The Cancerous Growth Of Tolerance

It is quite common for people of various worldviews to pretend like there is some surprising deficit of "respect" for the average person in the current state of affairs, as if contemporary Western society is not one of the most tolerant cultures of all time.  On the contrary, people are often expected to respect even the most imbecilic of ideas and those who propose them--except for unpopular truths, of course.  The cancerous growth of tolerance has threatened the majority of the Western world.

In light of the tolerance that is entrenched in Western culture, many people vehemently dislike the notion that moral superiority is metaphysical superiority: that is, if truth has value, the person who pursues it and lives in accordance with their moral obligations has more value than someone who does not.  Many seem to automatically reject whatever a person is about to say at the mere suggestion that people are not equal in value if moral obligations exist, for people behave differently enough to not share the same moral status.  It only takes a few moments, however, to realize that this is necessarily true.

The average person does not deserve any special degree of respect.  No one who clings to irrationality deserves any respect beyond that which is necessary to not mistreat them.  In other words, they deserve only to have their baseline human rights acknowledged and to not be treated unjustly.  No one deserves anything more by default; anything beyond this is earned on individualistic grounds by one's concern for truth, soundness in exercising rationality, and commitment to justice, which is the core of morality.

One of the most dangerous ideas that a society could ever absorb is the notion that someone who lives in opposition to rationality and morality is just as valuable as someone who lives for genuine rationality and morality.  It may be true that simply being human grants each person some degree of intrinsic worth, but it is still true that many people are fundamentally unequal in an intellectual and moral sense, and thus not everyone can legitimately claim to deserve the same social treatment.

Of course, even legitimate intolerance is often demonized by the masses, although there is no arrogance in intolerance if it is directed towards deserving people.  Every society has three options regarding how it handles tolerance: it can tolerate everything and allow itself to dissolve due to a lack of rigidity, be intolerant of intolerance itself and cling to an inherent contradiction, or be intolerant towards irrationality and injustice and, in doing so, align itself with reality.  Only the third option is in accordance with reason.