[lbo-talk] Re: circumcision/relativism/genital multilation

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Feb 8 10:46:34 PST 2005


Justin:
> That is
> because we are a moderately tolerant society, or
> anyway, our values don't require us to attempt to stop
> every evil we see by force.

Actually that does not apply to moral conservatives who, as George Lakoff (in __Moral Politics_) argues, strongly believe in NOT compromising with the evil. For them, tolerance is moral cowardice and acquiescence to evil.

Talking about "we" is a misnomer here. This is not a single relatively homogenous society but a social Frankenstein patched together with parts that do not quite fit. The values of tolerance you mention may be shared only by a relatively small section of this social Frankenstein. Fundamentalism - which is an exceptionally powerful force in the US by the developed country standards - is not just a religious belief, but an affective response to change, uncertainty and ambiguity.

I think that the level of intolerance in the US society is quite high, though unevenly distributed (albeit I would not attempt any cross-national comparisons.) The reason why this intolerance has not yet erupted into a full blown pogrom is that the US elites has traditionally kept a tight lid on any kind of mass movements, and did not allow that to happen. But there is little doubt in my mind that if the signal came, you and I as well as other "cockroaches" on this list and other "dens of liberalism and moral decay" would most likely be hunted down and lynched.

Wojtek



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