What remains of toleration?

Public Interest, Wntr, 1999 by Adam Wolfson

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson set down in his journal what he thought of John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration. He began by noting that Locke sweepingly denied toleration to those who entertain opinions contrary to the moral rules necessary for the preservation of society. As for those who teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics, or that kings, once excommunicated, forfeit their crowns, or that dominion is founded in grace, or that dominion is due to some foreign prince, well, they too, Jefferson observed of Locke's theory, were not to be tolerated. But that was not the end of it. Jefferson also took note that Locke would deny toleration to the intolerant and to atheists. With a touch of condescension (and perhaps some measure of eager anticipation?), Jefferson wrote, "It was a great thing to go so far ... but where he stopped short, we may go on."

I think it fair to say that Jefferson would not be disappointed (unless he would be aghast) by how far we have gone, at least if Alan Wolfe's recent survey findings on the opinions of middle-class Americans are to be believed. Generally, the middle class is thought to be a rather intolerant lot. "The strong permanent leaven of intolerance ... at all times abides in the middle classes of this country," complained John Stuart Mill of his England. The American middle class has been, if anything, considered much worse. In Nixon's day, they were the "silent majority" who favored a tough stance in Vietnam and opposed the Woodstock generation at home. In the 1980s, they were the "Reagan Democrats" who, with Reagan, believed the Soviet Union to be an "Evil Empire," and "welfare queens" undeserving of aid. Today, they are thought to be the "angry white males" who oppose affirmative action, multiculturalism, immigration, gay marriage, abortion, and pornography.

How astonishing then are Wolfe's findings! In his thoroughly documented book, One Nation, After All, he describes an American middle class in the 1990s which is remarkably more tolerant and liberal than anyone would have guessed. On a range of divisive issues that are said to make up the heart of the culture wars in America - from the place of religion in public life, to acceptance of postmodern families, to openness toward alternative life-styles, to teaching multiculturalism in the schools, to protecting a woman's right to choose - the American middle class is, Wolfe points out, extraordinarily nonjudgmental. They have, he reports, even invented an "Eleventh Commandment" to guide their thoughts and actions - "Thou shalt not judge." That's putting it too mildly: Wolfe's findings indicate that the American people's nonjudgmentalism relegates moral commands of any sort to the status of personal choices, good to follow, perhaps, but not to be forced on anyone against his or her will. So disturbing did Wolfe - who is a centrist or moderate liberal - find this picture of the American people that he wondered whether his fellow citizens did not need a good dose of Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy to stiffen their spines and steel their hearts.

Wolfe located the source of the American people's nonjudgmentalism in their commitment to toleration. Tolerance (along with moderation), Wolfe writes, are the "bedrock moral principles of the American middle class." But toleration is a "moral principle" that has apparently chased all other moral principles from the field. "A large number of those with whom we spoke," writes Wolfe, "fear that morality, if understood as a set of moral injunctions, can lead to intolerance, an outcome unacceptable to a people as nonjudgmental as middle-class Americans." Middle-class Americans are, reports Wolfe, "committed to tolerance to such an extent that they have either given up finding timeless morality or would be unwilling to bring its principles down to earth if, by chance, they came across it." Moreover, their mistrust of timeless moral truths has been accompanied by an embrace of "difference," as it is called today. According to Wolfe, the American middle class is strongly sympathetic to multiculturalism, even enthusiastically supportive of it. "Teaching children respect for the many cultures brought to this country was variously described by our respondents," Wolfe reports, "as 'very good,"real good,"important,"fine,"great,"really great,"neat,"superb,"helpful,' and 'necessary.'"

Wolfe's field research captures the two horns of our dilemma. Our "bedrock moral principle," toleration, has led us to shun morality while mindlessly embracing "difference." As Allan Bloom wrote more than a decade ago, we are all relativists now; and, as Nathan Glazer said more recently, "We are all multiculturalists now." Thus the following spectacle: Vice President Al Gore urges the American people to embrace a television character named Ellen who plays an out-of-the-closet lesbian (and who is so in real life as well). And President Clinton urges the American people to tolerate abortion (to make it "safe, legal, and rare") - even partial-birth abortion, which Senator Moynihan has described as a form of infanticide. Liberalism's old bedrock - the right to life - has turned to vapor. In its place is an indiscriminate toleration at times indistinguishable from relativism, along with a right to have one's identity recognized and respected, whatever it may be.