Tolerance of Intolerance; Intolerance of Tolerance

[Ron Green]

Intolerance has to prevail, doesn't it? Because intolerance will be tolerated, but tolerance (that allows irreverent fun-poking, etc.) will not be tolerated.

Seems like the spiral will be downward.

[VLC98]

1. Never thought of it that way..

but you're absolutely right. It's been a struggle for me to instill and maintain tolerance of religious busy bodies in my children, when those zealots are intolerant of my godless children.

[JuniperLea]

2. Man, I must have struck gold today!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=317046&mesg_id=317171

I'm seeing this all over the place now...

[CAcyclist]

3. Jefferson said , "The only thing we must not tolerate

is intolerance."

So there you have it, simply don't tolerate intolerance. I don't.

[tishaLA]

14. Thomas Paine said "Toleration is not

the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms! The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty and the other of granting it!"

ETA: Tahiti Nut beat me to it! LOL!

[smitty]

4. Many Muslims consider

the cartoons that appeared in the Danish newspaper intolerant and insulting to Islam. Non-Muslims consider them mild political satire.
So who's right? Should we forbid the speaking or publishing of words or images that may offend a religious or ethnic group? If we do so, are we engaging in self-censorship and denying our own beliefs? Do people have a right not to be offended?

[bloom]

5. People may not have the right

to not be offended.

But people do have the right to not start fights. If someone starts a fight - they should not be surprised when one ensues.

I think people engage in self=censorship all the time. It's often called "manners".


This seems like the classic bar fight to me. The cartoons were a provocation pure and simple - and meant to be so.




The question people should be asking is - Who benefits? (I say it's BushCo.)

[CJCRANE]

6. Exactly - the RW benefits.

I mean while we're at it why not publish cartoons of Jews or Chinese people with bombs on their head. It's freedom of speech right?

It doesn't matter that it offends a racial minority or a billion people.

:sarcasm:

[smitty]

7. Every political cartoon

is a provocation to someone or some group. Perhaps we should ban political or satirical cartoons because they may cause a violent reaction in some some individual or group. Printing satire is not the equivalent of starting a bar room fight; good manners does not mean suppressing your ideas and opinions. Finally, "good manners" is a two way street.

[bloom]

10. These were not created and printed

for satirical reasons.

There were created and printed because someone wanted to start a fight. There was no other point. For several of the cartoons - that is the ONLY point. Just to portray Mohammad. Just to be a provocation. You can argue that it should not provoke someone - but that was the intent - whether it makes sense to you or not.

And they knew this would work. Just like those who flushed the Koran in the toilet would work.

I'd say they got their wish - just like the bully in the bar.

[smitty]

11. "They" who is "they"? Who wanted to start a fight?

These cartoons were originally published in a Danish newspaper last September. They were virtually unnoticed until some people decided to be offended and make an issue of it.

[bloom]

20. I've read the timeline and I've been aware of the controversy

for some time.

It's the timing for one thing. And the fact that it was a right-wing Christian newspaper - for another.

"The Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, had asked 40 cartoonists to draw images of the prophet. The purpose, its chief editor said, was "to examine whether people would succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim issues."

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060203/NEWS07/602030406/1009

Also - cartoonists involved said it was meant to be inflammatory. They knew it would be inflammatory.


Don't you think you would think it was odd if FOX news ran something that was esp. racist, hateful and provocative against Muslims. Something that would make them want to riot. And after it simmered for 3 months and there weren't riots and the President got on board with the issue and got some more news outlets to run the provocative thing as if they were trying to start riots - wouldn't you wonder?

And after them in January - the reaction apparently still wasn't strong enough - so now in Feb. more and more newspapers - still a lot of them right-wing running them - is obvious provocation - like all of the entire continent was saying that Muslims could go to hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

Don't you think you would wonder just a little if our gov't wasn't up to something - esp. when at the same time there was nearly daily rhetoric about provoking a war with Iran - a mainly Muslim country?

