‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
The masters of our culture, the elites from academia, media, entertainment and politics understand that the contemporary culture war is all about power. And so every culture clash revolves around power and a determination of who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed, who is the victim and who is the victimizer. And our words, which should be the key to good communication and erudite thought have become a tool to shut down communication and thought. Do we not see the irony in the term “cancel culture”?
As an author of five books on ideologies and values, I have become very sensitive to the use and misuse of problematic terms in the service of the various ideological wars stemming from political correctness, cultural and moral relativism, wokism and diversity, equity and inclusion.
In this essay, let’s examine three confusing words that seem to require some thought – tolerance, respect, and empathy.
- Tolerance
In my book, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed, I have examined the use and meaning of the word “tolerance” and what I call “tolerism” or the ideology of excess tolerance.
In the Western World, a good portion of liberal academics, journalists, clergymen and politicians now preach that terrorist violence against civilians is not due to lack of tolerance by the terrorists for the liberal west, but that it is due to lack of sufficient tolerance of the liberal west for the “root causes” of the violence espoused by the terrorists.
Once upon a time, a progressive was somebody who believed in social and democratic progress, so that all citizens could share fairly in the bounty of our productive societies. Now, however, people who call themselves “progressive” are often those who tolerate the intolerant terrorists for using violence against civilians, because these terrorists, being minorities with less power than Western governments, are by that reason alone, being oppressed. These progressives think that the more violent these minorities are, the more this proves that they are being oppressed and we in the liberal democracies are the ones doing the oppression. Many also think that we in the West are somehow proto-fascist and have no right to tell other peoples that they are being illiberal.
Sir Karl Popper, the great Austrian/British philosopher lived through the cataclysmic events of Stalinism and Naziism and argued that these totalitarian movements created a paradox for philosophical toleration. He put it this way:
“If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, 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.”
Philosopher John Rawls devoted a section of his influential book A Theory of Justice to this problem: whether a just society should or should not tolerate the intolerant. He also addressed the related issue of whether or not the intolerant have any right to complain when they are not tolerated, within their society.
Rawls concluded that a just society must be tolerant; therefore, the intolerant must be tolerated, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualified this conclusion by insisting, like Popper, that society and its social institutions have a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance. Hence, the intolerant must be tolerated but only insofar as they do not endanger the tolerant society and its institutions.
Indeed, Popper himself wrote in 1981’s “Toleration and Intellectual Responsibility” that we should tolerate intolerant minorities who wish to simply publish their theories as rational proposals, and that we should simply bring to their attention that tolerance is based or mutuality and reciprocity, and that our duty to tolerate a minority ends when they resort to violence.
More difficult, says Popper, is when an intolerant minority passes from rational thought to violence – for example, what of incitement to violence or conspiracy to overthrow liberal democratic institutions? Popper says that the difficulty in finding the dividing line between criminal and non-criminal acts or words should not pose more of a problem here than in other areas of the law, where illegality is a matter of degree and jurisprudence.
Popper states:
“We must not tolerate even the threat of intolerance; and we must not tolerate it if the threat is getting serious.”
This does not mean that we should give up on rational refutations of their intolerant ideas, and their advocacy of violence. Popper argues that almost all such parties seek to justify their violence in a similar way: they allege that our tolerance and our democracy is just a sham, and that we, the allegedly tolerant, were first to use violence and in fact we use violence all the time. Popper draws on the events of his lifetime: he notes how in 1917 it was argued in support of the Communist violence that it was Capitalism that was really the violent system. This was of course followed by an orgy of killing and imprisonment by the Communists. Then came the horror of the Nazi years and the pursuit of the utopia of the Third Reich, based on the slaughter of millions.
Says Popper:
“After these events in Germany, I gave up my absolute commitment to non-violence. I realized there was a limit to toleration.”
And so the Western world advised Israel to tolerate the last twenty years of terrorism and rockets launched from Gaza against peaceful Israeli civilians which fostered a terror state using supplies for weapons and tunnels rather than social good. This led to an extremely barbaric massacre on October 7th by what can only be termed a genocidal hate cult.
