"Liberalism has always been associated with a passionate interest in freedom of thought ... That is why it is associated with resistance to tyranny, with criticism of dogma and authority, with hatred of intolerance." —Walter Lippmann, “The Press and Public Opinion,” Political Science Quarterly 46 (June 1931) p. 161.

13. Hating intolerance

If you hate intolerance, aren't you guilty of the same thing?

This question was posed to me by a Christian fundamentalist whom I greatly respect but with whom I often disagree. He said my intolerance of his intolerance of gay rights was in itself a form of intolerance. And my answer, after mulling it over for a month or so, was this:

If a thief is forced to pay back what was stolen, are we robbing the thief?

Intolerance and hatred rob us also, and by opposing them, we are in effect making them return the thing that has been stolen.

What is it that intolerance and hatred steal? Individual judgement and the ability to think for one's self -- an ability which is prized above all others in a university, in a newsroom and in an ideally functioning democracy.

Each individual has a right and duty to develop his own ability to form independent judgements on issues.

"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as publick liberty, without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it he does not hurt and control the right of another; and this is the only check which it ought to suffer, the only bounds which it ought to know." -- Cato Letters, No. 15, 1721

Intolerance is an attempt to control the right of another to freedom of thought. When someone who pretends to deep religious conviction says "God Hates Fags" or that Moslems will not go to heaven, they are not asking you to think. They are asking you to hate.

We, Americans, many of us Christians, have a duty to question them, perhaps to oppose them, and to refuse to tolerate the drift into an intolerant and theocratic government.

When Michael Crichton says that the political position in favor of protecting the environment is a religion, again, it is intolerance. Actually, its progress that is the religion -- Progress mixed with fundamentalist Christianity. And this doubt of these faithless environmentalists is an affront to Progress, which is what so enrages conservatives.

But in the end, these ad hominum attacks, this name calling behavior from self-righteous fundamentalists, this intolerance, is itself hateful. It can't be accepted.