One way to winnow this surfeit of tolerances to a more manageable domain is to lean upon intellectual or political history. It is open to bidding from the most aggrieved and self-righteous of public figures.
Invoked against political protest, rejected as a national value, and conjured as a ground for strictly enforcing the law against children, the tolerance card today (sometimes intolerantly) is seemingly as empty as it is commonplace. Its promiscuity suggests that the word has come adrift from any conceptual or normative anchor. It appears assailed from all sides of the political spectrum. Tolerance, it would seem, is in parlous straits. The policy under which immigrant children are detained is termed, perhaps not coincidentally, “zero tolerance.” Those far-right parties gain ground in the 2019 European Parliament polls. And then there is the immigration detention facility in Clint, Texas, where children as young as seven, “many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears,” care for “infants they’ve just met” without soap, shampoo, toothpaste or showers. In Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherland, far-right parliamentary parties adopt platforms rejecting “multicultural society,” committing to “Western Christian culture” and the closure of all mosques. Sullivan mourns the failure of “reasoned discourse” others condemn students’ “difficulty tolerating moral difference.” The Tarrant County Republican Party votes to remove its vice chair because he is a “practicing Muslim” the vote fails after state and national leaders object. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019Ī waitress at the upscale Chicago cocktail bar Aviary spits upon Eric Trump in an apparent show of political disdain the President’s son complains about the absence of “tolerance.” Harvard University fires faculty dean Ron Sullivan after students protest his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein. Review of The Limits of Tolerance: Enlightenment Values and Religious Fanaticism, by Denis Lacorne
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