faces of tolerance

What is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.

Herbert Marcuse

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

Given current events in Indiana, I suppose it is time once again to recall a post first run on the old Right Reason blog in March of 2007, and reprinted on this blog in December of 2009.  Here are the relevant passages, followed by some commentary:

To the charge that liberals are (or, given their principles, should be) in favor of X [where X = legalizing abortion, liberalizing obscenity laws, banning smoking on private property, legalizing “same-sex marriage,” outlawing the public advocacy of traditional sexual morality, etc. etc.], the standard liberal response goes through about five stages (with, it seems, roughly 5-10 years passing between each stage, though sometimes the transition is much quicker than that).  Here they are:

Stage 1: “Oh please. Only a far-right-wing nutjob would make such a paranoid and ridiculous accusation - I suppose next you’ll accuse us of wanting to poison your precious bodily fluids!”

Stage 2: “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as X. All the same, it’s good to be open-minded about these things. I mean, people used to think ending slavery was a crazy idea too…”

Stage 3: “Hey, the Europeans have had X for years and the sky hasn’t fallen. But no, I admit that this backward country probably isn’t ready for X yet.”

Stage 4: “Of course I’m in favor of X - it’s in the Constitution! Only a far-right-wing nutjob could possibly oppose it.”

Stage 5: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…”

…

Fortunately, though, we can rely on conservatives to hold the line, and indeed to turn back liberal advances. Right?

Well, no, of course not. (You can stop rolling your eyes, I was being facetious.) For conservatives - or maybe I should say “conservatives” (since there’s very little that they ever actually manage to conserve, unless money is somehow involved) - seem to go through five stages of their own. Here they are:

Stage 1: “Mark my words: if the extreme left had its way, they’d foist X upon us! These nutjobs must be opposed at all costs.”

Stage 2: “Omigosh, now even thoughtful, mainstream liberals favor X! Fortunately, it’s political suicide.”

Stage 3: “X now exists in 45 out of 50 states. Fellow conservatives, we need to learn how to adjust to this grim new reality.”

Stage 4: “X isn’t so bad, really, when you think about it. And you know, sometimes change is good. Consider slavery…”

Stage 5: “Hey, I was always in favor of X! You must have me confused with a [paleocon, theocon, Bible thumper, etc.]. But everyone knows that mainstream conservatism has nothing to do with those nutjobs…”

End quote.  Now, where X = curtailing the free exercise of religion, at the time I first wrote those words I estimated that liberals were at about stage 2.  At this point it seems that many of them are at about stage 4, and a disturbing number of hotheads among them seem willing to push for stage 5 vigilantism.  Conservatives, meanwhile, seem mostly to be at about stage 3 of their own progression, and I suspect that not a few are at least flirting with Stage 4.

And so here is where we find ourselves in the land of the free and the home of the brave in April of 2015:

Prominent conservative politicians and churchmen have all essentially caved in on the substance of the dispute over “same-sex marriage.”  None of them will publicly express the slightest moral disapproval of homosexual behavior, and few even bother anymore with social scientific arguments supporting the benefits of children being raised by both a mother and a father.  Indeed, all of them are eager to express their deep respect for their fellow citizens who happen to be homosexual, vigorously to condemn “homophobia” and discrimination, etc.  Some of them are even happy to affirm “same-sex marriage.”  All they ask is that religious believers who on moral grounds disapprove of “same-sex marriage” not be forced to cooperate formally or materially with it.  The circumstances where this might occur are, of course, very rare.  No one is proposing that business owners might refuse to serve a customer simply because he or she happens to be homosexual.  What is in view are merely cases where a business owner who objects to “same-sex marriage” would be forced to participate in it, say by providing a wedding cake or wedding invitations.  Nor would his refusal to participate inconvenience anyone, since there are plenty of business owners who have no qualms about “same-sex marriage.”

In short, what conservatives are proposing is not only extremely modest, but is being defended in the name of their opponents’ own principles, the most liberal of principles, viz. the Jeffersonian principle that it is tyrannical to force someone to act against his conscience, and the Rawlsian principle that a pluralistic society should strive as far as possible to respect and keep a just peace between citizens committed to radically different moral, philosophical and religious views. 

