Cross-Posted at Democrashield
A common allegation among the right-wing is that the left is intolerant. What leads them to this conclusion? Because progressives aren’t afraid to condemn conservative bigotry–and thus begin the conservative cries of "You hypocrittes, how dare you don’t tolerate our intolerance!"
Follow me for some common sense...
Case in point: Congressman Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who’s currently running for Governor. Jindal converted from Hinduism to Catholicism years ago, and he has published several pieces on religion–particularly, on Catholicism and Protestantism.
The Louisiana Democratic Party collected some of these writings and put them up on a site called Jindal on Religion. What it shows is that Jindal is a proud Catholic who doesn’t appear to look too kindly on Protestantism.
The defense from the right is as predictable as it is nonsensical. They’re alleging that–since Jindal is using his Catholicism to justify his bigotry–that the left is intolerant of Catholics (of course, that must be a surprise to the multitude of Catholic Democrats out there).
Nobody’s criticizing his religion–we’re criticizing his bigotry against Protestants, and his use of his Catholic faith to justify it. We Americans are pretty tolerant of the religious beliefs of others–hence our reverence for the concept of freedom of religion. Just because he may claim it’s his religious beliefs that give him those opinions doesn’t make it true–personally, I don’t feel that anti-Protestantism is an inherent part of Catholicism, do you?
So the problem for the right isn’t that Jindal is prejudiced–it’s that we Democrats don’t hestate in pointing it out. Let’s make it clear–believing in tolerance doesn’t mean you have to tolerate every belief, every staement, every idea. If someone believes in something compeltely bigoted, it makes no sense whatsoever to be tolerant of their belief, since the point of tolerance is to eliminate bigotry and prejudice, not sanction it.
In other words, no, we don’t have to tolerate intolerance. Sorry.