If I want to be a tolerant and accepting person, do I have to accept someone who wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body?

This is similar to a love of freedom; I want everyone to have freedom, but that means having to restrict the freedom to infringe on other people's freedom. That might seem to be a contradiction, but it is a paradox you have to address.

I think it's just based on how much of a threat a group is. If conservatives were a tiny minority of the population like Muslims are, no one would care enough to hate them.

>wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body?

This is super uncharitable btw. Imagine a conservative saying "why do I have to tolerate someone who literally wants to murder children?"

I think this is a common misunderstanding among conservatives of a certain type.

The pattern seems to be:

A right-wing person makes a statement saying, "We need to stop allowing Muslims into this country to protect ourselves against terrorism"

A liberal response is to say, "That is intolerant. You can't group all Muslims as terrorists. We need to be tolerant of people with different faiths"

Right-wing response: "What?! You get mad at Christian conservatives for being anti-gay, but you want us to tolerate Muslims? Muslims are even MORE anti-gay than Christian conservatives!"

The problem is that liberals AREN'T tolerant of Muslims who have anti-gay beliefs; we are as against them as we are against Christian's who are anti-gay. The liberal position is that you shouldn't lump ALL Muslims together; there are Christians and Muslims who are tolerant of homosexuals and Christians and Muslims who are intolerant of homosexuals. We are against the latter group. We are defending the moderate Muslims who aren't intolerant against being lumped in with the intolerant ones, but conservatives seem to think that is a blanket support for all Muslims.

Now, of course, the reponse when I make this point is usually to link to some tweet or post by a self-proclaimed liberal supporting anti-gay Muslims. However, these are often parody tweets or posts made by a conservative trying to mock liberals support of Muslims, or perhaps some delusional person who calls themselves a liberal. It is NOT an opinion held by the majority of liberals.

And yes, my characterization of pro-life as being trying to control a woman's body might be a bit uncharitable. I could have worded it more neutrally.

In principle, yes. In practice they definitely are not. Liberals are not going on mass firing and blacklist campaigns of conservative Muslims. They aren't getting filtered and censored on social medial platforms. There is nowhere near the same level of emotional hatred and vitriol towards them. And anyone that has such hatred is seen as a bigot. But the same level of hate towards Christians is perfectly accepted.

This was a big issue in the atheist community. A lot of atheist thinkers became massively successful for mocking and criticizing christians. But there was huge controversy when they started doing the same for Muslims.

What happened? Well Muslims might have the same wrong beliefs. But they aren't The Hated Outgroup like the Christians were.

Where are these 'mass' campaigns happening? I am sure there are some by fringe liberal groups, but 'mass' is probably an overstatement. Same with filtered and censored on social media; I see plenty of right wing posts on Facebook and Twitter.

> This was a big issue in the atheist community. A lot of atheist thinkers became massively successful for mocking and criticizing christians. But there was huge controversy when they started doing the same for Muslims.

Any examples? I have never seen any 'huge controversy' for mocking conservative Muslim beliefs.

Some of what you are observing probably also has to do with location and culture; the people posting things encounter a lot more conservative Christians in their day to day life than conservative Muslims. You don't have the same emotional response to something that isn't happening near you.

I am realizing as we are continuing this discussion how difficult it is to reach each other. A lot of this has to do with our own perceptions of the zeitgeist of society, and we clearly are not seeing the same things. I see the massive power social conservatives wield over our national discourse and politics, while you see the power liberals hold. I don't know how we can convince each other. We can both surely find countless examples of both conservatives and liberals making comments that prove our points, and countless examples to disprove the other person's.

I feel like so much of this is your own personal lens with which you see the world. I don't think we can show the other person our lens through an anonymous internet forumn.

If your belief is that you want to deny rights to some people, you are going to be held accountable by society in the sense that you won't get to hold powerful jobs. You won't be arrested, but society isn't going to let you run a public company.

What does that are liberals who are trying to assert their power. Now I would bet that most of the liberals who helped bring about that result wouldn't support a legal right for polygamy, polyandry, or marriage between close relatives.

Why not? While being sexually attracted to close relatives is very rare, the portion of the population that is preferentially polyamorous is larger than the proportion that is preferentially gay. Why should people who wish to make multiple commitments not have the rights that gay people have?

I submit that their reasons for not supporting those causes are no better or worse than Brendan Eich's for not supporting gay marriage. I further submit that when people are punished for publicly supporting statements that half of the nation supports, you're creating chilling effects for free speech that fly in the face of how this democracy is supposed to work.

In the sake of disclosure, my white mother was married to a Chinese man before that was legal in much of the country. Furthermore my sister performed a gay marriage before THAT was legal most places, and I have another close relative who was openly polyandrous for over a decade. As a libertarian, my only issue with gay marriage is why the government involves itself in people's private affairs.

