ID: A scene from Legally Blonde of a conversation between Warner and Elle in the corridor at Harvard, in 4 panels:

  1. Warner asks “What happened to the tolerant left?”

  2. Elle replies, smiling “Who said we were tolerant?”

  3. Warner continues “I thought you were supposed to be tolerant of all beliefs!”

  4. Elle looks confused “Why would we tolerate bigotry, inequity, or oppression?”

  • @lmmarsano
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    112 hours ago

    If there’s an unacceptable use of Force against the intolerant, then is there one which is acceptable and if there is

    I don’t see how that follows: spell out the logic?

    use of Force against intolerance

    I’m mostly confused, because I was thinking of violence/force used by the intolerant for intolerant acts: that can be justifiably constrained.

    Legal constraint implies force by legal authorities: violators go to jail or get legal penalties.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 hours ago

      Tolerance by itself already does not tolerate harming non-consenting adults, quite independently of the agressor being an intolerant or not.

      Further, violent intolerance is already covered by the rules against violence in general (there is a case to be made about the punishment for intolerant violence being greater than for similar violence which is not intolerant, but I’m not going into that here).

      I was only talking about personal acts in the framework of non-violence, for example speaking out or not against non-violent displays of intolerance, allowing the intolerant to use a space you control to spread their intolerance in a non-violent way and so on.

      So yeah, as soon as Force (be it via a social structure for the exercise of Force such as the Law or outside such structures) is considered against non-violent displays of intolerance, merelly Tolerance as a Social Contract does not suffice to cover it since the initiation of violence against other human beings who are not being violent comes with its own rules of morality.