Howard Rotberg on "Tolerism"

The great value of new words that play, like puns, on the old, is that they can open up new ways for people to see and to exchange their differences and thus contribute to building up understanding of our shared reality, saving it from decaying into tired cliches that with time become less and less able to make sense of what is an ever-changing world. We can only engage seriously with a reality that we are helping to name and construct, and not with one that has been lost to cliche. The play on words is thus essential if we hope to successfully recognize and mediate our differences going forward. Perhaps nowhere is the need for new words and concepts greater than in our now deeply-cliched discussions of "tolerance" and "discrimination". At a time when we can read of government officials outlawing job ads that ask for "reliable" workers, because this might be discriminatory towards the unreliable, we know we are in desperate need for fresh ideas, or just plain old sanity (the two going together), about what it means to "discriminate", a word that not long ago had positive connotations for it pointed to a superior, not lesser, accounting of reality.

Something the same can be said for the word "tolerance" which our friend Howard Rotberg has taken on in his new book Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed (now also available at amazon.ca) We hope to have a review of Tolerism up at this blog before too long. In the meantime, let's look at an excerpt from Howard's interview by Jamie Glazov at this week's Frontpage (readers who are in areas where the Michael Coren tv show is broadcast can also watch Howard's guest appearance tomorrow night (Wednesday the 27th):

FP: What is the difference between tolerance and Tolerism?

Rotberg: Over the years, such philosophers as Karl Popper and John Rawls had struggled with the idea of toleration and what limits must be placed on the tolerance of the intolerant, who, without such limitations could destroy the tolerant and the ways of tolerance. As the Second World War becomes a distant memory, we have noticed an alarming development: Instead of warnings about appeasement of Evil, we are told by the post-religious that there is no good and evil, only “competing narratives” which in a world of cultural relativism, means that western distinguished historians are given no more respect than mere polemicists, and that liberalism in Israel is given no higher respect than the totalitarian propaganda machines of its neighbours. The causes of Tolerism, then, are political correctness, cultural and moral relativism and moral equivalency.

Tolerism, the ideology, involves not just a tolerance of what should be intolerable, and the failure to set reasonable limits on tolerance, but an intolerance of opposing viewpoints within liberal democracies, and an element of self-hatred, cultural masochism, and delusions about the difference between social tolerance and political tolerance. Those who seek justice are mocked with the allegation that we are seeking “vengeance,” as Spielberg did with his dastardly re-writing of history in the movie Munich to show that Israel, and, impliedly, the Bush administration, were all about retribution and vengeance instead of the supposedly enlightened trait of tolerance. Tolerism, then, is the ideology of those who have attempted to cast off the Judeo-Christian ethics of justice and morality, and the sanctity of human life and fundamental liberties, and instead seek to undermine the great liberal democracies by their unwillingness to accept that tolerance has limits and that justice is far more important.

[...]

FP: What is the connection between Tolerism and anti-Semitism?

Rotberg: There are several: Firstly, to the extent that Tolerism contains a large dose of self-hatred, or the hatred of America and Israel standing for all that is good – liberal freedoms and human rights- a large number of Tolerists (think Naomi Klein here) begin to hate America and the Jewish state equally. These haters of all that is good relate well to Radical Islam which is the repository of unbridled hate for all things Jewish and American. While historically, up until the 1940s, Islam accepted Jews as dhimmis, Radical Islam has never accepted Jews in the Middle East, which is, according to them, Dar-Al-Islam, once and forever Muslim territory, notwithstanding the continual presence of Jews for 3500 years.

Secondly, Tolerism posits a type of moral and cultural relativism that resents states like America and Israel striving for the morality and justice advocated in the Bible. As well, if Islamic totalitarian theocracies or Palestinian death cults are as morally valid as any other position, then the Jewish narrative must by its nature be extremist and hence suspect. This is why there is such little regard paid in the topic of “refugees” for the nearly one million Jews who were expelled from Arab countries in the 1940s, and were taken in and resettled by Israel. The United Nations then can create a separate organization for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and be utterly silent about the Jewish refugees from Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Thirdly, I referred to Spielberg’s travesty of a movie, Munich, which portrays the Jew-nation of Israel as vengeful and intent on retribution, compared to the supposed Christian virtues of tolerance and mercy. This is a theme that is best explored in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, where a proper reading of this classic shows a man so marginalized and abused by society that he ends up, as a result of this marginalization, vengefully obsessed with retributive justice, which of course is denied to him, because the very Court proceeding has been corrupted by Portia impersonating the Judge. An improper reading, such as was done by the Englishman Michael Radford in the most recent movie version of The Merchant of Venice, makes the Jew Shylock the archetype for the supposedly vengeful Jews and Americans exacting a negative form of Justice against the poor, oppressed terrorists or the Iraqi terror state. The fact that the worst terrorists have university educations and come from above average income families is irrelevant to the anti-Semitic fantasy that the intolerant Americans and Israelis are the new Nazis and supposedly deserve the terrorism inflicted on them. It is all anti-Semitic in nature.

FP: How do we find the limits of tolerance?

