![]() We follow Locke in holding that this ultimately determines the purpose of the state, or more generally the political/legal order. ![]() Liberty is found when the natural rights of individuals are protected by positive law, which in turn protects the possibility of self-direction and thus the possibility of individual moral responsibility and pursuit of human good among others. As Locke notes, “liberty is not license.” “Liberty” is a moral notion, and what differentiates liberty from license is the moral concept of an individual’s basic, negative, natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Liberty is not, however, merely the lack of external impediments or simply the ability to do whatever one wants to do. The value of tolerance is measured against that-making the primary purpose of the state to protect liberty. The answer is one that Thomas himself presupposes and employs in his defenses of tolerance, namely liberty. This alone forces us to ask ourselves why we even care about tolerance. ![]() This ideal society must be intolerant of intolerance. But the two models are enough to make our point: Thomas’ tolerant society faces self-referential problems. We could point to other views, such as Herbert Marcuse’s, which hold that tolerance is essentially repressive in that it maintains a majoritarian status quo. We thus have two models that, in the abstract at least, do not necessarily violate liberty: one is the model of tolerance and the other the model of pressure towards acceptance. Pushing for acceptance is an entirely different approach by having conformity at its essence. That is what it means to tolerate something: to allow some belief or practice to continue despite one’s own view that the belief or practice is mistaken, wrong, or immoral. ![]() People must be willing to allow the rejection of some beliefs and practices for there to be tolerance. The key to the presence of tolerance is non-acceptance. By contrast, one cannot vocalize disagreement with certain practices today without facing immense pressure to conform to acceptance of them. Toleration supposes that you can disagree with a moral or political stance of some sort, but nevertheless allow it to be practiced. Instead of toleration, we have adopted acceptance or ostracism as our model. Michael Thomas definitely points to an important political virtue when he suggests that tolerance is “ the primary political virtue.” In this connection, it is interesting to reflect on how absent this virtue seems to be from the present-day consciousness. ![]()
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