And for taking this paradigmatically liberal position, they are widely and shrilly denounced by liberals as… “bigots,” “haters,” “intolerant,” comparable to the Ku Klux Klan and the upholders of Jim Crow.

Meanwhile, some liberal business owners fire employees who take this conservative position, while others refuse to do business in a state that adopts it.  Other liberals routinely refuse even to discuss the merits of the conservative position but merely hurl insults and try to shout down and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with them.  And when a particular business owner affirms that customers who happen to be homosexual are welcome in her restaurant, but also says that she would not agree to cater a hypothetical “same-sex wedding,” she finds herself suddenly subjected to a nationwide Two Minutes Hate, with an online mob actively seeking to destroy her livelihood and reputation -- some of them even proposing to burn down the restaurant or kill its owners.  Even some mainstream liberals, while not condoning such violence, suggest that the restaurant owner had invited this abuse.

And liberals have winked at or even embraced the ethos and tactics of the lynch mob in the name of… tolerance, freedom, and pluralism, of love and compassion and opposition to bigotry.

How have we descended into such Orwellian insanity? 

It’s all about sexual equality

Part of it has to do with the fact that what is at issue here concerns sex.  And make no mistake, it is sex in general, rather than homosexuality in particular, that is ultimately at issue.  Consider that current liberal proposals to curb freedom of conscience where disapproval of “same-sex marriage” is concerned are of a piece with recent liberal proposals to curb freedom of conscience where contraception and abortifacient drugs are concerned.  Consider also that only a small percentage of people, including a small percentage of liberals, have a homosexual orientation.  But perhaps a majority of people in contemporary Western society, and certainly the overwhelming majority of liberals, have bought into the sexual revolution.  In particular, they have bought into the idea that where sex is concerned, the only moral consideration, and certainly the only consideration that should have any influence on public policy, is consent.  There can in their view be no moral objection, and perhaps no reasonable objection of any other sort, to sexual arrangements to which all parties have consented.  There is in their view a presumption in favor of license, and thus a presumption against anyone who would object to license.  The conclusion that there can be no reasonable objection to “same-sex marriage” follows naturally.  It is merely one consequence among others of a generally libertine attitude about sex.

Now, here’s the thing about sex.  The unique intensity of sexual pleasure, the central role that success in romantic and sexual relationships plays in our sense of fulfillment and self-worth,    and the unpleasant feeling of shame that accompanies indulgence in sexual actions we suspect of being in some way wrong, makes it very difficult for people to think clearly or dispassionately about sex.  We have a very strong bias in favor of trying to find ways of rationalizing indulgence, and a very strong bias against regarding some sexual behavior toward which we are attracted as wrong or shameful.  These biases are only increased by sexual license.  The more deeply you buy into the sexual revolution and act accordingly, the more reluctant you are going to be to want to listen to any criticism of it. 

This is why Aquinas regards what he calls “blindness of mind,” “self-love,” and “hatred of God” as among the “daughters of lust” -- where by “lust” Aquinas means, not sexual desire, but rather sexual indulgence that is in some way or other disordered.  Sexual immorality fosters “blindness of mind” in the sense that the one indulging in it tends to have greater difficulty than he otherwise would in thinking coolly and dispassionately about matters of sex.  He tends toward “self-love” in that he is strongly inclined to make his own subjective feelings and desires the measure by which to judge any proposed standards of morality, rather than letting objective moral standards be the measure by which to judge his feelings and desires.  He tends toward “hatred of God” insofar as the very idea that there is an objective moral law or lawgiver who might condemn his indulgence becomes abhorrent to him.  (I recently discussed Aquinas’s analysis at length here.)

So, when a sexually libertine liberal activist shrieks “Bigot! Bigot! Bigot!” in your face at the top of his lungs as if he were putting forward a rational argument, or tries to destroy a person’s reputation and strip him of his livelihood in the name of compassion, or threatens to kill him or burn down his business in the name of tolerance, the manifest cognitive dissonance should not be surprising.  It is only to be expected.  Sexual libertinism is destructive of rationality.

