But if you don’t tolerate intolerance then does that means you don’t tolerance your own intolerance for intoleran-error error ERROR ERROR ERROR ERRORERRORERRORERROR-BOOM

Go take it to the forums or PMs or something, please.

@Background Pony #CC28  
There’s power that simply can be abused, and then there’s power that has obvious loopholes allowing abuse. I’d put this in the second category. And besides that, the idea behind it, that a government should be allowed to dictate the beliefs rather than merely keeping watch over the actions of its people, is itself wrong.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
Yes, this can be abused. It actually is being abused right now in many countries. But the same is true about any kind of power.

@Background Pony #CC28  
And if they don’t actually commit any violent acts, what would you suggest doing about it, besides maintaining that none of the actions they endorse are or will ever be legal? The government can make statements denouncing them, but you can’t legally prohibit people from talking or gathering, no matter what they gather to say. You can punish the people who try to act on those views, but you can’t punish those who just maintain and state them. Any law that allows you to would near-inevitably end up being abused.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
Ok, then imagine a group of people promotes an ideology that all redheads are evil and must be killed. They start gaining support. They create a political party in order to change the law to enforce or at least allow killing of redheads. You try to tell them redheads are normal people but they don’t listen. They accuse you of being a redhead protector and tell you that people protecting redheads must also be eliminated or at least forcefully silenced.
 
This is the kind of situation where you can’t counter the intolerant by rational argument nor keep them in check by public opinion.

@Background Pony #CC28  
Make the laws fair, make sure people’s rights are protected, and fight back if someone tries to change those things by force. Teach why individual freedoms are important. Protect yourself and others from mistreatment. Present relevant facts in discussion and make sure your arguments are clearly supported. But I don’t want to “solve the problem” of other points of view becoming widespread, because to do so seems to me like an inherent violation of others’ freedom to choose what they believe. Suppressing information, even information on why a person thinks something wrong, only leads to ignorance regarding the cause of real problems.
 
We are not perfect, and what many define as a “tolerant” society now would actually treat some groups much worse than others. If criticism and discussion are obstructed, we will never learn.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
Then how do you want to solve the problem of intolerant ideology or an intolerant group of people taking over a tolerant society?

@Background Pony #CC28  
What concerns me about the principle is that it seems very likely to lead to someone deciding that a certain ideology has more of a following than they’d like, and using force to silence it. The sort of person who believes anyone has the right to control public opinion is not someone I’d want making the laws.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
I understand “keep them in check by public opinion” as “as long as intolerant people are widely considered wrong, there is little risk of them taking over our tolerant society and they should be tolerated”. Of course we should still try to persuade them.
 
And yes, there is a problem of people calling their political enemies intolerant and calling for their physical elimination or at least silencing. I just consider such wolf-criers intolerant and apply the usual rules to them.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
Bit late, innit? The time to ignore the heckler is before taking the bait, not after.

@Background Human  
Yes, that’s what happens when you insult people instead of talking to them. It applies pretty much everywhere, even outside the internet. It was a serious conversation before you showed up, so you shouldn’t have expected mindless mud-slinging to work out. If you keep doing it, I’m just going to do my best to ignore you, because I really don’t know what your problem is.

@Background Human  
 
Me and others have said what we needed to say,nothing wrong with calling out those that interject themselves but have nothing to say.

@Antonyourknee  
And yet you keep coming back too. Because it offends you that I’m not dignifying your argument with a serious response.

@Background Human  
Your the one who keeps coming back,if you think this discussion is not important then you should have just moved after your comment got called out or just not get involved at all. But you did,Your fooling no one.
 
Post your response meme you copied off the internet as we all know you will so you can tell yourself your the winner of this little dialogue and move on man.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
The important thing is that you won an argument on the Internet.
 

@Background Human  
>lol I was only pretending
 
But seriously, you’re acting like a five-year-old. Don’t try to weasel your way out of having made a terrible argument by pretending it’s all a joke. You called two people racist for not wanting speech suppressed. You can’t make that look good by going “haha, stop being so serious guys”. Just admit you messed up, badly, and move on. Or at least have the decency to leave the conversation quietly.
 
@Background Pony #CC28  
It’s “keep them in check by public opinion” that concerns me. It seems to feed into the idea that if a philosophy is bad enough by someone’s definition, it’s okay to suppress it with violence. That is a very easy principle to abuse. For example, the classic approach of saying it’s okay to attack Nazis, then calling everyone who disagrees with you a Nazi. A person’s rights can’t just go away because they’re inconsiderate, ignorant, or both. It also seems to me like the section you quoted is discouraging violence not because it’s wrong, but because it’d be hard to get away with.

@Background Pony #9DA0  
@Antonyourknee  
That’s why this quote has this part in it:

 
I do believe intolerance sometimes must be suppressed. But only as a last resort. Too often people call for suppression at the slightest sight of intolerance, sometimes justifying it with the quote @AmrasFelagund posted but omitting the part I quoted. This kind of intolerance is not justified. Intolerance can only be justified when all other methods have been exhausted and the thing we are fighting is bad enough.

@Background Human  
Nonsense it is then.

@Antonyourknee  
>continuing to be this serious on a Siberian antelope opera fansite

@Background Human  
Well your poor attempt at inserting yourself into a discussion at least gave others a chance to develop and expand our arguments,so your presence here wasn’t completely useless. I’m sure you’ll want to take some pride in that or just respond with some nonsense,no diffrence.

@Antonyourknee  
@Background Pony #9DA0  
>being this serious on an Icelandic llama novel fansite

@Background Pony #9DA0  
Well Said good sir.

@Background Human  
First of all, very mature of you to jump straight to a mocking strawman argument.
 
Secondly, that would be spreading a philosophy by force, i.e. the exact thing I was just stating as wrong. A more correct assessment would be to say I don’t want those who prefer a white ethnostate (I’m not sure that’s an actual word) to be jailed for saying so, any more than you should be jailed for calling me and Anton racist rather than putting in the effort to read our posts and realize they never made reference to race. Intolerance, no matter how unpleasant it may be to hear about, should not be punished by law unless it is first acted on by means more severe than merely stating it.
 
If hurling unfounded accusations of bigotry is the best you’ve got, though, you’re within your rights to continue.