Dear Friends,
It seems to me, what you tolerate… you will get more of. If you tolerate your children lying to you, they will lie more often, if you tolerate your spouse stepping out, he or she will take on more lovers, and if you tolerate violations of our Constitution, the violations will happen ever more often and become more egregious, until the Constitution means nothing. Really it is mere common sense. Everyone from children to politicians understand that people will do more of what we get away with. It is human nature. While tolerance of other people’s foibles is a sign of maturity, tolerance of barbarism is absurdly and self destructive. A civilized person will ignore minor personal failings, but when the nature of the relationship is changed, due to intransigence, such tolerance is proof of weakness. Rest assured, our children know this innately, our politicians know this by experience, and invaders know this by edict.
People are self interested. We will do what benefits us… as long as it is tolerated. Armed robbery is quite lucrative, but is not tolerated, while rent seeking, manipulating stock and commodity prices, bribery, selling political favor and outright embezzlement, is tolerated. A multiplying factor in the negative effects of tolerance happens, when tolerance is given to select groups of people, and withheld from others. Obviously that is a form of bigotry, but a form that is not only tolerated today, but encouraged by the media, politicians and academia… politically correct tolerance you might say. If our bad actions are tolerated, since they give the person engaged in them a leg up on everyone else, it is only human nature to do more, and be more aggressive. Since certain people are allowed, by political correctness, to lie under oath, block streets protesting and praying, steal directly from their shareholders, sell political favor, etc… it is not their fault… it is ours for tolerating it.
It is ironic, we do not tolerate those things that do us no harm and have little effect on our society, but allow in the name of political correctness, those things that pose an existential threat to our culture, society and civilization. People who never bathe are not tolerated, they are ostracized, while people actively undermining our government with criminal acts are tolerated and indeed embraced. This paradigm is magnified when certain groups are tolerated while others are not. Such “tolerance” elevates arbitrary groups above the law, while others are diminished, to less than human beings in the eyes of the law. The media, most politicians, academia and the new class, for instance, was utterly intolerant of the Tea Party peacefully praying outside congress, while at the very same time, they not only tolerated but encouraged Occupy Wall Street… to smash windows, burn cars, spill human feces in bank lobbies, rape women and batter passersby. Clearly, peaceful praying is not a threat to civic order, while overt violence destroys civic order. Yet ironically, the one was tolerated… and the other not.
Tolerance is only civilized when it is enlightened tolerance. To tolerate that which is of minor inconvenience is a sign of maturity, tolerating a child laughing too loud in a store is a sign of mature tolerance, while allowing people to set up child sex trafficking rings is absurd tolerance. Clearly, it is not enlightened to tolerate heinous crimes against anyone, let alone children. Yet, many of us cannot stand a child laughing too loud as we eat in a fancy restaurant, but turn a blind eye to the crimes of Rotherham. Tolerating our leaders profiting from selling twenty percent of our uranium to an enemy, is self destructive, but intolerance of our President feeding koi in Japan, the wrong way, is childish and mealy mouthed. True tolerance is for idiotic, foolish and innocent foibles, while self destructive tolerance is for crimes against humanity, our Constitution and reason.
You get more of what you tolerate… so why are we tolerating such absurdities? Unless we as a society and people are utterly stupid and foolish, or weak, we must want our politicians to lie to us, our CEOs to steal from retirees, certain groups to create unrest, live under the threat of child abductions, oppression of Christians for their faith, move our nations from liberty to oppression and disarm law abiding citizens… so criminals will not have to worry about being shot when they rob a liquor store at gun point. Today we, encouraged and led by our government, tolerate behavior that threatens our very existence, and we are told to be utterly intolerant of that which is merely annoying. So, we as a people in the West have to ask ourselves, what do we want more of? Do we want more terrorism, political evildoing, crime, incursions on our Constitutional Rights, slavery and violence, because by our tolerance of these things… we must, because if we didn’t, we would not tolerate them.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
