Why Can't We All Get Along?

Little Stephen and the Disciples of Soul

I guess this is current events.

I never was of the right temperament for this idea. But many decades ago, I could be intellectually convinced by those saying that we all want the same things. We just disagree on the means. We can discuss and argue about those means, with some approach to rational arguments.

I was wrong.

In the United States today, many do not want general prosperity for all. They want hierarchy, with themselves on top. They do not want to succeed, unless some others fail. They deny the right to exist for many.

In what kind of society can we live freely with such reactionaries? Many would say the answer is liberal society. We want a minimum set of rules, and a lack of restrictions, such that everybody is free to pursue their own idea of a good life. Many of these rules are like conventions on which side of the road to drive. No ethical question arise here. But if we all agree to drive on the right, each of us can make our own plans to get from one place to another with some confidence that they will succeed.

Questions obviously exist about the content and extent of these rules. I think an extreme degree of inequality, with those towards the bottom having only the prospect of a precarious life, is incompatible with a liberal society.

But what happens when those who do not accept the existence of those who differ too much from them take advantage of the liberal norms? Karl Popper reads Plato's Republic as putting forth the paradox of tolerance:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fi sts or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal." -- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1, footnote 4 to chapter 7.

I'd rather not live in a time where this paradox was directly applicable.