tolerance revisited
What people are (were?) really saying in advocating tolerance is that we should be tolerant towards ideas and ways of life that are merely different from our own. Even the pathetically anodyne Declaration of Principles on Tolerance makes this clear:
1.1 Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication, and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference.
The promotion of Tolerance was a reaction against people being intolerant towards (mere) difference. But the concept has now been extended to mean we should be tolerant of pretty well everything... that if something jars: Be Tolerant! Tolerance has become a value in itself; intolerance a vice.
What if something jars for good reason? Are there then 'good reasons' for advocating tolerance in this case? Possibly: if the benefits of doing so are greater than the damage done by being intolerant. But there's another point here which is often missing in debates on tolerance, related to the jarring. In the old (pre-UN) sense of tolerance, the term applied to something hard to bear, something we should tolerate for a greater good. Tolerance was a shield that stood between us and whatever it was that jarred (protecting the tolerated thing rather than the tolerator).
There are two problems about valuing that shield in itself. The first is that the virtue should come further back: it should be virtuous not that we manage to hide our dislike or disapproval of something merely different, but 'virtuous' not to feel that dislike or disapproval in the first place. Valuing tolerance is like valuing George Bush's missile shield.
The second problem is that the jarring is often (but not always) an important reaction to something in itself non-virtuous, unsatisfactory, unjust. That reaction is a vital element, an essential precursor to acting against injustice. Without the jarring, we don't get past first post. If we put the shield up as well, tell people to sit on their inclination to react to anything that jars - we can be quite sure that the jarrers will rule the roost.
The issue, of course, is where the limits to 'tolerance' should be: which things we should tolerate and which things we should positively not tolerate. The safe (and easy) answer is to draw the line where international law has drawn it for us: 'Tolerate everything that is not a human rights violation'.
Rubbish. Firstly, because there is no reason on earth why we should accept the line drawn by our politicians and their lawyers without question, without thinking; no reason on earth why they - of all people - should be regarded as the ultimate authority on questions of jarring.
More importantly, because even if we do take this to be the line in the sand, we should be very clear that international law offers the bare minimum, a pathetic level of guarantee and even of moral rectitude. We can stay behind the line and still have people homeless on the streets of Oxford; millions dying from AIDS or starving to death in Africa; depleted uranium being fired at children in Iraq; and EU bureaucrats eating up the money meant to go to those in desperate need.