But that is a lot less important to me than concern over political correctness making people feel scared about expressing unpopular opinions. When am I going to have an unpopular opinion that I get penalized for?

And your presentation of his belief is, again, very uncharitable. A decent percentage of conservatives were in favor of civil unions and other legal work arounds to give gay couples the same benefits as straight ones. Many didn't really care what gay people did and were just afraid of the slippery slope.

>A liberal response is to say, "That is intolerant. You can't group all Muslims as terrorists. We need to be tolerant of people with different faiths"

That's a very good characterization of most liberal responses on this particular issue. It's a complete non-sequitur. The RW statement does not in any way imply that all Muslims are terrorists. The liberal response doesn't address the crux of the statement at all, it just impugns the character of the person who made it.

While it is true that the RW statement doesn't imply that all Muslims are terrorists, it does imply that it is ok to ban ALL Muslims if some are terrorists. The liberal position is that this is NOT ok; we feel that the cost of blocking innocent people from entering the country is not worth the cost of allowing some possible terrorists in.

The RW position is that the cost of innocent people being blocked from entering is worth paying to block the possible terrorists.

This is somewhat ironic, because the positions become reversed when talking about gun control; conservatives believe you shouldn't punish law abiding gun owners because some people use guns to hurt people, while liberals believe it is a fair price to pay.

This is actually one place where I diverge from the traditional liberal position; while I think some gun control is reasonable, I think we shouldn't punish gun owners unreasonably because some people can't be trusted with guns.

I'm about to speak one of the "heresies" that sama referred to in the third paragraph.

I don't believe there is a significant "cost" to barring immigration of low-skilled, poorly-educated people into the US. If fact, in my calculation, it costs us more than we gain by letting them in, considering that the number of jobs that the half of our citizenry with an IQ of 100 or below are capable of doing are shrinking.

I'm not without compassion for those people who want to come here. I don't blame them at all for wanting to. But my main priority is helping our own citizens (of any race, creed or color) who rightly view their future with trepidation. America has a huge number of huge problems, and I don't see how low-skilled, low-educated immigration addresses any of them. But I do see how it exacerbates some of them.

Unlike many people, I'm not moved by platitudes like "but we're a nation of immigrants!" or "diversity!" I think US immigration policy should be based on what benefits the US and its citizens, rather than other countries or their citizens. My position is essentially based on mathematics.

I would say that in about 80% of the instances where I've attempted to discuss this issue with liberals, they've offered not a shred of dispassionate reasoning, but reached straight for the old "but that's racist!" arrow in their quiver. They either can't or won't refute my reasoning, so they impugn my character instead.

I really enjoy the rare occasions where I can have a legitimate discussion on political issues with someone who disagrees with me, and who can discuss the issues without calling me names. But alas, those occasions are rare. That's why sama's article really resonated with me.

That said, the majority of studies that I have seen disagree with your calculation. http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-ef... is typical. Even low skilled immigrants have a small but net positive effect on the net wealth of US citizens. But the effect is small, and there are some who are impacted negatively. Particularly among blacks and teenagers who have been displaced from bottom rung jobs by immigrants who are willing to work harder for less, and still feel lucky because their lives are better than where they came from.

Due to that I am happy with having relative open borders for immigration. But I can understand why others might be concerned.

I understand that reducing productivity costs will increase productivity, so unlimited immigration would make GDP go up. (And GDP does not factor in the costs of supporting increased numbers of unemployed people.) But this, from the study, strikes me as pure hand-waving:

>Moreover, immigrants are often imperfect substitutes for native-born workers in U.S. labor markets. That means they do not compete for the same jobs and put minimal downward pressure on natives’ wages.

For the statement "they do not compete for the same jobs" to be even partially true, you would have to show me at least one job in the US that only immigrants do, and no natives do. It certainly would not be construction, or landscaping, or custodial work.

A flood of low-skilled, low-educated immigrants would benefit people like me, who they do not compete with for jobs, because it would make the services they provide cheaper for me.

But as you acknowledged, it does hurt the people whom they DO compete with, and I would argue that extends beyond blacks and teenagers, although that alone is enough for me.

Roughly half of the working population in the US has an IQ of 100 or below. These are the people upon whose well-being, I, personally, place a far higher priority than similar people who are currently not US citizens. That is what my position is premised upon. I am willing to forgo the extra GDP and cheaper lawncare so that their lives might be a little less difficult than they currently are.

I don't personally support banning Muslims because the terrorism is so low it's not worth worrying about. But one could imagine if it got much higher and was a legitimate large threat. Then I would be completely ok with banning Muslims.

