The Tyranny of the "Tolerant"

The Wall Street Journal ran a column a couple of years ago by Joseph Epstein which was headlined "The Tyranny of the 'Tolerant.'" In his column Epstein argued that tolerance, once a reasonable virtue among liberals, has been transformed by the contemporary left into an oppressive form of tyranny.

Epstein starts off with this question:

[I]n the current day, who is more intolerant, more close-minded and unforgiving, more malicious than those who officially pride themselves on their tolerance for sexual difference, minority mores, protest in all its forms—namely, those who march under the banners of the woke, the politically correct, the progressive?

Epstein is correct in declaring that the left is home today for the least tolerant people in our society, but how did we come to this sorry pass? He explains that the genesis of the left's contemporary intolerance, like most of our cultural dysfunctions, traces back to the 60s:

Herbert Marcuse, of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, published an essay in 1965 with the provocative title “Repressive Tolerance,” in which he argued that “liberating tolerance” would entail “the withdrawal of toleration of groups and assembly from groups and movements” on the right, while encouraging all aggressive movements on the left.

Marcuse's recommendation has been embraced by the modern left and enjoys a prominent place in their field operations manual.

Here's how the current tyranny of the "tolerant" manifests itself in our culture:

Use the wrong word, have a political flaw in your past, fail to line up for the next obviously good cause, and the tolerant will be the first to come after you. They may not be able to burn you at the stake...but they will make sure you don't get the job, promotion, prize or leg up. They will instead see you castigated, fired, consigned for life among the mean, ignorant and lumpen.

He goes on to list five opinions and views — one could add many more — that the "tolerant" absolutely won’t tolerate:

• That abortion is, somehow, anti-life and thus might just be wrong.
• That the final word isn’t in on climate change, let alone what, if it exists, ought to be done about it.
• That racism isn’t systemic but the absence of fathers in African-American families is, with 70% of black births being out of wedlock.
• That sexual reassignment surgery and transgendering generally is a ghastly solution to what possibly isn’t truly a problem.
• That most government programs for the improvement of the human condition are unlikely to be effective and in many cases exacerbate the illnesses they set out to cure.

Anyone reckless enough to openly express any of these opinions publicly is at best regarded as a stupid rube - "deplorable" in Ms. Clinton's felicitous formulation - and at worst an evil, dangerous enemy of society in need of being shamed, prosecuted, persecuted, shouted down, fired from their jobs and personally and financially ruined.

The self-righteousness, judgmentalism and cruelty of these folks would make the religious inquisitors of the Middle Ages envious. Epstein states that they are possessed of a "strong sense of their own virtue."

They are convinced they are on the right side: the side of social justice, of generosity of spirit, of sensitivity, of goodness and large-heartedness generally. They think themselves the cognoscenti, in the know, superior in every way. They are the best people, and they darn well know it.

Of course, so did the inquisitors. It's one thing, Epstein notes, to laud oneself for the superiority of one’s own opinions and quite another to want to destroy others for what one deems the moral inadequacy of theirs.

In the current political climate this is what those who pride themselves on their tolerance are all too happy to do. What is unprecedented, and unhappily becoming a contemporary condition, is the intolerance of the ostensibly tolerant for even the slightest disagreement.

Hence the refusal of our once most august universities to allow speakers whose views their students and faculties find uncongenial. Hence the organization of what are in effect lynch parties devoted to tearing down statues and insisting on the renaming of schools and institutions. Hence the McCarthy-like search through people’s pasts for unfashionable opinions with which to destroy their reputations.

It is profoundly ironic that a political ideology, progressive liberalism, that started out in the 19th century encouraging open-mindedness, personal autonomy and freedom of speech and thought has morphed into something out of George Orwell's 1984.

In fact, the story of the evolution of modern "progressives" from classical liberals to tyrannical neo-Marxists and fascists sounds very much like the story Orwell narrates in his other famous novel, Animal Farm. Both books should be required reading for every college student in today's America.