Tollerance, Intollerance And Liberty

By: Raymond_Matison

Americans have a well-earned reputation for being tolerant.  This tolerance goes back to before the very foundation of our country.  The original immigrants to Britain’s American Colony often were people escaping some form of oppression in Europe, and thus were quite cognizant and very sensitive to its practice.  Landing in America, these early immigrants quickly became tolerant of each other and learned not to be oppressive to others themselves. 

Colonists remained tolerant, and were loath to oppose the demands of the King of England regarding trade, taxation, or other decrees.  Thus, colonists tolerated policies of their king, which in the colonies were widely seen as unjust.  However, at some later undefined breaking point, perhaps when England required gold for payment settling trade and eliminating colonial scrip as currency which created an economic recession, colonists suddenly changed their acquiescence and became intolerant.  This was good, for it ultimately created a new, separate and independent country based on the rule of law rather than kingly decrees.  Had it not been for their ultimate embrace of intolerance, America would have never come into being.  We would be the docile subjects of England, while the Constitution and American exceptionalism could only be the subject in a book of fiction.

Defining Tolerance

What is the definition of tolerance?  According to Mr. Webster, a tolerant person is one who recognizes and respects or puts up with the beliefs of others - without necessarily holding or sharing those views.  Tolerance ends and intolerance starts at the point at which a person being inundated with views or arguments that he or she cannot morally accept, rather than just putting up with or tolerating them actually starts to take a stand against their protagonist’s views.

Tolerance, when structured within a personal set of moral or defined values, is good; it sets out valid and understandable guidelines for sound personal relations with others.  It is encapsulated by the well-worn phrase that good fences make good neighbors.  

We do need to understand, however, what are the consequences of excessive tolerance on political and economic liberty?  It is quite clear that a certain level of tolerance is necessary for society to function; however, it is also obvious or understandable that being overly tolerant beyond your own moral boundaries can be destructive of both individuals and society.  Allowing others to push you beyond those personal boundaries for accepting intolerant situations eventually either destroys the tolerant person’s character, or it creates a deep personal unresolved conflict and a submerged loathing of that group of people who created this discord.

Over recent decades, we have been conditioned to be increasingly tolerant of views, positions, disruptions or actions in our society that many personally find unacceptable or even reprehensible.  In this regard, becoming increasingly tolerant means that we have slowly relinquished some of our individual rights.  By extension, we have been surrendering our liberty, but the pace of that surrender has been unnoticeably gradual.

For the most part, people will retreat somewhat from their own views, rather than to provoke a disagreement.  This is normal human nature.  People may explain that yes, I do disagree with your viewpoint, and continue to maintain mine, but it is not worthwhile for me to challenge you or create a conflict.  Yet this appeasement if practiced consistently over a long period of time will result in a complete compromise of one’s original beliefs and destroy the very character of that person.  To maintain their personal integrity people must be courageous and take a stand against what they see as views that are contrary from their own morals and values, while being open to considering alternative views.

The early lessons in tolerance

For decades in the 19th century, America’s population grew, filling in a vast and largely empty continent, from a continuing influx of immigrants either seeking religious freedom, a less despotic life, or simply seeking economic opportunity in a vast new land. Americans easily evolved as increasingly tolerant because the vast majority of these immigrants came from Europe which shared many cultural similarities, religion and moral values. 

During the last half-century Americans have been nudged yet again to become even more tolerant.  America accepted a wave of immigrants after WWII, which also was similar in culture and religion to those already living in North America.  However, over subsequent decades, immigrants fleeing wars that America has participated in, such as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria brought in immigrants that were not assimilated in the county’s melting pot, and who held widely unfamiliar cultural or religious values. This required that Americans learned to become ever more complacent to this diverse group of immigrants and further expand their tolerance beyond their previously familiar and accepted boundaries.

Changes with the 1960s

Founding father of the United States, Sam Adams is known for a quote that states that it does not take a large group of people to prevail, but rather an irate (intolerant) tireless minority. In the 1960’s and 1970’s small groups of liberals and radical student groups were quite irate and intolerant pursuing their goals to impose on an already very tolerant people their radical social views. 

Once this majority was cajoled and browbeaten to accept these standards, people rather than truly becoming more tolerant, effectively became docile and inwardly resentful.  In effect, these citizens gave up their intolerance on issues conflicting with their moral boundaries in order to appease a small boisterous and quite intolerant group of activists.  Students or people who wanted to express a differing view from these radicals were shouted down and not allowed to exercise their 1st Amendment rights.  And as it turned out, our universities were the most intolerant free speech suppression centers, violating our most basic right.   Americans had the choice of either standing up for their rights, or lamely giving them up to an irate, intolerant activist minority.  Since they caved and compromised their moral stand, they meekly huddled together to became the beginning of America’s “silent majority”. 