This is because American Muslims are nowhere near powerful enough to write their prejudices into law, whereas conservatives control all three branches of the Federal government and 31 state legislatures (see https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_houses).

You will always find that people consider your opinions worthy of much closer scrutiny when you reach a position from which you can impose them on everybody else.

In fact that's the biggest problem. These two groups completely hate each other, but live in separated regions. If they were completely mixed together geographically there would be no issue. People fired from liberal run companies could just go work at conservative run ones. We would have conservative social networks and liberal ones, and the "free market of free speech" argument would actually work.

This is only true in some parts of California, whereas other parts of the state are notoriously deeply conservative. Orange County, for example, was central to the power base of both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. (The Nixon Library is in Yorba Linda; Reagan's is in Simi Valley.)

Taken as a whole California tilts left these days, and even Orange County isn't the hotbed of conservatism it used to be (it went for Hillary by a few percentage points). But there's still plenty of conservatism in the state -- enough for Donald Trump to win 25 of its 58 counties last year.

- [Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage | Pew Research Center](http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay...)

I don't think this is the reason. The offending group could be arbitrarily big or small. Today's true problems (from the perspective of likelihood of affecting the civilization or the planet) and today's problems that dominant ideologies care about and feel threatened by, are two completely different things, sometimes laughably so.

I think it's entirely about signaling, and that applies to all sides. When a person or movement or another social entity claims they care about X, the real information the entity is conveying is "caring about X is now the color of our flag, raise a flag of the same color if you're one of us". The actual issue of X is largely irrelevant and can even revert if necessary (i.e. if the signal becomes too unreliable to detect potential members). At least this is what I've noticed across cultures, ideologies, languages, continents..

Edit: Incidentally, that's also why you hear complaints about double standards all the time (how come Europeans don't criticize it when... how come Feminists are silent when... how come Conservatives are nowhere to be found when...). Logical consistency is rarely a useful signal as people are not well-tuned for detecting it and have great capacity for bypassing it: by applying self-deception, compartmentalization, a host of biases, and by building narratives and simple models in their heads while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. It's difficult to think of even one group that enforces logical consistency as its signal (maybe logicians? who knows?)

You're spinning the argument and calling the other side "intolerant". You're part of the problem Altman is mentioning. Sad thing is that probably you are not aware of that.

However, no one is arguing for a woman to be able to abort a fully healthy baby at 9 months. That isn't an operation that happens, so it is a complete straw man to try to argue it.

No, just their freedom to express that they don't like it.

Not grant them actual power to interfere in people's lives by implementing the denial.

> Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body?

We have to tolerate someone who expresses (in a non-harassing way) that it would be a good idea for them to do that; we shouldn't tolerate someone trying to instigate such control.

And I mean as a matter of public policy. Whatever you choose not to tolerate personally is up to you as long as your preferences aren't used as the basis for perpetrating discrimination.

However, that isn't what the blog post is talking about. It is saying people SHOULD tolerate it personally, and we shouldn't call people 'heretics' for their ideas no matter what those ideas are.

I think it is ok for people to say "If you say gay people shouldn't get married, I am going to immediately respond that you are wrong and that it is immoral to hold that belief. If you say and hold that belief, I do not want to be friends with you and I don't want to support your business."

Boycotting people and businesses that hold views that go against your moral beliefs isn't wrong, and should not be condemned as blocking progress.

Now, I do think we all have the responsibility to make sure we limit the things that we respond to in this way. For example, we shouldn't have the 'shun the person' response if you disagree with what the tax rate should be, or if you think that raising the minimum wage will cause rampant inflation. Those aren't moral beliefs, they are implementation details.

Now, it would be different if your belief was "I don't want to raise the minimum wage because poor people don't deserve help", we might run into more issues. It becomes a bit tricky because a lot of horrible, immoral, views are hidden behind false justifications. Sometimes we make mistakes, and people with legitimate beliefs might be caught up in the crossfire, but this doesn't mean we shouldn't take reasons into account when determining the response to an opinion.

That simply isn't the case; definitely not "everyone".

> and we shouldn't call people 'heretics' for their ideas no matter what those ideas are

Indeed, those people are wrong; if you want to publicly call someone a heretic, or whatever, (in a non-harassing way), that's just your freedom of expression. You don't have to like the fact that someone thinks controlling women's bodies is a good idea, and may call them a backwards idiot or whatever.

> Boycotting people and businesses that hold views that go against your moral beliefs isn't wrong, and should not be condemned as blocking progress.

Right as far as a personal boycott goes; but now suppose you don't want to let such a person into your restaurant, or give them a job in spite of qualifications.

Also note that if you belong to some religion A, then people from a certain other religion B almost by the respective definitions of A and B hold views that go against your moral beliefs.

