| | I recently read twice through this outstanding little book:
Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders by Jamie Whyte. My review will follow in a few days. For now, the present topic is a crime against logic because all it does is beg the question.
As Jamie Whyte points out, those who are "intolerant" do not view others as having made some unfortunate faux pas like serving red wine with fish. They consider those who disagree with them to be basically, fundamentally, irrevocably wrong in a way that cannot be reconciled via compromise.
If you believe that abortion is the same as the murder of an adult, there is no middle ground. If you believe that pornography leads to rape, there is no middle ground. If you accept the literal truth of the Bible which commands that we not suffer a witch to live, there is no middle ground between killing a witch and not killing a witch. (That such fanatics wear cotton-polyester blends in defiance of the Bible is another matter entirely.)
I point out that only the force of arms -- us against them -- keeps these fanatics from doing more damage than they do. I point to the two Topics I created on the ELF and the Conservative Right as terrorist networks. Does Prof. Machan propose that by asking ALF/ELF to be "tolerant" of experimentation on animals or the use of fur in clothing that we will find some happy middle ground between doing that and not doing that?
The plea for tolerance makes sense only to those who are tolerant in the first place.
That raises another question, entirely. Such toleration may be contrary to the intent of Objectivism. While libertarian politics allows that we ignore those who drink or smoke or screw in ways that we ourselves might not, Objectivism per se is very specific about what can or cannot be smoked, drunk or screwed by a rational person in pursuit of her own highest goals according to the only objective standard of judgement, her life as human qua human.
Rather than exorting the audience to be tolerant of mystics, altruists and collectivists, an Objectivist would remind us that there is no compromise with evil -- and that is what we are talking about. Ayn Rand pointed out that in any such conflict the more consistent side will win and the intolerant advocates of mysticism, altruism, and collectivism are, indeed, more consistent than the tone of the title essay in this topic would indicate its author to be.
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