|
The
Myth of Tolerance
by Carlos Mantica
When UNESCO declared 1995 as the “Year Against
Intolerance”, the Nicaraguan Institute for Culture
and the Cultural Association “New Acropolis”
planned to publish a cultural supplement under the
title Towards Concord Through Tolerance, whose
objective was “to foster this feeling that seems
to be almost extinct in our peoples.”
My pride was shaken when I found my name next to
the names of thirty-three of the most outstanding
personalities in the nation, who had been invited
to participate in this project. But, once the
temptation was overcome, I consider myself to be
inhibited (or at least embarrassed) from the
possibility to participate in such a lofty
initiative. In fact, even though I share the ideal
of concord, I have justifiable reasons to doubt
that tolerance (or the things that often come
across us under its disguise) is the most
effective way to reach this unity of hearts we
aspire to. In addition, I believe that tolerance,
far from being an almost extinct feeling among our
people, has grown among us to such an extent that
it is almost impossible to distinguish it from
overindulgence.
In order to understand each other better, let us
begin by clarifying concepts. Let us remember that
manipulating words has always been the most
effective tool to corrupt the truth.
The Dictionary of the Spanish Language published
by the Royal Spanish Academy offers us the
following definitions:
Tolerate: 1. To suffer, to
bear patiently. 2. To allow something that is
not held as legitimate, without explicitly
approving of it.
Tolerance: Respect and consideration for
the opinions or practices of others, even if
they are disgusting to us.
The quickest reading of these definitions
immediately shows that, in the name of tolerance,
many things are demanded today that go beyond the
scope of the notion of tolerance. When we read,
for example, the manifestos and literature of the
Gay Movement or of certain (lesbian) trends in the
Feminist Movement, we realize that neither of them
simply intends to be tolerated, that is, to be
withstood patiently without approval, but
precisely the opposite. They intend, and have
managed to achieve, to have their sexual
preferences be approved and placed at a level of
social equality with the heterosexual relationship
that makes the perpetuation of the human race
possible. They require that the remaining 98% of
us be the ones to change, not only in attitude,
leaving behind extreme positions that would make
them victims of mockery and contempt, but to
change our minds and even our morality, and to
raise their particularity to the level of an
inalienable right. None of this demands tolerance.
It all began with a sexual revolution that emptied
sexual relationship from every sense of
responsibility and separated it from procreation,
encouraging the use of contraceptives, up to the
point of limiting it to the mere sphere of
pleasure (which is also claimed as a right). Now
it has come to the point of claiming the right of
homosexuals and lesbians to marry and to adopt
children that will grow up in their image and
likeness. The request for understanding and
respect (tolerance) has now become a demand for
equality of job opportunities. Now this is claimed
as a right, and companies, schools, or the army,
are required to hire or recruit members of those
groups in specified proportions.
All of these are achievements have already
obtained in the United States and in other
countries, and they might have an explanation
under a different name or pretext (perhaps as an
effective tool for birth control), but certainly
not as an expression of tolerance, unless the
definition of tolerance is twisted and inflated.
The same can be said of abortion, which went from
being tolerated by the state to being demanded as
a right, so that contributors are currently
required to finance with their taxes, in state
clinics, the free enactment of a form of murder
they cannot agree with.
These three things—homosexuality, lesbianism and
abortion—plus so many others that are added day by
day, have as their common argument the notion that
we are the owners of our own bodies.
As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters:
The humans are always putting up
claims to ownership which sound equally funny in
Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing
so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity
comes from men’s belief that they “own” their
bodies—those vast and perilous estates,
pulsating with the energy that made the worlds,
in which they find themselves without their
consent and from which they are ejected at the
pleasure of Another!
The examples above do not exhaust the long list of
things that are required today in the name of
tolerance. In the past few weeks we witnessed the
great mess that emerged concerning the
accumulation of garbage in our sidewalks. Nobody
thinks about claiming for tolerance or come out in
defense of filth or pollution. But it is precisely
tolerance that is claimed as a right (the right to
freedom of expression) by those who set out to
fill with garbage and filth, not our streets, but
our homes, and the minds of our children, through
the propagation of violence, pornography and
stupidity in the mass media.
This reminds me of the words of Aleksandr I.
Solzhenitsyn in his address at Harvard University
in 1978:
Western society today has revealed the
inequality between freedom for good and freedom
for evil… The defense of the rights of the
individual has come to such an extreme, that it
leaves society in a state of defenselessness
against certain individuals. It is the task of
the West to advocate, not so much human rights,
but human duties.
