17 January 2010

When Can, or Should, Toleration Be Suspended?

In Visions of Order, Richard Weaver argues that modern, liberal society may suspend tolerance under one circumstance - when the competing civilization attributes immanence to its forms. That is certainly the case with Islam.

How can we continue to tolerate an aggressive and growing minority who believe it their God-given right to overthrow our governments and reduce us to penury? The Netherlands' prosecutors of Geert Wilders have not thought through the larger questions and seem to maintain that total tolerance must be enforced at all times, even if it leads the the destruction of the very system they are using to prosecute him - the system Wilders is trying to save. [New English Review] Read more