Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
but it seems to me that a lot of the opposition is of the "we won't stand for it, no matter what" variety, and that scares me as much as anything.
|
I can imagine things in the world where it is even more scary to imply that whether to accept them or not is a question of negotiating them. Not everything must and should be open to negotiation, and tolerance. Some things are unacceptable by the rule of our cultural values per se.
But there you are again in that dead end of your thinking on "total freedom, else it is no freedom", and time and again you seem to not care for your head crashing into that wall at that road's end. I have a very hard time to even imagine reasons why somebody could think like this. That tolerating what does not tolerate you means your tolerance being destroyed, and freedom for those abusing it to destroy freedom, necessarily lead to you seeing your freedom getting destroyed - that is so simple to see and understand, that even the 8-year old daughter of a good girlfriend of mine has already understood that (I learned in a recent report of her on a dispute she had at school with some girls).
Some things - speaking generally - must be confronted and never are acceptable and thus can never be considered negotiable. That might be a small limitation of that desired unlimited, borderless, total, absolute freedom - but if that helps to secure freedom
in general, to still very large ammounts, for the community and the overwhelming majority of it's people
- than I'm for it. Because 95% of existing freedom is more than 100% of a freedom non-existing.
Must yor really experience the loss of freedom first, before you understand this...? That would be too bad, because then it would be too late.
Some people seem to take pride in referring to that popular quote saying something like "I may not agree with you but I will always fight for your right to not agree with me". I would subscribe to that only if there is an amendement made, saying something like "I defend your right to disagree with me
only if that disagreement does not lead you to the claim that I must be destroyed for not agreeing with you". When the other does not tolerate me, I must not tolerate him. When the other claims the freedom to take freedom away from me, I support all effort that freedom is taken away from him first (else would voluntary to hand myself over in slavery). When the other concludes that because I do not agree with him, I must be overthrown, then I do not owe to him (or to me or to any ideal) that I even must defend him when he does so. No, certain peoples' freedom I will not defend, and certain peoples' right to disagree with me I therefore do not stand up for and would not defend.
Maybe you think, to come back to your quote, that that makes me scary. I say you better should be scared by those people that I refuse to defend for the reasons explained above. I do not deny my support to them for no reason.
