If people are no longer free to use words or social stigma to advance their views and opinion, because "tolerance," then what do we have left?
It exactly means that no matter how subjectively and personally odious somebody's beliefs are to you, you can still respect their personhood, and evaluate any associated business & products at face value.
"Tolerance" does not mean enforcement for or against selected beliefs. Waging a stigmatizing crusade against a belief is enforcement.
The moment you think you can deem and enforce absolute right & wrong upon others, you open yourself up to it happening to you without defense. That is not the path of liberty.
What on earth kind of law do you want to set up where I can't preferentially trade with people whose opinions I like, or preferentially not trade with people whose opinions I don't?
Again, tolerance means I don't want to imprison or kill people with distasteful opinions; it doesn't mean I have to like them or their distasteful opinions.
People can be bigots, they can be jerks. Go nuts, folks, be bigots or jerks, I don't care. But I'm not going to trade with bigots or jerks, I'm not going to hire them, and I'm sure as hell not going to say "hey, you're a bigot and a jerk but tolerance so let's have a beer".
Some people have no place in my life, and the beliefs they hold are a big determining factor in that decision. If they really wanna be my friend or business partner, they can change their beliefs.
That is pretty much the definition of not tolerating a person, to remove a person from your life, not tolerating having their existence in your sphere. If it's mostly based on their beliefs, then it's an example of not tolerating that belief.
You're perfectly fine to do that, as people do, but then you can't claim that you're tolerant of others' beliefs just because you happen not to be killing or imprisoning them.
> it doesn't mean I have to like them or their distasteful opinions.
Tolerance does NOT mean liking them! I keep hearing false dichotomy over and over. To be decent and civil to a person, to tolerate their beliefs existing around you, does not require condoning them. It's simply being a decent human being and not being an overprovoked reactionary, intolerantly policing all others around themselves, determining what others are not allowed to be like.
The alternative is actual argument rather than punishment, something overgard in no way ruled out.
...which unfortunately may not be a great tool given the current situation. I think we are at the point where playing nice may no longer be a serious option.
But that doesn't mean we should just, lke, punish all the bad people because they're bad people. That still isn't helpful. It just feels good, it doesn't necessarily accomplish anything.
In the particular case of people joining the Trump administration, I think Megan McArdle makes a good case against punishing capable people for joining it: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/there-s-n...
Still. We're in a situation now where argument is unlikely to get us anywhere -- but in better times, that's the ideal, not using words to punish people.
That's an utterly meaningless comparison. Bill Clinton was a governor with terrible policies concerning minorities [1], while Donald Trump was a real estate mogul with terrible policies concerning minorities. The fact that their different leadership positions meant that Trump could harm a statistically fewer number of people means exactly nothing.
"Didn't lock up any black people" isn't exactly an achievement for someone who hasn't served in government.
[1]: I agree with you that Bill Clinton deserves to be held completely accountable for his actions as Arkansas governor.
People prentend that politics is a purely abstract thing, but consider. Bush is directly responsible for well over 500,000 deaths. The blood of his victims is directly on the hands of everyone that voted for the idiot. Trump might not be as bad or he might start WWIII.
It's true that few of us have the time and energy to dig through all the bullshit and achieve understanding of everyone we find abhorrent.
But where we are able to do so, we usually learn some important things about others and about ourselves - mostly, that when it comes down to it, we all just want to feel safe and loved.
True compassion is hard, but unless we can offer it to others, we can't expect it to be offered back to us.
PS: Some people really don't care about safety others don't care about love.
You can disagree with their decision whilst still empathising with their reasons. Indeed you must, if you're ever going to persuade anyone to change their position.
Though you're poisoning the discussion by invoking cannibalism, it's easy to see that in primitive societies where it was accepted, it was due to a need for safety (from hunger) and love (from participating a communal ritual). Of course we find it abhorrent now, I certainly do. But I can understand why it would have been acceptable to people in a time and place where there seemed no alternative.
Equally, we would all hope and expect that where others find our opinions and actions abhorrent (and in a huge and diverse world, someone always will), that they will seek understanding before abusing or marginalising us.
> PS: Some people really don't care about safety others don't care about love.
When I've actually dug deeply into that question, I've never found it to be true. The people who, on the surface, seem not to care about being loved, actually turn out to be the ones who crave it the most. Just look into the life story of any psychopath or tyrant, and you'll inevitably find stories of abuse and/or emotional neglect in childhood.
There's a difference between "advancing your views" and "demanding someone get fired because they disagree with your views". See? If you want to call Thiel a dickhead for his support, feel free, you even have my agreement. But this is the CLASSIC go-to-move of overzealous social justice creeps, to demand banishment of the person for thought-crimes.
That's obviously a false equivalence. On the one hand, the candidate was encouraging his supporters' violence. On the other... well, not that.
The overwhelming majority of the videos I have seen are Hillary supporters beating Trump supporters.
The supposedly "tolerant" side has been looking awfully intolerant of late.
With the exception of Hillary-planted agents provacateur, as verified by DKIM-validated Podesta emails, who is beating up whom?
By this definition, business owners in Indiana who don't support gay marriage could legally not serve those customers. Is that the world we want?
I agree with you. But we cannot disregard the dishonest behaviour performed by most leftists/liberals over the years. The leftists/liberals hurl so much social stigma against the republicans/Christianity but they dishonestly and criminally keep mum about e.g. Islam. Sam Harris and Bill Maher have pointed this out beautifully at [1] and [2].
The leftists have never allowed anyone to socially stigmatize Muslims about their faith in the very vicious, barbaric and most importantly "the most intolerant" ideology of Islam. So now this has came around them.
Mainstream left/liberal camp is completely dishonest about its take on the issue of intolerance of Islam.
Sadly but not surprisingly people like Trump will succeed to exploit such thing.
The saner people in the left should reflect on this dishonest behaviour of the mainstream/vocal leftists and must do something about it, else the intolerance will just grow.
First a question: Insulting to whom?
If you think it is insulting to Muslims, then I disagree. It may be offensive to some Muslims. Will criticizing Nazism be considered as insulting (to Germans)?
