Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll confirmed what most sentient Americans already knew — that patriotism, religion, and even having a family are now much less valued than even in the recent past.  Patriotism was "very important to only 38% of today's respondents compared to 70% in 1998.  Religion was down to 39% from 62%, and the importance of raising children cratered from 59% to a demographically dangerous 30%.  One statistic, however, likely caught most folks by surprise — the significant slide in the number of Americans who thought tolerance was "very important," which slipped from 80 to 58%.

The obvious cultural attacks on patriotism, religion, and "the nuclear family" can take the lion's share of "credit" for dismal numbers in those categories, but what's the explanation for the pronounced decline in support for tolerance, a once highly touted "liberal" virtue that scored higher than any other category in 1998?  I think I know the answer.

Around the turn of the century, I was in a prep school teachers' meeting where a young economics teacher observed that "tolerance is such a negative word."  He suggested as a substitute the warm and fuzzy term "acceptance."  As usual, the logical consequences of this linguistic swap were never discussed.  After all, one can't "accept" ideas and actions that are fundamentally incompatible.  One can "tolerate" the beliefs of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and atheists, but one can't logically "accept" all four.  What my touchy-feely colleague really wanted, without saying or perhaps even knowing it, was for everyone to "accept" his largely secular, politically correct beliefs, which included the contemporary gay agenda.  

What then becomes of beliefs and actions that he and his like-minded colleagues reject?  Are they to be "tolerated"?  Apparently not.  By putting "acceptance" in the place of tolerance, beliefs and practices incompatible with "accepted" beliefs are set in a "not to be tolerated" category.  For the past several decades, one need only peruse Hollywood entertainment to see this formula working in practice as ridicule is heaped on patriots (often caricatured as idiots or neo-fascists), religious believers (parodied as rural morons or violent anti-abortion activists), and traditional families (where cringe-worthy Married with Children family life images compete with childless, carefree Seinfeld characters and the heroic detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order: SVU).  More recently, this implicit fictional deprecation has become explicit in real life, as "un-woke" cultural opponents are blithely labeled fascists, racists, white supremacists, homo- and trans-phobes, or, in the case of African-American conservatives like Larry Elder, "the black face of white supremacy."    

Put succinctly, the crowd that only a few decades ago passionately touted the virtue of tolerance now demands acceptance of their du jour victim groups and beliefs — ideas like the following: men can get pregnant and menstruate; separate-sex bathrooms are "heteronormative"; America is institutionally racist; children are mature enough to change their sex, and dissenting parents should be circumvented or even (currently under consideration in California) deprived of their parental rights.  

It turns out that "tolerance" was only a stopgap virtue until such time as enough power was gained to impose their utopian, totalitarian vision upon dissenters — under penalty of law and pain of ostracism.  Nowadays, Berkeley, the so-called home of the "free speech movement," alongside almost all universities, regularly harasses and prevent conservatives or non-conforming independents from speaking.  At Stanford's law school, a DIE associate dean sided with hecklers and lectured a distinguished jurist whose views didn't mirror her intolerant leftist creed.  And swimming champion Riley Gaines was recently assaulted by "trans activists" who weren't about to allow an actual female athlete to say that men who identify as women shouldn't compete in female sports. 

By ditching tolerance for "acceptance," intolerance toward what one does not accept and those who espouse such beliefs becomes acceptable — and widely practiced.  Consequently, bashing and silencing the "enemy" is legitimized, and rational discourse is made unnecessary.  Non-conforming views become "hate speech" and even "violence" that's worthy of violent suppression. 

In short, by substituting "acceptance" for "tolerance," it becomes necessary to be intolerant of persons who don't kowtow to beliefs that must be "accepted."  So much for tolerance. 

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is available on Kindle.

Image: geralt via Pixabay, Pixabay License.