RE: RE: Paradox of tolerance: Should a liberal society suppress the intolerant?
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RE: Paradox of tolerance: Should a liberal society suppress the intolerant?

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I disagree. In the first place, who decides what is intolerant and what is not, what must be oppressed and what is not, what is evil and what is not? You can't just point to a group and say "they are intolerant, let's be intolerant of them", because first of all, defining whether something is "intolerant" or not is something very subjective, it is very easy to point to a specific group like the Nazis, who serve as a prototype of evil, and say "they are intolerant", where everyone will agree, but most of the time it is not like that, most of the time it is not of a Nazi of whom we speak, it is of another person, of whom it is not so easy to decide if he is really intolerant, or if he simply disagrees with us. Maybe we think that he is intolerant, maybe he thinks the same of us, who is right then? This is what it really comes down to, to the word of one against the other, in general both parties being more or less intolerant. But you will realize that a person is not simply a one-dimensional character that can be defined simply by the label of "intolerant", or any other, humans are more complex beings, and it will take a little more empathy to truly understand the other without making a judgment first. Maybe someone thinks that your ideas are intolerant, and under that same excuse, they can simply violate your rights and take away your freedom without prior notice, in that case, you should accept it because apparently you are agreeing with its premise.

Secondly, if you are intolerant of them you cannot say, for any reason, that you are different from them, because you are making yourself equal to them, you are letting them win and you are saying "you know what, they are right, intolerance is the answer, intolerance is much more effective than tolerance, tolerance is useless, and for practical purposes, we must be intolerant". It is going back to the old lex talionis that says an eye for an eye, an tooth for a tooth. If you are intolerant, you have to be intolerant of yourself. That is confusing revenge with justice. Indeed, it is completely forgetting about justice and acting in a partial way. Christians respond to that by saying "don't resist evil" and "if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also", and you don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the logic behind that, it means that if you return evil for evil you will become evil, and then there will be no difference between you and them. The reality is that it makes no sense to fight against something, if in the fight against it you become what you are fighting with.

And the third and last thing for which I disagree, is because simply intolerance does not work, the reality is that oppressing a group of people is the most difficult way to make their ideas disappear. The reality is that these people will continue doing the same thing they already do, but from the occult, they don't need to do it publicly, but they will continue to do it, they will do it and you will be giving them reasons and permission to do anything else, simply because they are already in the red zone. They can be like the Islamic State if they wish, and nothing will make them go away.

Do you really think that intolerance will triumph over tolerance, if we are tolerant of everyone? Is tolerance self-destructive then? I think you have to have very little trust in people in general to believe this to be true, and if we can't trust people, isn't the whole of society destined for failure? Society is people after all. The only way that society works is if it is based on cooperation between free people, and for that trust it's needed.

@vieira: I disagree. In | Ecency