 |
 |
Toleration is a virtue when it stems from respect, and either weakness or condescension when it does not. Classic liberalism inverts this relationship, basing a plea for mutual respect on a basically negative case for toleration (better put up with the other fellow's delusional eejitry, as it's imprudent to assume you know better and fascistic to act like you do). It gets into trouble when it's faced with people it doesn't much feel like respecting (and clearly isn't respected by), but has obliged itself to tolerate anyway. I think that poetryetc's stipulations about mutually respectful conduct are based on a combination of legal positivism (them's the rules, because the list-owner says so and the listees agree) and psychological shrewdness (mutually respectful conduct over time fosters sentiments of actual mutual respect. Note that this is not true of unilaterally respectful conduct). It would be a mistake to suppose that we all like tying ourselves up in classic liberal masochistic knots. Or that we can be made to feel bad by appealing to fuzzy relativist pablums about the equal dignity of all points of view, especially when the individual making the appeal clearly doesn't believe a word of it anyway. Dominic