The observation that “there’s no one as illiberal as a liberal” has again been vindicated, this time by a Dartmouth University survey showing that Democrats are far more intolerant than Republicans.
Reporting on the story, the Blaze writes, “The survey, which came from the college newspaper The Dartmouth, was sent to 4,412 students through their college email addresses. Of those surveyed, around 500 responded.”
“In the survey,” explains the Dartmouth, “undergraduates were asked if learning that another student had political beliefs opposite from their own would affect a range of possible interactions with them.” And the partisan differences were profound. As the paper informs:
Democrats were consistently more likely to indicate conflicting politics negatively affect potential relationships. While 82 percent of respondents who identified [as] Democrats say they would be less likely to date someone with opposing political beliefs, only 47 percent of Independents and 42 percent of Republicans said the same. Similarly, 55 percent of Democratic respondents said opposite political views would make them less likely to befriend another student, compared to 21 percent of Independents and 12 percent of Republicans. Only gender plays nearly as strong of a role in dividing responses. For example, 83 percent of women said they would be less likely to date someone with opposing political views compared to 56 percent of men.
This is unsurprising. Leftists have birthed “hate-speech” laws overseas and speech codes on college campuses, designed to stifle politically incorrect dissent. Conservative students sometimes suffer grade reduction and verbal and even physical attacks, while conservative speakers have been shouted down at colleges — that is, when protests and rioting didn’t force the cancellation of their appearances in the first place. So universities may create “safe spaces,” places where self-proclaimed fonts of tolerance don’t have to hear opinions they find intolerable, but there is no safe space for conservatives in most of modern academia.
This leftist intolerance is exemplified by the current story about how Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, was excoriated on the Internet for eating at Chick-fil-A; the company is despised by the Left because its CEO, Dan Cathy, defended marriage in 2012. Dorsey, obediently politically correct, expressed regret on Sunday over eating at the restaurant. (My bet is that he won’t stop eating there; he’ll just stop publicizing it. “Sacrifice” isn’t a popular word among leftists — unless it’s the human sacrifice called prenatal infanticide.)
In contrast, “tolerance” is a big word among liberals, mostly because few today grasp its meaning. Imagine you’re eating a delectable meal at a fine restaurant, and your waiter approaches and asks, “Sir, how are you tolerating your dinner?” Would this strike you as odd? Or what if you emerged from an uproarious play and the theater manager asked you, “Folks, did you tolerate the performance?” Would you think he had much confidence in it?
“Tolerance” always implies a perceived negative. You have to tolerate a stubborn cold, but not a cold drink on a hot day; that’s something you relish. Thus, if someone demands you be tolerant of “transgenderism,” implicit is the idea that it’s a harmful phenomenon.
So how tolerant are liberals? Consider that most things they implicitly claim to be tolerant of they don’t consider negatives. For example, since they don’t mind (or actually like) homosexual behavior and illegal migration, it’s impossible for them to be tolerant of those actions. “Tolerance” simply doesn’t enter the equation.
As the Dartmouth survey and the above examples illustrate, however, when they do dislike something, watch out! They’ll stop at nothing to destroy it. A case in point is the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, where baker Jack Phillips was persecuted by Colorado officials for refusing to bake a faux-wedding cake. When a conservative finds a business’ practices abhorrent, his instinct is to not patronize it. When a liberal finds a business’ practices abhorrent, his instinct is to not patronize it — and to try to destroy the owner by any means necessary.
Thus have we seen governmental prosecutions of Christian businessmen and threats of violence against them severe enough to close down their establishments. The message is, “You’ll bend to our will or we’ll bend you until you break.”
This also explains the collective tantrum attending President Trump’s rise and assumption of power. Conservatives had to tolerate Barack Obama, and tolerate him they did: They complained, but they followed the law. Leftists have responded to Trump with protesting, rioting, vandalism, and attacks on conservatives, as exemplified by the Antifa fascists (who, of course, claim to be anti-fascist).
Yet claiming one thing but doing another characterizes leftists. They outsource their virtue, expiating their sins by supporting through government what they don’t care enough about to tend to personally, as writer Peter Schweizer illustrated in his 2008 piece, “Don’t listen to the liberals — Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.” One example is that while leftists castigate conservatives for allegedly being numb to the poor’s plight, conservatives actually give far more to charity despite having lower average incomes. Liberals are, as has been said, “bleeding-heart tightwads.”
As for tolerance, it does have its place. An example is when the perceived negative is not an objective one; tolerating and eating a disliked healthful food, for instance, can be virtuous. Another example is when the objective negative cannot be remedied, such as with bad weather; keeping a stiff upper lip can be virtuous in that case.
Now we come to an area in which conservatives should be a bit more like leftists. When the perceived negative is a remediable objective one, the only virtue lies in wiping it out (you don’t tolerate the bubonic plague if you can eliminate it). Oh, liberals are wrong about what’s wrong. But their zeal for attacking what they “feel” is actually negative lies to stark contrast to conservatives, whose tolerance of evil has led to its acceptance and marketing and civilization’s decline, as I explained in the essay “The Acceptance Con.”
In reality, the truth is precisely the opposite of what leftists claim: The more traditional people are today, the more tolerant they tend to be. Why? They have no choice: They have far more to tolerate, as they perceive most of our societal phenomena as negative. After all, “leftism” and its agendas have become the norm.
And, of course, that’s where tolerance of the intolerable gets you.
