A bad sign: intolerance for tolerance
Recently, I arrived at a moment of introspection about a curious aspect of my own behavior. When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they listen, they respond, I talk some more, and at the end of it we get along just as we always have. But I've discovered that when a progressive friend says something with which I disagree or that I know to be incorrect, I'm hesitant to point it out. This hesitancy is a consequence of the different treatment one tends to receive from those on the Right and Left when expressing a difference of opinion. I am not, as it turns out, the only one who has noticed this.
"That's a stupid fucking question," answered a Socialist Alliance activist when I asked sincerely where they were getting what sounded like inflated poverty statistics. "If you don't believe in gay marriage or gun control, unfriend me," demand multiple Facebook statuses from those I know. "That's gross and racist!" spluttered a red-faced Ben Affleck when the atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris
criticized Islamic doctrines on Bill Maher's
Real Time. Nobody blinks an eye when Harris criticizes Christianity, least of all Affleck, who starred in Kevin Smith's
irreverent religious satire Dogma. But Christians are not held to be a sacrosanct and protected minority on the political Left. As
Skeptic Magazine's Michael Shermer tweeted recently:
Comment: The Russian Center for Syrian reconciliation is holding talks with the leaders of the illegal armed units on the withdrawal of the second group of militants from the Damascus' suburb of Eastern Ghouta, the center's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Zolotukhin, said. Militants in Eastern Ghouta plan staging a chemical attack on March 11 to accuse of it the Syrian governmental forces, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mehdad told reporters on Saturday.