Frankly yes. A tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696026.
Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power.
In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant.
The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society."
The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere."
Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world.
One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
The fact that you can say that statement without irony is honestly so scary to me.
We had a coup attempt on Wednesday! We're already there. This is the attempt to recover. Maybe it won't work. I'm not super hopeful. But in a country where the president can aim a riot at congress, his ability to tweet doesn't really seem like the freedom we should be most concerned about.
Absolutely wrong [0].
> We are heading toward authoritarianism.
With the failure of this insurrection and the (unfortunately very weak) backlash against Trump, the primary leader of this failed coup, we've actually moved away from authoritarianism. If anything, we need stronger action by the government to prevent this from happening again.
This isn’t authoritarianism, and we can still rightfully claim to be a tolerant society with sound rejection and banishment of hate speech. Hypothetical example, my religion does not believe in gay marriage, yet I don’t prohibit others from pursuing a happier life. But (the royal) you must absolutely draw the line at enabling hate.