re: #115 shortshrift

The tendency of groups to move towards orthodoxy, puritanism and extremism is well known. This can happen when the identifier of the group is as broad as nationalism, or as narrow as animal rights. The vested interest in the identifier by the adherents promotes an ever greater refinement of the identifier, to the point of where it becomes holy, a fetish perhaps. As the holy cause is refined, heresy is too. More and more subtle signs of heresy are exposed, and the heretics are anathematized.
Every group is susceptible to this tendency. In the case of a group whose identifier is “tolerance”, the dilemma is obvious: do you permit intolerant people to demonstrate tolerance, or do you purge them before they destroy you. Democracies have the same dilemma: do they allow parties to be elected that will end democracy? Even where the majority of voters would vote for that party? Europe is heading there.

Do you mean, “Do you demonstrate tolerance by tolerating intolerant people?”

In Europe, the tolerant societies demonstrate tolerance by tolerating Islamofascists to march in the streets calling for beheading those who insult Islam, burn cars and attack Jews.

In reaction, the intolerant (and intolerable) neo-Nazi, Fascist and white supremacist parties take advantage of that aspect of tolerance to show how their societies are under threat due to excessive tolerance.

Absolutist defenders of tolerance amplify the first problem, which feeds the second.