The End of Tolerance (and of Freedom and of the Rule of Law)

Readers may have noticed I am not the most optimistic person about the future of the United States, but even this pessimist is distressed by the vehement response to Indiana’s modest attempt to defend Freedom of Religion.  (Yes, it is modest.  If you’ve been misled or alarmed by the lies and exaggerations about it, here is a good summary cutting through the . . . untruths.)

The willingness of corporate America particularly – even Wal-Mart and Cummins Engine – to attack freedom of religion especially alarms.  Theoretically, a state can and should resist attacks on Constitutional freedom from the Feds.  But states are understandably unwilling to risk hamstringing their economies to do . . . anything.  And if even Wal-Mart considers Freedom of Religion something to be tossed aside for the mandatory gay agenda, we are in a bad place indeed.

Wal-mart prefers gay rights to religious liberty. Is this to the culture war what the Cronkite Moment was to Vietnam? http://t.co/jzay5iriZv
— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) April 1, 2015

And whatever happened to tolerance?  We are now in an Orwellian place where tolerance, e. g. giving businesspeople space to conduct their businesses in line with their beliefs, is bigotry; and bigotry, particularly anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry, is “tolerance.” 

But genuine hate – and let their be no mistake, #BoycottIndiana has hate for traditional Christians written all over it – can make one toss aside decent principles as Alan Jacobs, hardly a right-winger, points out.

When you look at the people who have been protected by religious liberty laws, the liberal opposition to them is a straightforward …
— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) March 30, 2015

… abandonment of principle in hopes of winning a victory against the "repugnant cultural other": http://t.co/NWKHDO8ctW
— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) March 30, 2015

But “tolerance” is a word not used as much by the Left as it once was; it is not as useful now.  It is becoming clear “tolerance” was just an attractive station to get and keep us on the train to totalitarianism.  Yes, a society and/or government willing to force a businessperson or anyone for that matter to participate against their conscience in a gay wedding or in an elective abortion or else has a strong totalitarian streak to say the least.

I think John Zmirak (via Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) has got it right:

The age of tolerance in America is vanishing before your eyes. The question is how Christians and other people of faith and good will are going to respond.

A big question indeed and one I am honestly afraid to address. And it is not only tolerance that is going.  So is the Constitutional Rule of Law, not to mention Consent of the Governed.

Let’s break this down in stark and simple terms: Not only were gay activists willing to overturn an act of Congress (the Defense of Marriage Act) on spurious grounds; they also wish to force their libertine idea of marriage onto voters in each of the 50 states, voiding dozens of laws on an issue that has always rested with the states.

Zmirak’s is an excellent and perceptive piece.  Do read the whole thing.  It’s not long.

And I am afraid it is not long before Fr. Zulsdorf’s warning becomes too true:

Get your heads into that mental place where you will be able to face the persecution that is coming.  You will be vilified, in especially venomous ways, even within the Church by catholics seeking to twist the Church into an instrument of social re-engineering.