The facts:
A poll was conducted of Palestinians by the Arab World for Research and Development, a research organization based in the so-called ‘West Bank’, carried out after the Oct. 7 attacks and following Israel’s military invasion of Gaza.
To the question, “How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?” 59.3 percent supported it strongly, with another 15.7 percent of people supporting it somewhat — a combined total of 75 per cent backing the slaughter of men, women and children.
Would you tolerate twenty years of rockets by a neighbouring country run by a terrorist organization which has a charter calling for the genocide of the Jewish people in Israel? Would you use the word “tolerance” as a prescription for Israel given the facts of what happened even after Israel completely pulled out of Gaza in 2005 to see how a “two-state solution” would work out?
– 2002 to 2014 – 20,000 rockets (Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005)
– 2014 – 4000 rockets and 31 mortars
– 2015 – 49 rockets and 8 mortars (Israel withdrew in August)
– 2016 – 4600 rockets and mortars
– 2017 – 35 rockets and mortars
– 2018 – 395 rockets and 5 mortars
– 2019 – 796 rockets
– 2020 – no statistics available
– 2021 – 4388 rockets
– 2022 – 1179 rockets
– 2023 – 8500 rockets
- Respect
American President Barack Obama chose to make his first overseas appearance in Egypt where he said: “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; …(we) share common principles – principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings”.
Hillary Clinton, who almost became President, spoke about using her feminine skills to create something she called “Smart Power” – “using every possible tool…leaving no one on the sidelines, showing respect even for one’s enemies.” (emphasis added). Respect for one’s enemies? Respect, according to the Oxford Dictionary is defined as “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.” (emphasis added).
Islamism, or radical Islam, seeks a world-wide Caliphate achieved by Jihad, adherence to Shari Law, trickery and forced conversion. Islamism being the goal of Iran and its proxies and other terrorist groups who use beheadings, other murders, torture, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities and gays, and their forced genital mutilation of young girls, their abuse of women and their general disregard for individual human rights, does not deserve our “deep admiration” and does not show any great “qualities” or “achievements”.
3.Empathy
I remember how Rabbi Meir Kahane showed respect for the Arabs. He saw them for who they were, a culture and a people radically different from Jews, who could never mix successfully with Jews. With empathy, he suggested a way to get them to leave Israel: Pay them to go elsewhere. Unfortunately, the plan was not taken up. But he was one of the few Israeli leaders who was realistic about the problem. Perhaps this was because he also respected himself as a Jew, stood his ground, and did not need to invent fantasy solutions to the problem.
Thank you for this important article.
Postmodernism led to nihilism and moral equivalence. It led to an attempt to remove God from the social and cultural fabric of society. The removal of God and Judeo-Christian religion led to moral confusion and the inability to separate good from evil.
One characteristic of psychosis is the confusion between good and evil, and the fear that all of what is good has been irretrievably contaminated by evil.
The cultural decay which began with postmodernist elites came at a time when totalitarian Islamist forces were threatening to destroy Jewish and Christian peoples en masse, and the elites of the West were ill-prepared to see the evil in the Islamist totalitarian dogma.
At the same time, neocons in Washington DC who are war profiteers, saw an opportunity for endless wars as long as Islamism was a threat.
A US President who was a stealth Islamist, Barack Hussein Obama, also saw an opportunity in radical Islam: an opportunity to help the Islamists achieve a global caliphate. He set about to empower Iran to become the hegemon of the Middle East. This he did both before and after Trump’s presidency.
Obama and Biden thus became the enemies of the relatively moderate Sunni Middle Eastern states, as these countries viewed Iran as “the head of the snake” and dangerous to their survival.
The Obama/Biden and globalist criminal administration uses terms like tolerance, respect, and empathy not out of compassion, but to achieve their global caliphate objectives and the objective of destroying the wealth and power of the United States of America and Israel.