It’s all about sexual equality

But it’s not just about sex.  It’s about egalitarianism itself, which, as Plato argued in The Republic, is inherently destructive of moral, legal, and rational standards, and has tyranny as its natural sequel.  The egalitarian regime insists, notionally, on tolerating every opinion and way of life, and refuses either to judge any one of them as morally or rationally superior to any other, or to favor any of them in its laws.  Yet no regime can tolerate what would subvert it.  And the very idea that some views and ways of life are simply objectively superior, rationally and morally, to others, is subversive of egalitarianism.  Hence egalitarian societies tend in practice to be intolerant of views which maintain that there are objective standards by which some views and ways of life might be judged better or worse.  That is to say, an egalitarian regime inevitably tolerates only those views which are egalitarian.  Which means, of course, that it tolerates only itself.

Thus, in Plato’s own day, do we have the spectacle of Athens, which was democratic, pluralist, and egalitarian -- and killed Socrates, because it suspected that he was none of the above.  Thus do we have the French Revolution, which murdered thousands in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity.  Thus do we have Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, each of which slaughtered tens of millions in the name of equality.  If egalitarians have, historically, been able to convince themselves of the justifiability of all that, then burning down a pizzeria is a cinch. 

Nor is it by any means only these more extreme forms of egalitarianism that practice intolerance in the name of tolerance.  You will find the same tendency in John Locke, that most moderate of early modern liberals.  Locke famously argued for religious toleration -- except for Catholics, for atheists, or for anyone who rejects the doctrine of religious toleration.  The reason was that Locke regarded the views of all such people as subversive of a tolerant, liberal society -- Catholics because their primary loyalty was to the pope rather than to the liberal state, atheists because they denied the theological foundations that the Protestant Locke thought essential to morality and politics, and deniers of religious liberty for the obvious reason that they rejected the whole idea of the tolerant liberal state.  Locke went so far in the direction of insisting that only those religions which accepted his doctrine of toleration ought to be tolerated that he held “toleration to be the chief characteristical mark of the true church.”  In other words, a real religion is one which embraces Lockeanism.  Hence the Lockean liberal regime tolerates only those views which accept the basic principles of Lockean liberalism.  Which ultimately means, of course, that it too tolerates only itself.  (See chapter 5 of my book Locke for further discussion of Locke’s doctrine on toleration.)

Things are in no way different with the contemporary liberalism of John Rawls.  Rawls famously holds that a liberal society is one which is neutral between, and can be accepted as just on the basis of premises held by, all of the competing “comprehensive doctrines” -- that is to say, the religious, philosophical and moral worldviews -- that exist within a modern pluralistic society.  Or at least, Rawls says, it is neutral between the “reasonable” comprehensive doctrines.  And what makes a doctrine “reasonable,” as it turns out, is a willingness to endorse the principles of Rawls’s brand of liberalism.  Which means that the Rawlsian regime tolerates only those views which endorse its underlying principles.  And thus -- once again -- we have a form of egalitarianism which on analysis really only tolerates itself.  (I’ve discussed the bogusness of Rawlsian neutrality elsewhere, e.g. here, here, and here.)

Now, how do you counter sexual libertinism and the totalitarian tendencies of egalitarianism?  Naturally, by vigorously arguing for traditional sexual morality, and working for legal safeguards of the liberty of those who affirm traditional sexual morality to live in accordance with it.  Easier said than done, needless to say.  But there is no alternative, in the short term or, especially, in the long term.  Rusty Reno, at First Things, seems to agree.  He recommends two courses of action to conservative and religious leaders:

The first is obvious. We need to work for laws like the Indiana RFRA to provide some protection, however modest, to our communities from the coming onslaught of “anti-bigotry” laws.

The second is less obvious but perhaps even more important. We need to stand up and speak clearly about the biblical teaching on sex, marriage, and family. It’s the leaders of the Church who should be attacked in public as “homophobic,” not politicians like Mike Pence who are trying to do the right thing.

Yet some political leaders seem more inclined to cave in to the demands of the mob, and some religious leaders more inclined to hide under the covers and hope the problem goes away.  Naturally, this will only embolden the mob.  These political and religious leaders are asking for it, and they are going to get it from the “tolerance” crowd -- good and hard, as Mencken would say.  Unfortunately, they won’t be the only ones to suffer the effects of their cowardice.