Rotberg: Starting with the great philosophers of Toleration, we would have to accept, like Karl Popper that “if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

But just as important, we have to begin to discuss how Tolerism and its associated ideologies are behind many of the delusions about the nature of the war that has begun against us, and the nature of the enemy. We must learn that Terrorism is successful precisely because it creates what I call a “Cultural Stockholm Syndrome” or a cultural response similar to the “Patty Hearst Syndrome” where we begin to indentify with our terrorist oppressors and begin to accept small benefits from them as part of a submission to their will and values. The idea that the West can defeat terrorism by more tolerance of the evil perpetrators of murder directed at civilians, is, quite frankly, preposterous.

In the book, I explore a variety of ways to find a suitable limitation for tolerance, and I refer to writings of such heroic writers as David Solway, David Horowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Greenfield, Vijay Kumar, and even moderate Muslims like Tarek Fatah (who has called for a clear statement by Islamic theologians that Jihad must henceforth be only construed as an individual inner struggle for spirituality rather than be construed as an outer-directed violent struggle against Jews, Christians and Hindus). I hope that my book induces further discussion of what are the limits of tolerance.

Read the whole thing...

UPDATE:

SDAMatt has put up a video covering one part of the Coren show:

Excellent essay on the misconceptions of "tolerance" and "open-mindedness" in today's mulitcultural empire

Do read the whole thing (HT: Dag), but here's an excerpt, from the desk of A. Millar:

From prosecuting people for flying the England flag to kindergarten guidelines suggesting that if a child as young as three says “yuk” at spicy food that this is a sign of racism. From the erosion of free speech to the unwillingness of police to prosecute or even investigate crimes such as burglary. From the attempt to deport Gurkha war heroes that had fought for Britain to the protection of terrorists from deportation in case their human rights might be violated abroad. From the harassment of moderate Muslim and Conservative MP Baroness Warsi for suggesting that parliament discuss the crisis in immigration to then London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s open support of terrorism-supporter Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Or from lower sentences for honor-killing (and thus less protection for Muslim women) to cultural apartheid and the creation of Muslim ghettos. Close-minded “tolerance” has encouraged – even demanded – all of this.

And close-minded tolerance has meant that liberals have protested that sharia is a “right” of Muslims, because, they argue, Jews have their own courts. It is not a question of allowing one group to have their law because another has its law, but rather it is a question of whether these laws are just. Are women given an equal or lower status, for example? From what I know about Jewish law it in no way conflicts with democracy. As we know that women, homosexuals, and non-Muslims are regarded as inferiors in sharia, to defend its use as a right is absurd. How, for example, can it be a right of Muslim women to have less rights? Or for a Muslim man to allow his wife or daughters to have less rights?

Of course, if by “tolerance” we had meant the kind of laissez-faire attitude that underpins mature democracies (such as allowing, and even defending the right of, all sides to speak, regardless of whether we agree with the expressed views or vehemently oppose them) then the worst we could say would be that the term was being used wholly inaccurately. “Tolerance” has undoubtedly been peddled in part in a misguided attempt to make it more like the US, but Britain does not understand the country with which they claim to have a “special relationship.” Britain, EU member states, and their populations have a love-hate relationship with the US. On the one hand they admire it for its “diversity,” modernity, cities, etc. On the other hand they believe that US culture, such as freedom of speech, is the culture of a people with no clear view of right and wrong.

I should like to point out that, on the contrary, freedom of speech only emerges in cultures with a very clear view of right and wrong indeed – and that includes the US. Once, Britain was also known for being one of these countries. Journalist Luigi Albertini, who risked his life to write against Italy’s fascist regime, was inspired by his time in London and at The Times newspaper during the first quarter of the twentieth century. This, according to his brother, “confirmed in him the faith in ideas and in the possibility, in a free country, of promoting the elevation of minds through discussion and objective, unprejudiced criticism.” (Frank Rosengarten, The Italian Anti-fascist Press (1919-1945), p 34.) Today no-one would describe Britain in such terms.
[...]
When I first heard someone say that multiculturalism is natural and that Britain had always been multicultural I was entirely skeptical. If so, I wondered, why have we only recently heard of multiculturalism? On reflection, the speaker appears to have meant that it is natural for societies to be composed of different types of people doing and thinking different things, and in this sense he was undoubtedly correct. It would seem, that whether the speaker knows it or not, he or she is saying that multiculturalism is in accord with natural law. But, if so, they are wrong. Marriage may be natural – or at least in accord with natural law – but an ideology of ‘marriage-ism,’ or laws forcing everyone to marry, would quickly undermine marriage, just as laws that appear to enforce the government’s vision of multicultural Britain have fragmented society, created ghettos, have emboldened extremists at the sake of moderates, and given rise to seething resentment.

The natural can be allowed, but cannot be legislated into existence. Open-mindedness is manifest when people feel that they are in the same boat. When people feel this, racial and religious distinctions either disappear or are actually regarded as interesting. Cultures coexist without animosity in cities such as New York (which is now seen as a model for Britain to copy), not because multiculturalism is enforced by law, but because it is not enforced by law. Because the government seems to stay out of people’s private business, and because the police concern themselves with crime, not thought crime.

