I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)

That’s a very long article for making the core point that the author believes their kind of tolerance is better than your kind of tolerance.

Fact is, most people are uncomfortable to some degree with people of different race, gender, sexuality, nationality, dress sense, social class. Myself included. That’s human nature - well done if you are a rare exception, but most people aren’t. Tolerance is about getting over it, even though it never quite goes away.

So most people declaring tolerance of all those other kinds of people should earn some Virtue Points in the author’s framework. They deserve a bit of sympathy for not feeling free to admit they aren’t quite as comfortable as they’re supposed to be with other folks.

He’s being an asshole when he criticises basically anyone claiming to be tolerant of the different people around them. Forget the self-obsessed “look at how tolerant I am” activists. Give most people the credit they deserve.

Otherwise you end in the the perverse situation the author does: dismissing most people just trying to be good people; looking to find ways to give a bit of credit to people tending to the Nazi end of the scale; making like tolerance is a huge, blood bursting struggle where if you’re not angry enough, you’re not trying hard enough.

That piece is a variation on what it claims to be a bad thing: acting like your basic day-to-day tolerance of other kinds of people is this amazing, incredible, praise-worthy act that deserves an admiring audience.