Tolerating the Intolerant ... and the Intolerable?

One more old - though you could hardle tell it:

And now the Dutch are in trouble. I'm not sure what's going on there, in a country thought of as a bastion of liberalism and tolerance. A Dutch politician (I didn't catch her name, sorry) was on the BBC World Update yesterday (10 Nov). She said she thought that the Dutch weren't really all that liberal. "Just because we allow gays to marry, and have legalized drugs in our constitution, and permit people to choose when to die," she said (though I'm paraphrasing), "that doesn't mean we are all that tolerant of people who are different."

Maybe that's so. Maybe the Dutch aren't so much tolerant and liberal as they are in lockstep in a mindset that doesn't accept dissension, and just happens to include so-called 'liberal' values. I don't know. I'm not Dutch (I don't even play one on TV), and the closest I've been to the Netherlands is Brussels.

But what I think is happening at least includes the essential liberal paradox:

How do you tolerate those who want to destroy you?

We try to accept everyone, say everyone's right, let everyone think and feel and believe as they wish. But some people - and not just radical Islamicists, either; fundamentalist Christians are damned good at it, too - what they want is for everyone to be like them. So the problem we have, which they will never have, is: how do we accept them and let them be what they want to be, when what that is, is to hate and destroy us?

I'll tell you the truth: I don't know the answer. I suspect (with dread) that the only way to even half-way succeed is to stop trying and be more like them. I suspect that's one reason we don't win the arguments with them, the classic joke of the liberal always saying (as Roy Blount, Jr, says) "you know, you have a point...".

And I'll tell you something else. I'm going to stop saying that. I'm going to stop enabling them to destroy us. I've always said the difference between us is that while we want everyone to do as they please (exagerration, but you follow), they want everyone to do as they please. The mindsets aren't compatible. And frankly, if it comes down to it, I'd rather be a little bit intolerant than not (not be, I mean), when what I'm being intolerant of is so repellent.

It's like that thing about the stickers in the Georgia schoolbooks - if the truth "may hurt some people's feelings" then some people just have to have their feelings hurt. Telling them lies to keep their fragile little psyches undamaged is wrong.

And dangerous. To all concerned.