Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Fareed Zakaria: Liberals think they're tolerant, but they're not - CNN.com
What do you think? Does he make a good point?
What do you think? Does he make a good point?
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"Liberals think they're tolerant, but they're not."
- Thread starter Father Heathen
- Start date
Liberals aren't tolerant, that is true. But the context of said intolerance is important. Being intolerant of bigotry regarding homosexuality ,women's health, minority rights, etc; I think is a good type of intolerance to have.
Agreed.
I agree.
Thinking about topics of disagreement, even rabid fundamentalist conservatives treat this atheist with interest & civility. Not always with respect, but civility is more important to me. While seldom open to real change, they're interested in a very foreign perspective. Perhaps it's cuz I'm a curiosity than a threat to their belief system.....like an animal in a zoo.
But liberals are more diverse, in that many are engaging & civil....& others many are extremely hostile to different opinions & values.
This is just personal experience.
No one ask links to evidence.
Thinking about topics of disagreement, even rabid fundamentalist conservatives treat this atheist with interest & civility. Not always with respect, but civility is more important to me. While seldom open to real change, they're interested in a very foreign perspective. Perhaps it's cuz I'm a curiosity than a threat to their belief system.....like an animal in a zoo.
But liberals are more diverse, in that many are engaging & civil....& others many are extremely hostile to different opinions & values.
This is just personal experience.
No one ask links to evidence.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
I wouldn't expect anything less from the dear fellow.
In my experiences it is a mixed bag depending on which forum I post in.
crowfeather
One
While there are a minority of reasonable people that self-identify as socialists, the vast majority exhibit the exact behavior of those they are so eager to hate for being what they themselves are. In a nutshell: intolerant bigots.
This is not opinion. It is consistent and long experience. That said, the island upon which I live is a bastion of leftists so far left that they don't even appear on any map.
Lucky me to live among them, in an otherwise beautiful place.
But that's why they are here: it's not diverse or vibrant enough, and so they must commandeer it, and ruin it to their own specs.
Saving the world, and working for world peace, etc.
While abusing anybody who is physically located anywhere near them who is not them.
Ah well. You can see why I am a taoist. It's the only means I have ever found to cope with such humans.
This is not opinion. It is consistent and long experience. That said, the island upon which I live is a bastion of leftists so far left that they don't even appear on any map.
Lucky me to live among them, in an otherwise beautiful place.
But that's why they are here: it's not diverse or vibrant enough, and so they must commandeer it, and ruin it to their own specs.
Saving the world, and working for world peace, etc.
While abusing anybody who is physically located anywhere near them who is not them.
Ah well. You can see why I am a taoist. It's the only means I have ever found to cope with such humans.
I find similar experiences IRL & on internet forums.
Kuzcotopia
If you can read this, you are as lucky as I am.
Yeah, some 22 year old kids with no life experience are intolerant of other's ideas. Not sure anybody thought that was a surprise.
What continues to be surprising is the constant projection of those kids' attitudes and behaviors on all liberal voices and ideas. He's guilty of that, unfortunately.
So no, he doesn't make a good point.
Downloaded this and watched it. He was Right On. His point was that people should listen to others who have opposing views. That is absolutely vital to respecting the human soul in other people. I understand sometimes that is too hard, and there is also a time to walk out in protest. His points are correct. People should listen to one another.
(Don't play flashplayer videos willy-nilly from just any old site. Security. Security. Security. Generally speaking its A BAD IDEA to have the flashplayer on ANY intel-compatible based computer. Note that your OS will tell you that it is not responsible for your security. That's because you've probably got an Intel or similar processor that cannot be secured due to something called 'Buffer Overrun' vulnerabilities. We all have them. Say No to flashplayer (unless you have a separate hard drive and OS for it like I do. Then you can say Yes, but don't use it on the same system that you do any business on. If you have, stop; switch to another computer and change your passwords. This is not UFO stuff. This is serious.)
(Don't play flashplayer videos willy-nilly from just any old site. Security. Security. Security. Generally speaking its A BAD IDEA to have the flashplayer on ANY intel-compatible based computer. Note that your OS will tell you that it is not responsible for your security. That's because you've probably got an Intel or similar processor that cannot be secured due to something called 'Buffer Overrun' vulnerabilities. We all have them. Say No to flashplayer (unless you have a separate hard drive and OS for it like I do. Then you can say Yes, but don't use it on the same system that you do any business on. If you have, stop; switch to another computer and change your passwords. This is not UFO stuff. This is serious.)
Maybe they're intolerant nowadays; I'm not really sure. I don't think that's really the issue, though. The thing is, liberals aren't really acting like liberals of old. Their actions would indicate that they're afraid of open discussion and debate, which makes them look like intellectual cowards. They're perfectly free to protest and shun whatever it is they don't like, but either they do so as religious zealots howling against heresy - or they can do so as intellectuals approaching the issue on that level.
Also, there was once a time when liberals were able to acknowledge what was a symptom of a problem versus its deeper causes. I remember when it was once said that "crime is a symptom, not a cause." Liberals don't seem to take these approaches anymore. It's similar with all this hullabaloo over Trump. They present it as if Trump just sort of descended from nowhere, like some kind of "evil spirit," indicating that liberals don't even take the time to know or understand their own country anymore. What's more is that they don't even want to know.
My experience is that most people liberal or conservative claim to be tolerant excluding the extremes which are obviously intolerant, but even they on the surface may claim to be tolerant but like everyone else with certain qualifications . . .
