Where False Ideas Derive Their Power

It is hardly unusual for Christians to distinguish between people and their individual moral weaknesses, despite the fact that the latter can only exist because of the former.  In treating them as wholly distinct, these Christians aim to tolerate problematic people while reserving moral judgment for their behaviors, as if there is any point to such a distinction.  Distinguishing between fallacious thinkers and their errors is likewise pointless and illogical.  Deceptions, assumptions, and fallacies are certainly enemies of truth seekers, but so is anyone who defends them.

False ideas cannot have any power except when they are embraced and acted upon by unintelligent or morally misguided individuals.  The notion that people are not the enemy of truth seekers is therefore extraordinarily asinine: if ideas only have power when they are acted upon, then incorrect or unsound ideas are not responsible for human errors, but people themselves are responsible for whatever power an error holds.  Short of repentence, how can someone deserve to be treated as if they are separate from their worst fallacies and offenses?

In light of these facts, to tolerate an irrational person is to tolerate irrationality; to tolerate an unjust person is to tolerate injustice.  The subject of tolerance is hardly complex, and yet it is often treated like it is an unsolvable enigma.  There is no paradoxical obligation to be intolerant of the intolerant but tolerant of everyone else, as that which is not erroneous does not need to be tolerated and that which is erroneous should never be tolerated.  The matter is as simple as realizing that no one can possibly have a natural right to complete ideological or behavioral freedom [1] and that tolerance of something vile only makes the tolerator resemble the wrongdoer whom is being tolerated.

If logical and moral errors were never tolerated, none of them could ever seize control of any society.  There is no such thing as the development or preservation of a rational, just society apart from intolerance towards anything that threatens its integrity.  As long as no one is actually mistreated--as long as the threshold separating justice and injustice is not crossed--there is no limitation on how brutally people are permitted to treat those who are not aligned with reason.  Since errors are powerless without the people who advocate for them, the latter deserves as much harshness as the former.


[1].  There are no rights if objective values do not exist, but if objective values do exist there can be no right to do or even believe anything that contradicts them.