Answer these two questions.
1) Should black people have to tolerate racists?
2) Should racists have to tolerate black people?
Here we go.
If you said No to both
Er………you’re a bit weird. You seem to want either segregation of the races, or a race war.
People you are like – Charles Manson.
If you said Yes, then No.
Ok, so you’re a crazy redneck? Banjo, truck, one of those weird boats with a fan on the back?
People you are like – that guy from Deliverance.
People in these two groups represent less than 1% of the population, regardless of what the Guardian might tell you. After all, if America is full of rednecks, how did Obama get elected?
Now we’re into the meat of the matter.
If you said No, then Yes.
You’re a liberal fascist. You don’t want equality or freedom as much as you want your way of looking at the world to be enforced on others.
People you are like – Antifa, Hillary Clinton.
If you said Yes to both.
Congratulations! You are a mature adult human, aware that the only way we haven’t all slaughtered each other is by recognising and accepting even our most extreme differences and largely tolerating them in an attempt to have enough peace to progress.
People you are like – Increasingly, nobody at all.
As a libertarian socialist I can answer both questions with reference to the words “have to” that appear in both. As soon as there is compulsion involved, rights have been lost and liberty has been diminished. I am under no obligation to tolerate Alex Noble and vice versa. Our sole obligation is to stop swinging our fists before they encounter each other’s nose. If your reply to that is “But that’s exactly what I mean by ‘tolerate'” then welcome to the academy of circular arguments and play on words.
The first answer is that both groups must tolerate each other, as both are present and — for Americans who take seriously that “endowed by their Creator” stuff, their claim to a life here is equal, inherent, and “unalienable.” In fact, in America, tolerance is not expected equally by the two groups. Black Americans are encouraged to view everything bad that happens to them as a manifestation of white racism, even when simpler explanations fit better, with the poisonous implication that there is then no reason to try harder. Students at a university that prides itself on widening their horizons… Read more »
I guess “libertarian socialism” would be something like George Owell’s POUM gang that got smashed by their Stalinist “allies” in the Spanish Civil War. It was completely impractical back then and probably wouldn’t work any better now.