It is unacceptable that one small irate group in society may act totally intolerant, while criticizing the populace for not being tolerant enough.  Who might be the members of such a group?  It is noteworthy to cite Saul D. Alinsky, from his book “Rules for Radicals” where he states that:  “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people”.  Manipulating people to be ever more tolerant will achieve that objective.  He also states that:  “They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.”  Finally, he also notes that “the revolutionary force has two targets, moral as well as material”.  These revolutionary objectives seem to be a fairly accurate description of our society today, as the levels of hopefulness, tolerance and passivity, erosion of morals, and purging of savings and other financial assets destroying of our middle class society fits well the planks of this radical socialist revolution.

Limits to Tolerance

In our most recent decade, Americans have been yanked and shoved, pushed and pulled to be tolerant and accepting of a host of political and economic disruptions or constrictions that for most of the silent majority of Americans are disquieting and unacceptable. 

For example, how tolerant should we be of our elected politicians who have recently sponsored House Resolution 569 which among other things would condemn what is interpreted by its supporters as “hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States”?  Have these politicians not read or understood the first Amendment? 

If there are persons who feel strongly about such speech issues, as the 82 Congressional Democrats supporting Resolution 569 attests, the appropriate remedy is to try to change the first Amendment, for which the Constitution has a specific procedure.  Citizens must be resolute not to compromise their Constitutional freedoms nor allow circumventing the Constitution.  Rather than trying devious convolutions to restrict free speech, meet it head on by trying to modify this Amendment.  If this effort fails, then be an adult, and tolerate the opinion of the majority of the nation’s citizens.

How tolerant should citizens be of our education system which cannot produce the number of qualified scientists and engineers necessary for our industry, requiring them to be recruited from the thousands of students attending our universities from foreign countries which are either economic competitors or perceived as potential or outright enemies to America?  How tolerant should we be of our educational system when, in one of our finest universities (Yale), a surveyor can collect a multitude of signatures on a petition to eliminate the freedom of speech?

How tolerant should the country’s religious citizens be of a government that requires the removal of existing biblical references, Ten Commandments, or the name of God from our courts or other government buildings?  These reverend historical inscriptions can and should be accepted and tolerated today without embracing any specific religion.  One does not need religious upbringing to know that erasing what our forefathers believed in is wrong.  One does not need to destroy the past to make room for the future.  Today it only really requires that the small irate and tireless group of extremists tolerate and respect factual history, ancestor beliefs and those of the current majority.

How tolerant should “we the people” be as it relates to politicians ignoring the will of its electorate?  This willful disregard shows up in many bills or resolutions, but it is most reprehensible when it relates to the nation’s, and its citizen averse yet compulsory participation in foreign wars or its financing.  We should be intolerant about America going into wars on foreign shores that the people do not need nor want.  Even including the atrocious attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, no army has attacked America on its soil in the last two centuries.  So why were we involved in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, just to mention the most recent episodes?  Why must well meaning solicitors ask for donations for our Wounded Warriors program, when our leaders could have avoided such wars, whereby we would have no wounded warriors at all?

It takes knowledge and judgment to determine when to tolerate new economic doctrine.  For example, should citizens tolerate government implemented free trade agreements such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) which has exported millions of jobs to Mexico and other low wage nations creating high unemployment in America while creating significant continuing pressures for reducing wage levels of domestic workers?  The issues can be complex, and the simple slogan that free trade is always good may not be so for all parties involved.  It is a fact that this trade agreement is good for some, yet bad for others.  Who benefits, and who suffers should be the beginning of the inquiry as to whether to tolerate the people and the action which brought this reality into our daily lives and economic future. When jobs are being exported by a government trade agreement, how tolerant should we be at the same time about our open southern border, which also reduces job opportunities for Americans?

On the economic front, how tolerant should Americans be about receiving nothing on their savings and pension accounts, as debate about pension fund insolvency for states and municipalities and Social Security arises ever more frequently?  How tolerant should you be with the idea that you may have to work long and hard in your old age, as your life savings have been eroded by loss of purchasing power, devaluation, persistent government deficits, and welfare programs that have taken your savings and distributed them to idle others?  How tolerant should tax payers be about the dramatic rise in our nation’s debt, which will have to be paid off only from the tax paying members of our society? How tolerant should we be that banks are now allowed to speculate with depositor money, yet have our deposits confiscated when the bank loses money and needs to be bailed out?

Our bond, stock, and precious metal markets have been manipulated for decades through interest rate setting and other accommodations from the Federal Reserve.  Highly leveraged currency market manipulations have crashed foreign exchange rates bringing economic havoc to targeted countries – another form of waging war.  The LIBOR interest rate manipulation culminated in conviction of major global banks.  Why is there no outrage against these recurring depredations?