You should not be able to keep a person out of your restaurant because of their views, but the job one is tricky and nuanced.

I think there are certain beliefs that a person could hold that are valid disqualifications for hiring that person; for example, if a person is advocating that women shouldn't be allowed to work and should stay at home because they have nothing of value to offer, how can I possibly hire that person? How is a woman supposed to work side by side with someone who has expressed the view that they have no value in the workplace? I think if your opinion is that some of your coworkers have no value in the workplace, that has to disqualify you to work there.

Now, of course, the spectrum of troubling views will eventually reach a point where the answer is not so obvious as to whether they should be hired or not. I don't think I have a strong answer to where that line should be.

A person who holds the views that you describe because he is an Orthodox Jew cannot be fired for said views. No, I'm not making that up. Perhaps you should think carefully about what "freedom of religion" means to you!

That is a very different statement that comes from you defining conservatives as being against what you are for. But that is generally not the case. They are for something different than you are, and sometimes it comes into opposition with what you want.

This is in principle no different a substitution than pro-life people defining pro-choice ones as pro-murder. Obviously you see why that one is unfair. Can you see why the other is as well?

Almost everyone is happy to tolerate everyone who doesn't try to interfere with them, their preferences, and their beliefs. Racists are generally happy to tolerate black people as long as they sit in the back of the bus, use their own drinking fountains, and remember to say 'sir'. Even racists tolerate those who tolerate them.

That's a clever slogan. But the logical response to that would be to say that liberals are tolerant of everything except intolerance.

Which as a factual statement is of course arguable, but as a premise is certainly internally consistent.

Here is a simple demonstration. Consider the conservative argument that when you raise the minimum wage, elementary economics of supply and demand results in fewer jobs for poor people. I guarantee you that if you present this argument to 10 liberal friends, more than half will have a strong emotional response against it. While responding, some are likely to turn an interesting shade of red. Yet there is no intolerance in that argument.

Furthermore the argument is fairly well grounded in reality. Supply-demand curves are well-established basic microeconomics. And furthermore if you play around with https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#pa... you will find that Republican policies (which include low minimum wages) are consistently better for creating jobs. Just as Democratic ones are better for increasing GDP.

Of course some liberals will have emotional reponses to something that is not actually an intolerant opinion, like your example. There is no admission requirements to be a 'liberal', so we can't deny entry to people who don't understand the difference between a moral question and an implementation question like minimum wage.

The fact that a liberal thinks that "conservative" should be replaced with "intolerant" is a symptom of the problem that I describe.

You probably don't really think about the times a liberal person is reasonable and logical. You certainly will remember the ridiculous liberal who says illogical things.

Might that be skewing your impression of what 'most' liberals believe?

The statement that I made about minimum wage has the effect that I describe because it is a major liberal-conservative argument. As soon as someone states a position on raising the minimum wage, everyone else around will tend to assume that they know their political position. I could have produced other examples ranging from approving oil pipelines to the wisdom of tax cuts to cost effective ways to produce health care.

Now you may be atypical. But most liberals/conservatives respond with the same pattern. They figure out whether you're with/against, and then respond emotionally. And the issues do not neatly divide on "intolerance".

More interesting, the dividing issues change over time. Today woman's rights is obviously a liberal issue. If you go back 100 years, allowing women the right to vote was just as obviously a conservative one, because women were a reliable vote for Prohibition, which was a thinly veiled tool to attack blacks, Jews, Irish, and other "undesirables". You can thank the KKK for helping women get the vote in this country.

The dividing line really isn't as simple as it seems at the moment. But it is sometimes easier to see this with the perspective of history.

    > as a premise is certainly internally consistent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Upvoted for bringing it to my attention, though. :-)

As a non-American liberal, I'd argue 'liberals' are tolerant of anything except non-American liberals.

Try bringing up progressive topics in polite company and see how long you can last before becoming a conspiracy theorist / radical.

You agree with every UN member countries wrt Palestine/Israel except 2? Oh, we don't talk about that here. You want to support grassroots primary caucus delegate? Nevada primary co-chairs were expelled from the causes they were chairing for trespassing. You want more than 2 corporate parties? Jill Stein was handcuffed to a chair for hours for attempting to enter the televised presidential debate venue. You're anti war? You must be a Russian spy or literally Hitler for not opposing strawman foreign governments who resist trading oil in petro-dollars.

We have no choice but to work within the window of tolerance of the body of this community. I don't mean 'tolerance' in the virtue sense but in the physical sense of excessive stimulus triggering meltdown.

Nothing you listed seems even slightly crazy to me, nor anything that a good chunk of American liberals would disagree with. Or a non-trivial fraction of conservatives, for that matter.