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from Ethical Issues
How to Be More Tolerant
Philosophy professor J. Budziszewski has made some
interesting observations on the virtue of tolerance. True
tolerance requires good judgment about when to put up with
things with which we disapprove. However, by the new, distorted
definition, tolerance requires something different than
good judgment -- it requires "neutrality," which means
suspending judgment altogether. According to Dr.
Budziszewski's 1999 book The Revenge of Conscience, the
neutralist must make use of one of three fallacies:
1. The Quantitative Fallacy: "The more ideas and behaviors
you are able to tolerate, the more tolerant you are."
2. The Skeptical Fallacy: The best foundation for tolerance
is to avoid having strong convictions about anything;
therefore, "The more you doubt, the more tolerant you are."
3. The Apologetic Fallacy: If you cannot help having strong
convictions, then the most tolerant thing to do is to "Keep
your convictions to yourself." You should not discuss them
with others, nor act upon them.
But "neutralism," Dr. Budziszewski observes, is never
practiced consistently. Rather, it is used as a weapon for
demoralizing opponents. "The neutralist, too, has
convictions," he says. These are convictions about the
things the neutralist himself thinks should be
tolerated--for example, aberrant sexual behaviors.
Even the ACLU, supposedly a defender of all civil liberties, backs
certain
types of rights and shuns disfavored causes--like the
desire to change from gay to straight--by redefining them
as "prejudices."
But true tolerance, Dr. Budziszewski says, cannot mean that we
accept all behaviors. It does not imply we should put up
with false statements in a debate, or allow rape; nor does
it imply we should be neutral about everything, because
"there is no neutral ground in the universe." Instead, true
tolerance means that we decide to put up with some bad things
for the sake of a greater good. But we cannot evade making
decisions about what, in fact, those bad and good things
actually are.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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