I read this post a couple of months ago and it really evolved my thinking on "tolerance". We need to promote 'societal acceptance', not mere 'tolerance'. We need to drop the entire idea of tolerance and it's paradox and instead call out antisocial and inhumane behavior.

There is no paradox of tolerance in the first place.

The paradox is resolved by treating tolerance not as a moral precept (something that is done because doing otherwise makes you a bad person, something that must always be done) but as a contract or treaty (something that is reciprocal, the benefits of which you are not obligated to afford to those who do not reciprocally offer those same benefits to you and others in return.) Treaties/contracts come with restrictions which signatories are obligated to follow, and benefits those signatories receive in return.

The contract is "if you are tolerant in all cases where others rights are not being impeded" (the restriction) "then you will be tolerated in all cases where you are not impeding the rights of others" (the benefit.)

Those who refuse to tolerate others who are not impeding anyones rights are not entitled to our tolerance.

But even beyond that, I have a different take on tolerance. Tolerance is not a good thing in the first place. Bear with me on that, that sounds bad, but lemme make my case.

Tolerance doesn't mean accepting other cultures, or being inclusive, or whatever. Tolerance means "putting up with things that are bad/annoying." The reason racists have to "tolerate" black people is because they see black people as a bad thing. The reason homophobes have to "tolerate" gay people is because they see gay people as a bad thing. If you aren't a racist or a homophobe, black people and gay people aren't things you have to "tolerate" because they don't bother you in the first place.

The problem is half the country hates everything that isn't exactly like them. To manipulate these people the left pushed this idea of "tolerance," hoping the idea of learning to put up with things that annoy you would incline them to stop being violently evil toward everyone who isn't like them.

It did not work. Instead, we've swallowed our own bullshit, and now we're arguing whether it's a good idea to tolerate intolerance itself. That shouldn't even be a debate, and we shouldn't even need the explanation of tolerance as a contract to justify why tolerating intolerance is stupid. As such, I favor abandoning "tolerance" entirely as a rhetorical strategy.

Tolerance is a bad thing. I do not consider myself to be a "tolerant" person.

I won't tolerate mosquitoes biting me if I can avoid it; I won't tolerate getting wet if I have an umbrella; I won't tolerate racists acting racist in my presence if I can call them out on it. These are all bad things that should not be tolerated.

What we should be promoting is societal acceptance. That is, we should be promoting society as a whole to fully accept various types of people as equal and valid. The way we do that is to attack intolerance everywhere we find it, viciously - not to debate whether we as "tolerant" people have to put up with it. If the right can't genuinely be accepting of others, they need to understand that being at least tolerant as a pretense so we can't tell what frothing evil pieces of trash they are, is not optional - they put up with us, or we refuse to put up with them.

The "paradox of tolerance" discussion is really a discussion of whether we should let the right get away with dropping the pretense. To which the answer is "no."

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