SUICIDAL TOLERANCE: championing a judgement free world

The most “woke“ among us champion what might best be called "suicidal tolerance." Why suicidal? Because the foolishness they preach, essentially a judgement and ranking free world, would ultimately eradicate expertise and even tolerance itself.

Whence springs their wooly-headed demand that value judgements and rankings must perish? The main source is their conviction that values are mere “social constructs.” That conviction leads them to jump to the conclusion that no culture is better than any other. They ignore, or are ignorant of, the fact that some cultures are so intolerant that merely advocating tolerance would get them killed. (Isis comes to mind.)

Paradoxically, women are among the most vocal disciples of this new-found religion. And the worst offenders are academic women. One wants to ask these females, so you don’t think it wrong to have some crone excise village girl’s clitoris’s with a razor blade? How about forbidding women to vote? Requiring them to be absolutely obedient to their husbands? To meekly suffer death by stoning if thought they might be guilty of adultery? Should these hyper-tolerant ladies disapprove of any such things they cannot logically insist that cultural practices are value free! But they do.

In the real world cultural practices often have weighty moral content. Attitudes regarding individualism provide one example. The fact that valuing or even tolerating individualism is a moral choice is precisely why some cultures suppress it. They disapprove of the underlying value it places on individual perceptions, judgements and choices. The Taliban, for instance, permit nothing of the kind. These zealous fanatics punish any individuals who question the smallest details of their very narrow interpretation of Islam. They even forbid listening to music, dancing and flying kites — the later a very popular past time with Afghan children. Why? Because they perceive such enjoyment as being immoral.

Cultural practices often have very weighty moral value. That is exactly why they are NOT morally equal. Just the opposite. In fact, this moral content is why cultures are more or less dysfunctional. Why? Because of what they will or won’t tolerate and the human happiness or misery that results. 

The Taliban are a sterling example of a dangerously dysfunctional culture. Of course it’s intolerant to make such a claim. But tolerance is not always desirable. After all, some practices, rape, honor killing, and genocide, for instance, are plainly intolerable. Even a Harvard professor should be able to grasp that. Although some don’t.

Let’s dig a little deeper into cultural relativism’s implications. A major one is that this relativism necessarily opposes any rankings based on merit. Do you want your favorite baseball team to acquire a highly skilled pitcher. Would you prefer having your heart surgery performed by a masterful surgeon? Well, according to these believers, you are supporting existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. So also does insisting these “woke” individuals be able to tell their ass from third base. And most can’t.

A recent protest by Harvard students illustrates how far this silliness has advanced. Concerned that A’s now make up 60% of all Harvard course grades — up from 24% in 2005 — Harvard has now capped course A grades at 20%. This prompted a student petition asserting that assigning grades on the basis of performance creates “a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.”

To some extent it does mirror these hierarchies But far from perfectly. If it did, neither upward nor downward mobility would exist and both certainly do. For example, I know a woman who was born in a deep south home with a dirt floor and parents near the bottom of the social hierarchy. But, by dint of academic accomplishment, risk taking, good judgement and damn hard work, she now owns her own accounting firm and also is producing major motion pictures. Are there similar success stories? Of course there are. So the assumption that a system of ranking and sorting simply “mirrors and reinforces existing hierarchies” is plainly false. 

Besides, where would we be without ranking and sorting? We would find ourselves in a competence free world. Heart surgeons selected non-judgementally wouldn’t necessarily know a damn thing about what they were doing. Buildings and bridges would regularly collapse because they were designed by incompetent structural engineers. In short, we couldn’t rely on any specialized expertise whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Clearly a system without judging and ranking belongs in Lala land. So we must vigorously reject the judgement free style advocated by the most “woke” among us. Besides, these folks aren’t really woke at all — they’re dreaming! But as their crackpot social philosophy gains ascendence, their dream is becoming our nightmare.

ARE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS A THREAT? a comparison

A lot of Americans are worried about Muslim immigration. They regard these newcomers as culturally incompatible, dangerously intolerant and potentially larcenous. Plus they imagine them flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? Let’s look at it historically.

In the 19th century a lot of Americans were similarly concerned about Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, flooding into an essentially Protestant America. A major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope. He led an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that Protestants found especially threatening. And they asked how a people accustomed to religious tyranny could ever learn to live in democratic America? Wouldn’t these Catholics band together and become another America altogether? 

Their concern was intensified by the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. At the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years prior. And their number quickly swelled to five million. That was a lot of culturally different people to absorb so quickly. But Irish Catholic immigrants, despite strident opposition, proved so capable of blending in to the fabric of the nation, understanding, embracing and even exploiting democracy, that a third generation Irish-American, John F. Kennedy, became the 35th President of the United States.

How have the Muslims done in contrast? Well there has never been an America without Muslims. But most of them arrived as slaves and soon lost this religion. Contemporary Muslims arrive in very different circumstances. Coming, as they do, directly from Muslim lands. These new arrivals pledge no allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even a unified religion. In fact in many areas there still are bloody disagreements among them about what it takes to even be a Muslim. But the one thing they aren't, is Christian. And that makes a decided difference in their reception.

First of all, there is not always a happy coexistence with Christians or the Western way of life. The most fanatical among them, a minority to be sure, want to convert all of the United States to Islam — if necessary, by the sword. And to institute their version of Sharia Law in place of current law. 

Of course internationally a comparatively small number of Muslims have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent But these perpetrators were foreign nationals. However, in many American’s minds terrorism links to Muslims. That’s certainly not fair. But it is still true. And that means a sizable segment of Americans will oppose more Muslim immigration.

That fanatical variety is certainly dangerous. But keep in mind that Muslim immigrants constitute a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics. In fact, the entire Muslim population of the United States amounts to less than 1% of America’s total population. Plus less than 5% of all immigrants currently entering the U.S. are Muslims. Of course, the dangerously fanatical among them is very small indeed.

What about present-day Muslim immigrants fitting in? Will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien? Will they become something of a separate America? Or will these Muslim immigrants prove to be solid American citizens, just like the Irish. We shall see.

Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and lousy citizenship to Muslims collectively. That’s certainly unfair. But if people believe it to be true, it will be true in its consequences.

Besides, the Irish-American experience suggests Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish were gangsters of the first magnitude. In fact the Irish Mob once was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime gangs. Later arriving Italian-Americans proved even more capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that kind of behavior. 

However, a substantial number of Americans, especially those in the Bible Belt, regard the United States as a Christian nation For them, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. A substantial number of these true believers even maintain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. (A false belief constantly reinforced by right wing preachers.)  This despite the fact that some of America’s most influential founders like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were deists or rationalists. Plus the great majority of founders agreed that the United States should  NOT to have a state religion. However, this reality gives no pause for those who believe, or at least promote, the Christian American myth. 

 Looking back, though, many Americans once thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. That has faded away. Does that mean Muslims will also attain, even desire, the same degree of integration? That remains to be seen.