Tolerance—and tolerance – Sunday, June 4, 1950
An honest and earnest tolerance is a wonderful quality of character. But like all other great virtues, tolerance can be abused. And the abuse of tolerance, or of any other virtue, may cause it to defeat its own end. With this in mind, may we turn our attention to a type of tolerance that is intolerable—the type of tolerance that doesn’t distinguish between tolerance and indifference; the tolerance of the man who doesn’t care enough to know, or know enough to care, whether or not he is sincerely tolerant or merely compromising his convictions; the tolerance of the man who has a reputation for tolerance because he lacks the sense of responsibility which would lead him to find out whether he is really tolerant, or simply asleep! We wouldn’t want to live in a world without tolerance, but neither would we want to live in a world that had been taken over by a mistaken type of tolerance—a tolerance that didn’t distinguish between conviction and compromise, between principle and politeness. Nor would we want the type of tolerance that looks lightly upon the factors and forces that weaken the foundations of freedom, nor the type of tolerance that looks lightly upon the prevalence of vice and of arrant evil. It is one thing to be tolerant, but it is quite another thing to let someone tear down the house over our heads. If a farmer neglects his fences and lets his fields of growing grain be trampled into the ground, would we say that he was tolerant, or would we find another name for what he was? If someone sworn to sustain and enforce the law were laxly to let the law be abused and broken, would we say that he was tolerant—or would we give it another name? If a person complacently permitted lawless intrusion upon his peace and privacy, or the robbing of his rights or of his property and possessions, would we say that he was tolerant—or would we give it another name? Again, we wouldn’t want to live in a world without an honest and open and earnest tolerance. And certainly we would never want to tolerate intolerance. But neither would we want to tolerate the false type of so-called tolerance that countenances complacency, that encourages the compromising of principles, or that induces indolence or irresponsibility or downright dangerous indifference. That type of false tolerance is intolerable.
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June 4, 1950
Broadcast Number 1,085