In Europe, recently there has been an influx of mostly male immigrants from countries best described as economically undeveloped, culturally backward, reflecting a religious doctrine that requires subjugation of its host, highly intolerant, and devastated by war.  This immigrant invasion has manifested in riots, vandalism and brutal attacks on women in host countries. Anecdotally, these immigrants have demanded that German restaurants exclude pork from their menus, as pork from their religious dogma is offensive to Muslims.  How tolerant should the host country be to such demands?  Should the Germans proceed in appeasing immigrant demands and enable their own cultural suicide?  Or should they become intolerant and suggest that the refugee seeking asylum should be the one to become very tolerant, and respect the law and cultural customs of the host country?

During WWII the U.S. government interned all Japanese Americans including citizens in camps, even as there was no evidence of these citizens supporting Japan.  Fear and suspicion alone was reason enough for interment.  Yes, it was incorrect to intern American citizens of Japanese heritage without proven cause.  However, today there is ample evidence indicating the source of actual crimes, including mass shootings and suicide bombings, yet governments with the responsibility to protect people does little to hold protagonists, instigators, and lawbreakers accountable, urges people not to be xenophobic, or even attempts to blame the victims. 

Americans becoming intolerant, again

We should be angry. We should be intolerant. We need to learn from liberals, leftists, Islamic and other extremists and become intolerant. We must have courage to become illiberal and irate, and coalesce into a unified moral majority.  We dare not be cowardly for otherwise we will lose our freedom, our culture, our country, and perhaps our western civilization.  Americans must stand up to resist this blight, and fight back.

Victor Hugo once said: An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.  When the small tireless and irate extremists have pushed and subverted the nation into tolerating what has turned into a nation of socialist political correctness, obsessive wealth redistribution, currency destruction, and persistent military adventures, it is time to take action.  The time for this idea of becoming intolerant has come. It is time to retake America from that small subversive group that would destroy the country.   
It is time to understand that the small irate and tireless group of individuals nudging the silent majority to be ever more tolerant focus on issues and subjects follow the outline of “Communist Rules for Revolution” and the planks dictated in the “Communist Manifesto” - necessary to subvert and undermine capitalism and democracy.  This fact is not a pleasant reality to discover or acknowledge, but it is even more dangerous to ignore.  Invest the time yourself to search these two topics on the internet for confirmation.

Metaphorically, reflect on a house that you have purchased in the country, far from the city.  You take your family, including several of your young children, to the house only to find that there is a nest of copperhead snakes directly under the front open wooden steps of your country home. You are a genuine nature lover embracing all of nature’s animal kingdom, yet you would be a fool to let your children play in front of the house without first destroying or otherwise removing those poisonous snakes.  To tolerate physical snakes in the country home is to destroy your own family.  At this time we have a lot of poisonous political and other elitist “snakes” in the country where we live.  To tolerate the political and elitist snakes is to destroy the country.  The time has come for intolerance.

Pushback to inappropriate political correctness and excessive tolerance fortunately is already evidenced from the political process in the Republican primary contest for president.  Citizen resentment from long-failed government policies and radical-maneuvered excessive tolerance is expressed by public reversion to intolerance by endorsement of candidates who have the courage speak for the silent majority.  The elites may yet find a way to disenfranchise the public will again, but this will then soon lead to the second revolution on American soil.  This revolution will have several advantages over the one fought two hundred forty years ago.  First, we do not need to spend time and effort to construct another Constitution, for the one we have will do just fine – we just need to respect and use it.  Second, people will not be fighting a foreign army, and therefore this revolution can be peaceful.  However, the people first will have to become far more knowledgeable of economic and foreign policy issues, moral, uncompromising, intolerant, and united in order to win this cause for renewed liberty and a rehabilitated republic. 

After many disappointing election cycles, people are becoming less willing to tolerate or compromise further on their core principles.  They have tolerated useful idiots and socialist ideologues in government too long.  Indeed more than half of the world’s problems over the whole span of human history seem to come from a minority of people telling a majority how to live. It is time that people in government stop telling and regulating others how to live their lives.  It is time that people retain more earnings from their own labor.  It is time that their earnings do not lose value due to a policy convenient to government in continually devaluing the currency.  It is time that citizens are not made indentured slaves due to irresponsible expansion of government debt.  It is time that bureaucrats stop creating regulations outside of congressional law, making every citizen an unwitting criminal.  There is no more room for compromise or tolerance on such issues.  This peaceful revolution must proceed. Intolerance will carry the day.

Raymond Matison

Mr. Matison is a U.S. patriot who immigrated to this country in 1949. With a B.S. in engineering physics, an M.S. in Actuarial Science, work in the actuarial field, and as a financial analyst at Legg, Mason Inc., Lehman Brothers, and investment banking at Kidder Peabody, and Merrill Lynch provides a diverse background for experience.  First-hand exposure to fascism, socialism, and communism as well as the completion of a U.S. Army military intelligence course in the 1960’s have inspired a continuing interest in selected topics in science, military, and economics.  He can be e-mailed at rmatison@msn.com
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