Tolerance Leads to Tyranny

The ancient dilemma of democracy roosts in the Public Library

By Carol M. Highsmith — Library of CongressCatalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2010720179Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/master/pnp/highsm/02800/02868a.tifOriginal url: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.02868, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50977484

All across America, a plague is ravaging our citizens. This is not a plague of the body (though that one is far from over, either), but a plague of the spirit, a plague of the mind.

This is a paradox that Plato himself laid out over two thousand years ago. Plato realized that a society practicing true tolerance would eventually succumb to forces of intolerance.

Plato used this as an argument for “benevolent despotism” as a preferable form of government to Democracies. After all, if your tolerant democracy is bound to become an intolerant hellscape due to its own contradictions, why not just establish an autocracy and at least settle for stability?

But the 20th century philosopher Karl Popper wasn’t so sure. He believed that a tolerant society merely needed to set out guidelines for what constitutes tolerance. In his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, he stated his solution to Plato’s paradox.

For a democracy to function, it must allow intolerant speech, Popper believed. But it must also reserve the right, even by force, to put a stop to intolerant speech that acts in certain ways. Namely, if the intolerant are unwilling to engage in rational debate, if they try to force laws that…