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| "Repressive tolerance" |
| 2007-10-11 |
| Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal In the course of asking the rhetorical question "Would Hillary! defend Rush Limbaugh's free speech rights?" he has this to say about the Left: Who threw the first stone in these media-driven bloodlettings? Good question. But to my knowledge the right has no equivalent to "repressive tolerance," the aggressive theory of scorched-earth political argument laid out in the hothouse years of the 1960s by the late left-wing political philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Just last November, in an admiring essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the left polemicist Stanley Fish aptly summed up Marcuse's assertion that "liberal" notions of tolerance for political speech should be overturned. The rationale for this notion is that standard tolerance is rigged against the left. In practice, tolerance extends only to the ideas and beliefs of the powerful, while it shuts out ideas on behalf of the weak or "marginalized"--the poor, minorities, women and the rest. Mr. Fish says liberals fail to see "the dark side of their favorite virtue." Prof. Fish has an alternative to traditions of tolerance, and to anyone awash in American politics today it will sound familiar: "That is to say, and Marcuse says it, anything the right does is bad and should not be tolerated; anything the left does is good and should be welcomed." This would explain the emotional intensity and animosity in politics now: The other side no longer deserves minimal respect. It's not enough to disagree with conservative viewpoints; one has to undermine and delegitimize them. Mock them. Put them beyond the pale. Incidentally, Marcuse, Fish and others on the left who want to "withdraw" tolerance from the speech and ideas of their opponents count centrist Democrats among them. "Opponents," that is. That is what happened to Joe Lieberman. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 When you consider the Ann Coulters, Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons and other shrill talking heads of the right, Fish and Marcuse are on to something. As long as those dopes and partisan misanthrophes are being illustrated as the conservative, pro-American, pro-Capitalism, pro-War Support then we are doomed to the left's strategy. Why don't they come here and pick on us? What's wrong with us - why don't they pay attention? |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2007-10-11 17:09 |
| #1 A government only lasts as long as there are people willing to defend it with, as Lincoln said, the "last full measure of devotion". When you burn the Constitution for POWER, when you make the words meaningless, when you can't fool the people with shames and shows, bread and games, who's going to be there when someone shows up and says "I'm now in charge". Cause the people won't care. You can draft them, but you can't put 'fight' into them. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-10-11 09:07 |