Liberating intolerance

One of the darlings of the 60's intellectual generation was Frankfurt School Marxist Herbert Marcuse, author of the 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance. He opined that the freedom of speech provided by the West simply enshrined a permanent bourgeois majority culture and co-opted deluded minorities into thinking they were free because they were tolerated, though they would always remain inferior in power. His solution? "Liberating tolerance".

"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."

Sound familiar? All men are equal, but some are more equal than others? I actually took part in a small group discussion starring Herr Marcuse, back during my Columbia undergrad days.

Anyway. I was unhappy with Gene Robinson's prayer last week. Gay philosopher John Corvino writes that others, especially evangelicals, have targetted the same part of the prayer I did, namely, the hope for "freedom from mere tolerance". His response is frank and much to the point:

And that's where the culture war really is a zero-sum game, and "common ground" is impossible without dramatic concession: we want their kids to believe something that is diametrically opposed to what they want them to believe. There's no point in sugarcoating that conflict.

Corvino does not clarify, however, that while evangelicals want us all to accept Jesus as our Savior, they do not intend to make it a law. The post-tolerant prayer of the Robinsons has in view a change in state power. It is a Crusader's prayer for victory, in a velvet glove.

Not only gay marriage by any means necessary, but the thought-crime laws which outlaw free speech as well as the non-discrimination laws which wind up forcing people to participate in and support activities they find objectionable. In the contemporary US: Photographers fined for declining to shoot lesbian weddings. Churches fined for being unwilling to rent their buildings for these events. Religious adoption agencies closing in order to avoid mandated placing of kids with same-sex couples.

The situation in non-Anglo Europe is pitiful. Things like this go on in Britain and Canada (even worse) and now here in America, once the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Robinson's "embrace" is a code word for surrender.

I am not an evangelical Christian. I am a homosexual man. But both they and I are Americans. I cringe at the notion of the state enforcing on people who disagree with me not only a course of action they reject but even their right to express that rejection in vigorous speech. That First Amendment protects precisely the kind of talk we would rather not hear!

Liberals want to treat the jihadis in Guantanamo as if they were American citizens and they are all uniformly horrified by the idea of torture. All this, lest by surrendering our values for our security, --which The One just told us was a false choice--we turn into copies of our enemies.

Apparently gay liberals are not so worried that theitr drive for societal acceptance through greater and greater state coercive power might turn them into the very people who used to use it to keep us silent, closeted and afraid for so long. They, however, will see it all as liberation, because, as we know, if you are a victim, you can't really be wrong.

A commited liberal is looking more and more like a fascist with a smile.

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