I honestly wonder whether tolerance thus
understood can really be a way to concord, or
whether it has actually been and will continue to
be a cause for discord. I wonder whether the
current Nicaraguan crisis, our greatest stumbling
block that can lead us once more into chaos, is
not precisely the tolerance that has been shown
towards the intolerable.
Tolerance has a limit, which is the one set by
law. You cannot expect concord from tolerance to
governmental corruption which is punished by law,
or to the arbitrary usurpation of private or state
property, or to the destruction or damage to the
properties of the people, or to closing streets
and highways, or to the takeover of public
buildings, or to environmental pollution disguised
as a right to strike.
The reason why I believe that such a tolerance
cannot be a way to concord is very serious. The
concord of peoples and the peaceful common life of
citizens is based on the respect for the rights of
others. In Benito Juárez’s words, “Respect for the
rights of others is peace.”
But, which is even more serious, human concord and
common life are based on what sociologists have
called the social contract. This social contract
inescapably requires an agreement concerning the
things that can be permitted and the things that
cannot. It assumes a set of ideas, values and
patterns of behavior we all agree to and to which
we all agree to submit ourselves. Historically,
what our nations took as the basis for this social
contract is Judeo-Christian law and tradition,
which they cast in innumerable ways into their
constitutions and laws.
At all times there were people who broke these
laws, but their behavior did not invalidate the
acceptance of the fact that their act was not
permissible, and that those who acted against
those values incurred the punishment and the
weight of the law.
Democratic nations decided that it would be the
people themselves who would set the laws, through
representatives elected by the people. And these
representatives, in turn, would legislate in
support of the ideas, values and patterns of
behavior of the majority they were representing
and who had elected them. There existed, then, a
social contract that minorities were supposed to
respect.
Over the last few decades, two phenomena have come
up that presage a very dark future for mankind as
a whole. The first is a result of relativism, of
subjectivism and of atheistic secular humanism.
What these three trends ultimately say is that
every man is his own master and can govern himself
by his own conscience, and nobody can impose on
him a set of laws or values from without, in the
name of an authority or of a higher being that
does not exist.
We cannot attain a social contract if the dominant
idea is that every individual is his own master,
and that he has his own good reasons and therefore
the right to be and to act as he wills. Perhaps
for the first time in history we are facing the
impossibility of drafting a social contract that
can safeguard common life.
The second phenomenon is that of those democracies
which, in their concern to safeguard the rights of
minorities, have to such extent broken the rights
of majorities that, what once was the government
of the people, by the people and for the people
has now become the government of organized
minorities, with the tolerance and complicity of
so-called silent majorities.
The tolerance of disrespect for the desires and
concerns of majorities to benefit the interests or
whims of minorities is not the best way towards
concord. Minorities have their rights, but their
rights are also limited by respect for the rights
of others and by the laws that protect the common
good.
If to tolerate is to suffer, to patiently bear and
allow something that is not considered to be
lawful, without explicitly approving of it, then
the most tolerant person I know is God himself,
who defines himself as slow to anger, rich in
mercy, but who does not leave the guilty
unpunished.
God is so tolerant that he patiently bears our
sins, and permitted his Son to suffer for those
sins on a cross. He is willing to forgive the
unforgivable which is sin, yet he does not excuse,
approve or ignore sin, but calls us to repentance.
The problem begins when we mistake forgiving for
excusing. To forgive means to restore a
relationship with someone we recognize as guilty.
(One cannot forgive the innocent.) To excuse is to
declare that the guilty has no guilt.
God never excuses sin, but calls it by its name.
Forgiveness erases the guilt of the repentant
sinner, but does not dissimulate, cover up or
minimize guilt. Neither does it call right
something that is wrong.
I think something similar happens with tolerance.
Concord calls us to suffer, to patiently bear and
allow something that we do not consider to be
lawful, but without explicitly approving of it. It
calls for respect and consideration towards the
views or practices of others, even if they are
disgusting to ours. But it does not call us or
require us to call right something that is wrong,
or to grant as right something that is a violation
of a law.
Perhaps this essay will put to the test the
tolerance of those who often reply with insults
and accusations to the views of those who oppose
them.
This
article is adapted from the book, From
Egghead to Birdhood (hatch or rot as a
Christian), (c) copyright 2001 Carlos
Mantica.
Carlos
Mantica is a founder of The City of God
community (La Cuidad de Dios) in Managua,
Nicaragua, and a founding leader of the Sword
of the Spirit. He served as
president of the Sword of the Spirit
between 1991 and 1995.
|
