A column about history, culture, policy, and things in between.
"Are you an absolutist"?
A young man recently asked me this question after we had a discussion about the histories of America and Russia in the twentieth century. He did not ask it in a challenging way. Rather, he was intrigued, quizzical. He asked it in the same tone he might have used had he asked, “Do you believe in ghosts”?
From the time of America’s founding to approximately the mid-twentieth century, the highest virtue in our society was considered to be, well – virtue. That is no longer the case. Today our society values the priceless commodity of tolerance above all others. It has become noblest end. This can be clearly seen in many of our institutions, most notably our university educational system. There is no greater achievement than to impart to our kids a sense of becoming “open”, with an undiscerning and uncritical worldview the twin companion of the diploma. For who are we to say in 21st Century America that any one idea is better than another, or one system of governance, or one tradition?
The twin sibling of this issue of tolerance is that of our “feelings”. This movement of “feeling-ness” can be seen in the evolution of the Oprah Winfrey show and the staggering stature she has achieved in society. This is not a criticism of Oprah and I don’t suggest that she is the cause of this. I raise her show because it is illustrative of the point I am trying to make.
The thing she is most interested in finding out is “how does that make you feel”? She doesn’t ask her guests “what do you THINK about this” or “what do you BELIEVE about that”? Thinking and believing require that choices be made and preferences be described. Rather, she is only concerned about how they “feel”. And from such an incubator we get Tom Cruise jumping up and down on her couch, pumping his arms in the primal exultation of what he is feeling, and of – of being Tom Cruise I suppose.
Tolerance is god in America today. It is the greatest virtue we can cultivate; it is the greatest good we can bestow.
But this leaves me with a question. If we are to be tolerant of all things, all behaviors, all ideas, then what exactly is it that we can be FOR? To be passionately FOR anything requires that we define WHY we are for it. But any thoughtful and articulately stated reasons why we are for something raises the great risk of being branded as “intolerant”, for you cannot be seriously for anything without, by definition, being AGAINST certain other things.
Does the worship of tolerance demand that we forsake demonstrated and healthy traditions? Does the blind pursuit of tolerance forbid us to suggest that some ideas and some practices might actually be BETTER than others?
We have medicated ourselves with the drugs of tolerance and political correctness to the point where there is only one thing that it is NOT to be tolerated.
And that one thing of course is - intolerance.
