Actually, I really hate the word "tolerance." It has a patronizing color to it, where the intolerant and justified are relegated to the bigot bin. Also, Liberals sometimes don't articulate the limits of their own "tolerant" sensibilities.
One thing that progressives forget, that Marx might have been right about, was how capitalism unleashed novel, peculiar, and liberating sorts of relationships. It harnessed the most elusive of commodities, time, and added to labor and resources, brought a good part of the world an immense amount of leisure and happiness. Granted, this wasn't universal - many people were ripped from their livelihoods [say farming] and brought into new kinds of servitude that would soften the most hardened of capitalists today. Alongside capitalism, however, came various reform movements that mitigated some of harm that ruptured relationships brought. Capitalism only succeeded, however, with a long tradition of common law behind it.
And liberty, and liberalism, rests upon the leisure created by capitalism and laws that enforce the trust between two parties.
If we want to increase liberty in the rest of the world, including the liberty of gay people, then we should do a few simple things. First, we should increase the education and power of women in the third world. Second, we must assist those institutions that provide real economic and social stability. Only when such liberties are first provided, will we see other kinds of liberty be borne. ECUSA should first work for economic liberty in the rest of the world. The rest will follow.
I agree with you about "tolerance" - by definition it is something that the powerful show to the powerless and so is inherently patronising. "Inclusion" should be our watchword.
Posted by: Richard Hall | Oct 20, 2004 at 12:16 PM