Indeed, while the US has had its share of racial troubles – and while there is still a problem with illegal immigration in particular – where it has overcome them, it has done so because of a shared belief in its Constitution. It is the belief in “liberty and justice for all” that supports an American nationalism that crosses racial and religious boundaries.

In other words, America works to the extent it remains a covenantal nation where the constitution is the most sacred of all American things (which might help explain to non-Americans the interest in the little scandal of the Chief Justice and President Obama flubbing the oath of office yesterday.)

Let's stop "tolerating" the abuse of our language and common sense

Howard Rotberg is not content to relocate Tennyson's lotus eaters:

My forthcoming book, Exploring Vancouverism: The Political Culture of Canada's Lotus Land views the "Lotus Land" culture of Vancouver, where organized religion has its fewest proponents on a per capita basis in all of Canada, as a culture that has abandoned the yardsticks of Good versus Evil. The mariners in Alfred Tennyson's great poem, "The Lotos Eaters" land on the idyllic shores of a Lotus Land where life on the beautiful beaches is complemented by the intoxication of eating the "Lotos" leaves brought by the natives. Soon the mariners decide not to go back to Greece and resume their struggles for good versus evil, because, after all, what pleasure do they derive from that struggle, as compared to life in Lotus Land.

In fact, if one checks out the on-line Urban Dictionary, (www.urbandictionary.com),

one sees that there is a term being used by young people, called Tolerism, but it is defined as: One's skill in consuming massive quantities of alcohol without displaying obvious signs of drunkenness.

I suggest that in our wider culture, Tolerism is the skill in consuming massive quantities of political correctness, and moral and cultural relativism, without displaying the obvious signs of the drunken leniency toward, and even taking pleasure in, the slow ascendancy of Islamist values of terrorism, breach of human rights, and attempted reversals of the wonderful liberties and advances made in western societies, where church and state have been successfully separated, and an enormous degree of freedom reigns.

The drunken Tolerists, with the abymsal ideology of Tolerism threaten all that we have accomplished.

That's from Part I of Howard's essay on the ideology of Tolerism. It's a powerful way of summing up the moral sickness that has flowed from our descent into cultural and personal non-judgmentalism, all in the name of a "tolerance" which cannot mean very much if you yourself do not have a clear centre, a clear sense of right and wrong, from which to truly tolerate other positions. If you have given up on that hard, Eurocentric, heteronormative stuff, you know, good and evil, then you can't really be tolerant. True tolerance comes from recognizing the limits of your own ability to know good and evil; but to get there, first you have to try to know as much as you can...

In fact, once you have given up thinking hard about good and evil, in a world where human reality is such that there nonetheless is always such a thing as good and evil, better and worse, you must descend into a mythic consciousness and ritual practise that will positively require the public rendering of a whole array of sacrificial victims to replace your society's former, more rational, more "Eurocentric", more monotheistic, approach to learning about right and wrong, and hence about true tolerance of your own limits in knowing right and wrong. And in becoming religiously dependent on a culture of victims, i.e. on a mythological system of many victims, or gods, you will become relatively more evil - i.e. more in need of bloody rituals - than were our immediate forebears in Western modernity.

If all gods are equal, if that's your idea of "tolerance", then the inevitable conflicts between the gods cannot be mediated rationally but must be proven in the fatalistic flow of events, though "observation" on who, today, but maybe not tomorrow, is the noble victim and who the ennobled or ignoble sacrificer (or vice versa). And since such "observation", your unscientific questing after signs of divine favour, will become so important to you, you will act to anticipate it by encouraging events to move in the direction of rendering more victims, not that you will be very aware of what you are doing.

So we should definitely welcome Howard's redefining of "tolerism". In Part Two of his essay, Howard notes:

Treating very bad behaviour with excessive leniency, and even taking unrestrained pleasure in that behaviour, hardly seems to me an admirable ideology. Yet, over and over again, we are told that "Tolerance" is our most important value. I disagree.

Now, when talking to Tolerists, I avoid the Israel-Arab problem entirely and I just ask them what they would have done with Hitler and the Nazis. Would it have been an admirable and tolerant position to be lenient with the Nazis?

If you think that the Tolerist mind gives in at that point, I have news for you. I have now heard the argument, made in all seriousness by a highly educated (but morally infantile) Vancouverite, that the Nazis were, in his opinion, the result of the Allies after World War 1, imposing draconian terms on the losing Germans. To this Tolerist, then, in an astounding leap of tolerist logic, the Americans were responsible for World War Two and even the Holocaust!

The Tolerists have infected so much of our Cultural Elites. Here is the example of PenCanada which gave its inagaural 2005 Paul Kidd Award for Journalistic Courage to an anti-American ranter named Paul William Roberts, as if it takes courage nowadays to join the chorus of anti-Americans. Roberts succeeded in getting a three page excerpt from his nonsensical book carried by the Globe & Mail, which shows the current reach of Tolerism.

Follow the above link to read Howard's letter to the Globe and Mail condemning their publication of Roberts' infantile polemics. Finally, in his latest post, Howard considers how the British love for the masochistic has led them to be the world leaders in "tolerism".