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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   44867 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

[...]

No side, after all, will ever accept a peace in which their most basic needs are not satisfied — their safety, and their power to ensure that safety, most of all. The desire for justice is a desire that we each have such mechanisms to protect ourselves, while still remaining in the context of peace: that the rule of law, for example, will provide us remedy for breaches without having to entirely abandon all peace. Any “peace” which does not satisfy this basic requirement, one which creates an existential threat to one side or the other, can never hold.

If we interpreted tolerance as a moral absolute, or if our rules of conduct were entirely blind to the situation and to previous actions, then we would regard any measures taken against an aggressor as just as bad as the original aggression. But through the lens of a peace treaty, these measures have a different moral standing: they are tools which can restore the peace.

Right-wingers perceive left-wingers to be approving of and encouraging the murder of people like them. This is because a lot of leftists objectively, unquestionably are doing so, and a lot of other leftists are doing things that are arguably doing that, or in some cases flirting with it, or in some cases might be perceived as flirting with it, etc. down the chain of increasing abstraction.

I think you are probably correct that in at least some cases, celebratory leftists perceive Kirk's death as some crazy random happenstance like a lightning strike; I have not yet observed the limits of human self-delusion. I am not sure what can be done for such people, any more than I have a solution to the tide pod challenge. Some people apparently need to learn the hard way.

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