I do believe on average that liberals are more 'inclusive' in their definition of their 'sense of community.'
I personally believe tolerance is simply a degree of intolerance where you have to believe that someone or a group of people are in some way different and you feel there is need to tolerate them.
It sounds like Fareed Zakaria has a problem with tolerance of liberals.
Personally I am intolerant of anti-science religion, extremism that advocates violence as a solution to name a few. If given some further thought I could possibly come up with quite a few things I am intolerant of, or I struggle to find a reason to tolerate them . . .
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I don't think the article has a point.
It seems to be mistaking open rejection of certain viewpoints for "silencing":
LIke it or else, there are situations when people have to choose between being incisive or instead being complacent.
A necessary part of free speech is the preservation of the right to be, shall I say, rude towards particularly abhorrent political stances so that there is no mistaking about one's degree of disagreement.
It seems to be mistaking open rejection of certain viewpoints for "silencing":
LIke it or else, there are situations when people have to choose between being incisive or instead being complacent.
A necessary part of free speech is the preservation of the right to be, shall I say, rude towards particularly abhorrent political stances so that there is no mistaking about one's degree of disagreement.
crowfeather
One
Did you know that only a few years back, conservatism was considered the standard of normal by which normal was measured?
By 'only a few years back', I refer to an era when things worked, countries and their citizens knew who they were, and people were polite to each other.
Now it's a case of conservative = skinhead nazi fascist pig.
Interesting development, eh? I fear it does not bode well.
By 'only a few years back', I refer to an era when things worked, countries and their citizens knew who they were, and people were polite to each other.
Now it's a case of conservative = skinhead nazi fascist pig.
Interesting development, eh? I fear it does not bode well.
siti
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure he really does have a point. My take on this is that today's graduating students are just more politically aware than they used to be. They know what the speakers invited to their campuses stand for and (for many of them at least) they sense a once in a lifetime opportunity to make their feelings known. When I graduated, I didn't know anything about the politics of the speaker at my graduation ceremony. It wouldn't have made any difference whether I was liberally-inclined or ultra-conservative in my own views.
But I don't understand why protesting graduates are taken as emblematic of liberalism. Graduating students are aware, connected and flexing their political wings - and perhaps 'muscle' - in many cases for the first and last time. I don't think that is a symptom of liberalism so much as it is a symbol of our times.
Genuine mature-thinking liberals are certainly tolerant of free speech - as a matter of principle - and are often criticized for that very principle. And there is a danger in it of course. If you are prepared to tolerate extreme voices, then there is a risk that intolerant racist, homophobic...etc. views are propagated. So it becomes a question of how far the liberal should be prepared to tolerate intolerance. I don't know the answer to that now, let alone when I was a graduating student.
In any case, if graduating students are really as intelligent as their degrees suggest, it must already be clear to them - almost as clear as it is to this jaded socialist - that democracy (or at least the pseudo-democratic cronyistic partocracy that passes for it in the western world these days) is a failed experiment - how many Trumps and Brexits do we need to prove that? The question for liberals is how can that be fixed without resorting to the very extreme measures that liberals live and breathe to oppose?
But I don't understand why protesting graduates are taken as emblematic of liberalism. Graduating students are aware, connected and flexing their political wings - and perhaps 'muscle' - in many cases for the first and last time. I don't think that is a symptom of liberalism so much as it is a symbol of our times.
Genuine mature-thinking liberals are certainly tolerant of free speech - as a matter of principle - and are often criticized for that very principle. And there is a danger in it of course. If you are prepared to tolerate extreme voices, then there is a risk that intolerant racist, homophobic...etc. views are propagated. So it becomes a question of how far the liberal should be prepared to tolerate intolerance. I don't know the answer to that now, let alone when I was a graduating student.
In any case, if graduating students are really as intelligent as their degrees suggest, it must already be clear to them - almost as clear as it is to this jaded socialist - that democracy (or at least the pseudo-democratic cronyistic partocracy that passes for it in the western world these days) is a failed experiment - how many Trumps and Brexits do we need to prove that? The question for liberals is how can that be fixed without resorting to the very extreme measures that liberals live and breathe to oppose?
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I didn't know of him beforehand, but it wouldn't seem so.
Fareed Zakaria - Wikipedia
Btw, if anyone objects to this Satan friendly source, I'd
be glad to write a Conservapedia entry to post here.
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siti
Well-Known Member
It was? I grew up understanding that conservatism was not for the likes of us that had 'nowt' to conserve. In my beloved Disunited Queendom (a small island nation formerly considered part of Europe), the Conservative Party still stands for the haves more than the have nots. That seems not to have changed too much as far as I can see - although I have been very far away from it for the best part of two decades.
crowfeather
One
You miss the obvious
It was the 'haves' that decreed what 'normal' was. I was English, too, and a very definite 'have-not'. Yet strangely, I never once resented my lower-class position on the general hierarchy.
While relatively well-off malcontents ranted about the 'bourgeoisie', and distributed copies of The Socialist Worker, I just smiled in non-comprehension, and happily starved.
Hard to believe the change that took place, so quickly. Not hard to recognize that it isn't remotely any kind of improvement.
crowfeather
One
Projecting one's own behavior onto others, and hating them for it, definitely is something to be ashamed of.
But it's never easy to admit to oneself, that one is a complete failure.