Common wisdom holds that the political left in America has taken the high road on tolerance. That same wisdom says that the right, on the other hand, is still mired in the smelly swamps (er, wetlands) of intolerance. Lately, however, growing numbers of leftist icons have the distinct odor of intolerance wafting about them.
The left seems intolerant about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They seem intolerant about Christianity. They seem intolerant about deficits and taxes. They seem intolerant about immigration reform and voter identification laws. They seem intolerant about people who use firearms to defend themselves. They seem intolerant of Israel.
The left, of course, never was tolerant – unless it was their agenda being advanced. Then they positively oozed tolerance from every pore of their being. And why not? It’s easy to hike the tolerance high road when history is going your way. It’s a little harder to tolerate your agenda being taken out with the trash.
It was the left’s control of Old Media that gave them the appearance of being tolerant. That’s because until recently the media framed public debate surrounding the news before turning it loose for comment. As the New York Times’ latest “job outsourcing” to the unemployment line illustrates, there is less call for old-line, leftist-propaganda-adorned buggy whips than there used to be.
You can still see the media carrying water for the left today. A story in Canada’s Toronto Sun is titled, “Pastor to defend anti-gay stance.” Many people might examine the same evidence and conclude that the pastor was defending free-speech rights. Others might have thought the pastor was defending marriage and children from what is, shall we say, not the most astute lifestyle choice in the universe. But the Toronto Sun didn’t want its headline readers – for that is what the bulk of us are when we read a newspaper – to make those “mistakes.” They wanted their readers to know the pastor was intolerant of homosexuals. End of story.
Who filed this complaint against the pastor with Canada’s Human (Homosexual) Rights Commission? Why, the “right reverend of academic tolerance” Dr. Darren Lund, a University of Calgary professor! No word, of course, on whether Calgary’s tolerance-obsessed professor might have more than an academic interest in the homosexual lifestyle.
Speaking of academics, nowhere is the left’s newfound intolerance more on display than in discussions about intelligent design. Normally tolerant scientists (just the facts, please, ma’am) rapidly evolve into raving Chicken Littles, hysterically shrieking to all who will listen that the sky is about to fall if students are exposed to the theory of intelligent design (which simply says that the theory of evolution might be a bit – shall we say, simplistic – in explaining mankind’s arrival on planet Earth).
It’s odd, but America’s academics display about as much tolerance for what can be taught in the classroom as Indonesia’s Islamic leaders display over what can be taught in one’s own home. There, they recently prosecuted three Christian Sunday School teachers for exposing Muslim children to Bible verses.
What a sight: Islamic clerics and American academics, walking arm-in-arm down the tolerance highway.