And maybe you missed the story where our gov't pays PR firms to stir up trouble around the world - and in newspapers around the world - not only to affect public opinion there - but knowing that it will get back to the US. They (our gov't) just have to get things stirred up -Including fabricating events. They don't have to be the ones doing the rioting.

And the neocons think this is great. They want lots more newspapers to run these things. They want more provocative cartoons. And they want the US to attack Iran. How convenient.

[Hatalles]

15. It's a problem when it's a provocation to an broad section of people.

Imagine a major US paper printing 12 cartoons of MLK or Rosa Parks decked out in leopard skins, bones, etc. -- the whole Jim Crow caricature -- and declaring they did it in the name of 'free speech.'

IMHO, this whole 'free speech' business is bullshit.

[smitty]

18. So let's not print a cartoon

that may offend Christian fundies, they may protest...oooh, we hurt their feelings. The First Amendment, if it means anything, protects the right of someone to print or say something that may be offensive to someone else (why else do political blogs exist, to publish pablum?). People do have the right to object to what I say but they don't have the right to threaten or physically attack me.

[megatherium]

9. Freedom of expression is meaningless if only inoffensive expression

is permitted. In the United States, we permit even the most vile antisemitic or racist propaganda to be published (unlike in Europe) because we believe that the danger from censorship is greater than the danger posed by that kind of hate literature.

Now we have Muslims calling on al Qaeda to "punish" the countries that published the cartoons. If the Danes who published those cartoons were seeking to make Islam look bad, they didn't succeed nearly as much as the Muslim preachers who are inciting this kind of violence in their faith's name.

[sweetheart]

8. intolerate intolerence

off in to irrelevance,
nothing common sense won't sort,
So it seems they've come up short.

[TahitiNut]

12. Here's what Thomas Paine said ...

'Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it." (Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, p. 58. As quoted by John M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and the Secular State: The Constitutional Context, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, p. 7. Swomley added, "Toleration is a concession; religious liberty is a right.")

It is sheer sophistry to claim that tolerance negates itself in being intolerant of intolerance. Indeed, it is merely Justice under the Golden Rule to be intolerant of intolerance.

[Ron Green]

13. Good, good. Therefore the world must, under the Golden Rule, NOT

tolerate a belief system that itself is intolerant of a large segment of reasonable people. These belief systems would include all fundamentalist religions whose members would take up arms when their beliefs are challenged.

[TahitiNut]

16. It's one thing to possess and express a belief, It's quite another ...

... to insist that others comply with that belief to the exclusion of all others. Whether sectarian or secular, mankind is vested with free will and free conscience. As with all freedoms, the civil liberties to exercise those freedoms stop where they infringe on the rights of others to exercise theirs, or not. Those who'd invade the secular with the sectarian speciously argue that they're being oppressed when they're not 'free' to coerce others in complying with their sectarian dogma. All government is coercive. It's a question of equity and balance. The balance, of course, is what justice is all about - a balance that must be sought or governance becomes illegitimate. Justice is, in my opinion (and Rawls') the sole legitimate goal toward which government can be aimed.

Show me a religion with warring sects and I'll show you a religion corrupted with secularism. It seems to be an almost unavoidable characteristic of the Abrahamic family of religions - a fact that makes Buddhism very appealing to me.

[smitty]

19. I couldn't agree with you more.

[gulliver]

17. Tolerance and intolerance both work.

Engineering requires tolerance within constraints. Robert Persig, I think, has a nice discourse on it in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

21. Bill Maher does a pretty good riff on this topic in one of his specials

There are so many built-in ironies to this whole discussion - the major one being that the tolerant would ultimately be killed off by the intolerant whom the tolerant tolerate.

[TahitiNut]

22. Old Testament: Intolerant G-d; New Testament: Tolerant G-d.

Who made whom in whose 'image'?? :evilgrin: