Everyone loves invoking the paradox of tolerance because it makes you sound smart and progressive.
Paradoxically, it’s most often used as an excuse to be intolerant of some group that you have arbitrarily branded as intolerant.
I hereby pronounce you intolerant, thereby according to the docterine of the paradox of tolerance you are forthwith stripped of your right to be tolerated.
As always, the problem is nuanced and you need to consider carefully the extent to which you’re willing to tolerate what level of intolerance under what circumstances.
Nazis and proud boys often self-identify. And still enjoy the respect and understanding that centrists deny to anyone on their left.
The label isn’t arbitrary when you’ve earned it by how you act. You have decided to arbitrarily label your opponent here as “intolerable” based on no evidence. Conservatives at large have been labeled “intolerable” based on their abject refusal to support basic protections of human rights and safety, bad-faith arguments, bait and switching, lying directly to the faces of their constituents as well as to other lawmakers who require an assumption of trust in order to operate, and actively and frequently calling for violence and murder against non-violent members of the out-group.
Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa, and overstepping those bounds causes the social contract to be voided. When you void your own social contract then you are personally responsible for whatever happens outside of the protection of that contract. Don’t want to get punched in the face? It’s real easy then, don’t tell me that my sister deserves to be murdered. Like will be met with like.
Paradoxically, it’s most often used as an excuse to be intolerant of some group that you have arbitrarily branded as intolerant.
This just isn’t a thing.
