(05-29-2017, 04:22 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN reports on a claim by Fareed Zakaria that liberals are intolerant.
CNN Wrote:Fareed Zakaria said Saturday that though many liberals think they are tolerant, often they aren't.
Zakaria noted that "at the height of commencement season," many new graduates across the country had made their political views apparent, from the Notre Dame students who walked out as Vice President Mike Pence gave his commencement address to the crowd members who booed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during a speech at Bethune-Cookman University.
"American universities seem committed to every kind of diversity except intellectual diversity. Conservative voices and views are being silenced entirely," Zakaria said.
I'm not sure this is right. Conservatives were given opportunity to speak. The Notre Dame students didn't have to listen. The Bethune-Cookman students spoke back. There might be an error in liberals inviting in people who will say what the students don't want to hear.
Or is that a mistake? A lot of the problem is nobody listening to the other guy. Once a partisan latches on to a world view, he'll reject the opposite, often not listening just in case something new is offered. Given what Pence or DeVos generally have to say, it's not surprising that well educated kids are apt to reject it.
Is it intolerance if one has a strong opinion and rejects the opposite opinion? There is sure a lot of opinions and rejection, in America, and on this forum.
Freedom of speech does not imply the right to an uncritical, sympathetic audience. Most of us have values, and certain speech is incompatible with those values. The demand that people treat nonsense with respect is the demise of freedom of thought, suggesting that official communication is command.
Pence and DeVos represent what few Americans can accept: a hierarchical order in which millions suffer for the indulgence of a few in return for getting right with God and deserving pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die instead of the fire of Hell. I can hardly imagine a more exploitative foundation of society, and if heaven is for the good it is for those who have challenged gross inequity and not for crass exploiters lest one speak of a God unworthy of worship. I could never worship a gangster, after all.
Some things simply do not merit tolerance. Child sexual abuse, something that the System used to tolerate, now has no supporters. Gay-bashing has no ethical justification. Gladiatorial games and human sacrifices would be crimes against all decent sensibilities. We normally expect government to be responsible to the People (and if it is not responsible to the People, then what merit does it have?) corruption has no justification.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.