Tolerance Is Virtue

by John deLaubenfels

I have enjoyed Paul Hein's columns, and agree with most of what he has to say, but one recent column begs for a dissenting response.  I refer to the aptly-named "Tolerance Be Damned!"

Mr. Hein opens with a horrifying mini-surf of TV fare (admittedly empty stuff), then asks,

Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? This guy was 50, or thereabouts, and he hadn't figured it out yet? I knew the answers to those questions when I was ten years old, and so did all my classmates at St. Gabriel school in south St. Louis. "God made me to know him, love him, and serve him in this life, and be happy with him forever in the next." We learned those answers by rote from the Baltimore catechism, which has fallen from favor. Learning by rote is considered bad form today, although it is hard to understand what we learn that isn't "by rote." Our phone number. The alphabet. Our address. Even our name, and how to spell it. The multiplication tables. Time enough to understand these things when we got older; but in the meantime, let's learn them, so we'll have something to understand. Seemed like a good idea then, and it still does.

If Mr. Hein was able to figure out the purpose of life at age 10, and has never doubted his prescription since then, I would venture to guess that makes him a very unusual human being.  Most of us, I daresay, experience many moments of crisis in our lives, whatever our upbringing.

And surely, when and if a person achieves the wisdom to know his/her purpose in life, that comes not through "rote."  Take the multiplication table: a parrot can learn it, but it takes human intelligence, divorced from rote, to understand the mathematical concepts behind it.  I'd much rather my son understand those concepts, even if he has to wield a calculator to multiply 12 x 11, than the converse.

Of course I'm in favor of teaching children to spell their names, but the really important things in life can't be learned by rote.

Mr. Hein continues,

Life was pretty much black and white 50 years ago, with precious little grey area in which to hide. We understood that certain things, like homosexual behavior, were wicked, even if we didn't know what homosexual behavior was. When we got older, and learned just what the poor wretches do to one another, we were confirmed in our belief.

I certainly won't assert that Mr. Hein is required to like homosexuals, but I'm not sure what the motivation is for trumpeting a belief that they're "wicked" and/or "poor wretches."  I know plenty of gay people who like their lives just fine, and that includes sex.

If Mr. Hein objects to the official victimization of gays, I'm right there alongside him.  If he objects to being forced to hire people he doesn't want to hire (for whatever reason), I'm right there too.  But whence comes this chip on the shoulder, this strident desire to label someone else's choices "wicked?"

After listing a few other things he's proud to be intolerant of, Mr. Hein continues,

Oh, it was a world with sharply-drawn lines, and well-defined boundaries; quite restrictive by today's liberal standards, or lack of them. But guess what! We were happy! Society wasn't always being torn asunder with rancorous disagreement. Everyone knew the rules, and few found them burdensome. 

Here I must sharply disagree.  I remember the '50's very differently.  The shadow of the Bomb was omnipresent.  The unspoken rules, which forbade mention of anything but the Happy Little Fantasy of the day, were oppressive.  Any spontaneous act was suspect.  God himself was an intrusive being who spent his days making black marks on everybody's permanent record.  The '60's, for all their excessive, drug-laced idealism, represented a needed rebellion from the stifling '50's.

Mr. Hein's final paragraph states:

People either have rules of right and wrong, or they have "tolerance" toward those who profess to march to a different drummer. That tolerance is OK if the difference concerns matters of mere taste. When fundamentals are involved, give me the rules! The hell with tolerance.

Well, yes.  I don't ever intend to be "tolerant" toward thieves (politicians or otherwise) or con men (ditto).  But I think Mr. Hein is off-base about where the boundary between "mere taste" and "fundamentals" should be drawn.  To be open about being gay, for example, seems to me to be strictly a matter of taste.  So do many other choices that were completely forbidden (i.e. driven underground) 50 years ago, and many, like smoking pot, which are still officially forbidden today.

Of course Mr. Hein is free to despise anyone he wishes to, and to be forthright about his feelings.  But if he is calling for a return to a society in which people must hide their choices to avoid persecution and prosecution, I must strongly dissent.  Tolerance does not mean agreement; it means simply, "There's room in this world for both of us." In my opinion, that's the only virtuous way to live.