Tolerance in name only 

A New Intolerance is nauseatingly abloom on campuses, in government bodies, and in general discourse. It is fortified by a smug delusion of moral superiority paraded by pompous, bumper sticker-slogan vomiting drones. 

This New Intolerance elevates feelings far over facts. It is profoundly nonintellectual.

Traditionally the thinking among inquisitive intellectuals who sought discussion of existential matters was that one could transcend immediate circumstances. Obviously, none could offer first-hand insights into experiences they had not lived, but it was agreed that by incorporating diverse testimonies into their general world knowledge, they were better able to understand and speak universally. 

And we do share a world, after all.

But in the New Intolerance imagining, only members of community X have any business speaking of community X. All outsiders can do, which is reviled, is mansplain, or whitesplain, or whatever-splain.

Not so long ago, many held fast to the noble ideal enunciated so well by Voltaire biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

But those today marching under the New Intolerance banner have no such impulse, no respect for opinion diversity. 

It is, of course, very possible to genuinely support others' rights to speak, associate, travel, petition for redress, etc, without sharing their every philosophy or agreeing with each decision they make.

But to many today, embracing someone's belief is a necessary component of supporting their rights. That is an illogical and immature formulation, but it is the one rallied 'round by annoyingly vociferous hectors. 

Reflect on the increasingly popular, bilious notion that it is wholly acceptable to verbally bully those expressing contrary opinions. To smear them and disrupt their affairs, doubtless as much to aggrandize oneself in the eyes of fellow PC swordsmen as anything else. 

Indeed, there are presently online efforts specifically engineered to relay complaints about private individuals whose social media words displease to their employers. The trumpeted ambition is to threaten adverse publicity for a small business and get offenders fired from their job -- for expressing an opinion.

This flatly obnoxious instinct to stamp out divergent perspectives, effect personal distress on heretics, and enshrine a particular ideology as the One True Belief 
indicates a poverty of moral character that is not ideologically exclusive. 

A line often attributed to 1930s Louisiana Governor Huey Long (but whose actual authorship is disputed) is "When Fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-Fascism!" 

And it is certainly so that garishly mounted and cartoonishly exaggerated nationalism can offer political ingress to undemocratic persuasions.

But so, too, can disingenuous, warm-hugs tolerance that refuses to abide philosophical difference and lashes out with claw and fang at the least hint of variance.

That wretch fancies itself as tolerant, and seemingly never tires of self-congratulation. But rational observers recognize New Intolerance when it looms.