| I'm kind of surprised at how the "paradox of tolerance" has gained so much currency in the past few years as if it were an obviously-established principle in free speech theory or something. In the recent past, this idea was much less accepted in the U.S. because it was not assumed that allowing people who were intolerant in some regard to express their ideas (or people who were hostile in some regard to U.S. society or culture) would inevitably lead to destroying the tolerant social order. Instead, the "marketplace of ideas" theory was usually taken to mean that people would consider various ideas (including intolerant ideas, or ideas aimed at radically changing the social order) and, in most cases, largely find them unappealing and not act on them. In the Cold War era, there were lots of civil libertarians who thought Communism was gravely evil and threatening, but that there was no "paradox" in allowing Communists to advocate their views because those views would lose an open discussion. The fact that Communists didn't necessarily believe in free speech or intend to reciprocate this tolerance did nothing to undermine this confidence; it was like "Communism is a bad idea and it's not going to win in a free marketplace of ideas; only the Communists need to use censorship to shore up their bad ideas, whereas we don't". Similarly, the ACLU defending Nazis in Skokie (etc.) didn't think that it was a paradox to defend and tolerate people who themselves would not tolerate the ACLU or other minorities. They believed that those people had pretty crummy ideas and that most Americans would see through those ideas. Similarly, there have always been religious groups that are wildly intolerant in the sense that they believe that their religion is the only true religion, that everyone should follow it, and even that ideally people should be forced to follow it, if that were possible. (To say nothing of the harshness with which they may treat people who disbelieve or mock their religions, or of people who flout their precepts.) Nonetheless, tolerating these religions isn't really a "paradox" except in the case where they're capable of taking over a whole society. Which is not never, but also not always. The stability question is subtle because it depends a lot on your assumptions. But isn't the paradigmatic unstable equilibrium case where most people in the society are willing or eager to become more intolerant, and tolerance is only maintained because they're kept from hearing suggestions that would move them in that direction? As I've been noticing more and more, that's what the west said about our adversaries in the Cold War: rickety societies propped up by lies and suppression! |
My main point was that the GGP's concept of tolerance, as something which can have no line at all, has never been the case in the US, and doesn't seem advisable, since his argument that any resistance is invalidation of tolerance would lead it to be easily destroyed.