And the more similar your enemy is to you in this quality, the more likely this becomes a vicious circle that eventually lets everyone compromise everything.
"The bad guys are doing the same thing that we're doing, so isn't it good that us good guys are keeping up? Would you rather this be done by the good guys, or just the bad guys? Are you working for the bad guys?"
It’s not an absence of rational ethics, it’s an absence of certainty when faced with imperfect data.
Sadly, if people play by the rules and unfair stuff keeps happening, you teach people to use tactics that they find personally revolting. Welcome to what happens when you move from "I must act honorably" to "the end justifies the means". Never push people to the thin ice unless you are prepared for the consequences as those powerless peons you hurt might just not be so powerless.
Voltaire was simply wrong about what an enlightened society looks like. It's basic paradox of tolerance stuff. Some things shouldn't exist anywhere.
* Free Speech exists to protect and guarantee disagreeable speech, because guess what: Nobody's going to censor speech they like or agree with; agreeable speech by its very nature does not need Free Speech protections.
* You have no Right to Not Be Offended, such a right does not exist period. Grow some skin and git gud.
I don't think you've actually read what Popper said about the paradox of tolerance. For your education:
> If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
"You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into."
Perhaps we should stop treating Popper or anyone else as an oracle of truths. He was a smart man, you can disagree with him nevertheless - in both directions.
I disagree 100%, and the fact that atheism is steadily growing, even among formerly devout Christians, the admirable success of Daryl Davis convincing KKK members to renounce their own hate, and the numerous examples of collaboration for a common cause between groups that should hate each other, like the KKK and the black Panthers, all demonstrate that this claim is flat out wrong.
Instead, what your cute catchphrase typically represents is an excuse to justify your own hate for an outgroup. Often understandably borne of frustration from impatience to learn about or inability to understand the motivations or experiences of an outgroup, and a subsequent assignment of negative qualities to them, because obviously you're not the problem (the "bias blind spot").
> The legitimacy of government follows from the consent of the governed.
Here, your neckbeard is showing.
A pluralistic world that doesn't have room is not pluralistic.
Much like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is neither democratic nor people's, despite its name.