The Left, and False Tolerance

If you find this blog worth while, it might not hurt to send it to some of your friends that tend to lean to the left.

 

The left has claimed a monopoly on term tolerance that is not completely unwarranted. The reasons for this are obvious considering that there is no competition offered from the right who generally openly rejects the term and principle all together. I would ask those of you that do claim the high ground of tolerance to take the time to read this blog and reexamine the principle and how it relates to your political beliefs.

There is only one foundation that tolerance can be built off of: mutual self respect.To demonstrate this, I think we recognize that “tolerance” for a mugger, rapist or someone trying to blackmail you as completely absurd. Tolerance can only be a meaningful and useful social principle if it can be applied to all individuals consistently. You may tolerate the mugger, but he/she is certainly not tolerating you and there is clearly no relationship built on mutual self respect involved.

The lefts argument for gay marriage is generally something along the lines of “consenting adults should be able to do as they please”. Essentially saying “hey, as long as no force or violence is involved its none of your business”. This is a wonderful philosophical argument. It is the recognition that that man owns himself and his actions, and for that reason no government has the right to intervene. This of course is a principle I stand by completely and passionately.

Likewise the feminist movement was the recognition that male genitals are completely arbitrary when it comes to any kind of claim to authority or right to violence. Likewise the racial equality movement was the same recognition for skin pigmentation.

I love this kind of skepticism towards any authority that bases its power on attributes of people and their lifestyles that have nothing to do with what fundamentally constitutes as a human being, and his or her rights. In other words, every individuals is his or her own master and has a right to live their lives as they see fit and any claim to intervene in such activities better be able to reference something better then race, gender, social class, religion, and sexual orientation to justify the use of force and coercion. (I of course claim that the only justification for force, is in reaction to force itself, in other words in the extremely rare cases of self defense).

If the left applied these principles as consistently as they were passionate about them then I would fallow them to the bitter end. However sadly this is not the case. The left applies the principles of tolerance to their own beliefs and ideas, but not to others, which is the essence of what we call bigotry.

The most obvious being the lefts view of capitalism (when I say capitalism I simply mean the freedom to exchange property, not what it has come to mean as the semi-fascist state of a mixed economy). If two consenting adults should be free to do as they please then you should accept capitalism (or I suppose rather tolerate it), which is based on the exact same premise. If you claim that free exchange of property is evil and that you have the right to use violence against those who do so (or rather the you have the right to out source violence to the government) you certainly have the right to make such claims, but you have forfeited the principle and high ground of tolerance.

You are claiming that mankind does not have a right to property (a completely nonviolent principle and lifestyle) but you have the right to violence. There is no other title proper to this position other then bigotry.

Also, where is the lefts tolerance for those who oppose the welfare state? The choice to not give to charity, or help the poor is an entirely nonviolence lifestyle choice. Whereas the right claims that the welfare state is inefficient, I could careless about its efficiency.  It could be the most efficient system in the whole world and I would still not accept that you have a right to one cent, or one second of my time and any claim to such is bigotry. (I shouldn’t have to point this out, but I of course has no problem with charity as long as it is voluntary, rather then forced at the point of a gun. And the claim that government intervention increases prosperity is weak at best but more accurately completely unfounded with the evidence pointing in the complete opposite direction).

If you advocate pointing guns at people for peaceful life style choices, then you have no claim to the high ground of tolerance. The left often criticizes America's foreign policy (and quite rightly so) for being an assault on disarmed civilians. How is it that domestic policy is not violence inflicted on a legally disarmed population? Surely you will not get shot if you pay your ticket, but of course that is only because you comply.  In the same way you won’t be shot if you give a mugger the cash.

The term tolerance is meaningless in the face of violence. In the same way sex organs, skin pigmentation, sexual orientation, and social class are arbitrary for any kind of claim to authority or right to violence, so are the blue and green costumes of policemen and soldiers completely arbitrary to any kind of claim to the right of authority and violence.

The consistent application of the principle of tolerance is not the left, socialism, communism, or anything like it, but rather libertarianism (and by libertarianism, I mean anarchism). Because it is violence that is at the heart of bigotry, and what is government other then a monopoly on violence?