The prices of religious toleration
So we have religious toleration in "the West". And we are therefore free to more-or-less get on with our lives. Which is great, and certainly an improvement over the historical alternatives.
Just as an aside, I really don't like the way people use the phrase "the West". I'm a Kiwi. We're to the far east of everyone.
Anyway, back to universal tolerance. On one hand, we have to put up with the hateful mouthings of various flavours of bigots. There's the anti-semetic neo-nazis, the religious fundies of all denominations, and the white supremisist nutters.
On the other hand, we also have the neo-liberal, post-modernist, moral-equivalence fruitcakes. The people that believe that literally anything is better than armed conflict, up to and including state-sponsored poisen gas delivery to whole villages based on their ethnicity.
But unless those who believe in religious toleration are willing to take up arms in defense of people of a faith other than their own, we are faced with a return to the control of the zealots. Any worldview without teeth, is simply doomed for extinction.
That's the way it is, and we simply have to learn to live with it.
Or, to phrase it another way, you are free to disagree with me as long as I am willing to kill or die for your right to do so.
Just as an aside, I really don't like the way people use the phrase "the West". I'm a Kiwi. We're to the far east of everyone.
Anyway, back to universal tolerance. On one hand, we have to put up with the hateful mouthings of various flavours of bigots. There's the anti-semetic neo-nazis, the religious fundies of all denominations, and the white supremisist nutters.
On the other hand, we also have the neo-liberal, post-modernist, moral-equivalence fruitcakes. The people that believe that literally anything is better than armed conflict, up to and including state-sponsored poisen gas delivery to whole villages based on their ethnicity.
But unless those who believe in religious toleration are willing to take up arms in defense of people of a faith other than their own, we are faced with a return to the control of the zealots. Any worldview without teeth, is simply doomed for extinction.
That's the way it is, and we simply have to learn to live with it.
Or, to phrase it another way, you are free to disagree with me as long as I am willing to kill or die for your right to do so.
2 Comments:
Hmmm, some points you've made, could revisit and build on them sometime? But as to those with worldviews without teeth being doomed to extinction...I doubt it, they'll ride through behind those of us willing to shoulder the burden and pay the cost.
By
Anonymous, at 13:20
I'm probably just being a snob. It bugs me that so many people take positions on things without thought. Many people choose to jump on some doctrinaire bandwagon and then never question their assumptions. For example, the default position I saw at Auckland University was anti-american. I heard lecturers talking together about how if any wmd were found, it would be 'cause those warmongering yanks planted them there. Forget what Saddam had been doing to the Kurds, or the shi'ite muslims, everything was done by the yanks, for the yanks. Oh, and for oil. Forget for a moment what the conflict has done to the price of oil.
By
Chewie the furry Baen Sidhe, at 22:15
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