We’ve been hearing it all of our lives, ‘tolerance is a virtue…we should be more tolerant … Hey, Martha could you please pass the tolerance, my baked potato is getting kinda bigoted…’
But did you ever get the feeling that those people telling you that you should be more tolerant aren’t very tolerant of you, your beliefs, or people like you?
What does the word mean, anyway?
It means ‘to put up with.’ There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, we can’t get along with everyone all the time and some forbearance is called for almost every day of our lives. But tolerance doesn’t sound very friendly. Forbearance at least has a spiritual tone to it. It sounds kind. Tolerance, on the other hand, sounds like what you do on an airplane when someone’s kid won’t stop screaming. Tolerance sounds like what you do when people are being loud in a movie theater and you’re afraid they’ll stab you if you say anything about it.
Well, it turns out that the tolerance we’ve had shoved down our throats all these years isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Certainly, the people who preach it nonstop do not feel the need to be tolerant.
Today’s political climate is anything but tolerant. The extreme left has become mainstream and believes that anyone who disagrees with them is the second coming of Hitler.
Here’s comedian and interviewer, Dave Ruben on the current state of tolerance.
