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Originally Posted by frogza
I've seen our societies tendancy to ride "slippery slopes" as I'm sure many of you have. For those who aren't familiar with this term, it means to continue with an idea that may have started out as good until the society in general is locked in extreme and usually damaging ideals. Nazi Germany began as saving the country from it's worst depression in it's history to the extermination of every group that was deemed as inferior. That's one of the most poignant examples of a slippery slope I know of.
So now I ask, where do we draw the line? Which groups do we say no to? Right now we see a large number of groups asking for tolerance, I think it would be good to include some but as you've seen by the few examples I have mentioned, I think some need to stay out in the cold for good. So recognizing that in general TF is a rather liberal community, what do you think?
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nazi germany wasn't a slippery slope. anti-semitism had a long history there, and jews and gypsies were frequent scape-goats. hitler even told the world of his plan in mein kampf, which he wrote before getting into power. the holocaust was premeditated, not slippery slope.
where do we draw the line? i think we draw the line where people are being forced to do things they don't want to. we don't let someone marry off their 12 year old daughter because she is not conisidered property (in the legal sense) and since she can not give legal consent to marry until she's 18, she should only be allowed to marry if she chooses and the parent consents. 12 is still a little young even for that in my opinion.
basically, anything that does not harm someone not participating in a private act, and doesn't hurt the community at large, should be allowed to be done by consenting adults, whether it's gay marriage, smokin' the reefa, going to church on sunday.
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Originally Posted by datacaliber
It's late. I'm tired. But I just wanted to say that I think we've hippie-ized the concept of tolerance. These days, you're a self-righteous closed minded bastard if you don't embrace everyone fully. I think that's why we're seeing a conservative backlash in this country, the tree-hugging peace-and-love hippies hijacked the left and pushed too hard.
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the reason you're considered a 'self-righteous closed minded bastard if you don't embrace everyone fully' is because you are. rather than embracing differences between individuals and cultures, you'd rather close yourself off to the new ideas and experiences. that's not to say that everything should be tolerated. honor killings, female genital mutilation and wife-beatings (all found in muslim areas although usually due to local cultures and not islam) should not be tolerated. there is usually a lack of consent by at least one party in each of those i listed. but if you aren't harmed by something, there's no reason not to let others be free to do it. you don't have to like it, but you should be tolerant of others that do.
also, i actually wouldn't call someone 'self-righteious' or a 'bastard' about it, personally. close-minded, yes. bigot? depends on the situation.
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Originally Posted by flstf
Anything can be done to the extreme but I'm convinced it is almost always better to err on the side of being too tolerant than too restrictive.
Genocide, child incest and drive-bys, etc.. are certainly examples of things that have crossed most people's line of acceptance and there must be laws in place to deal with them. Our whole system of checks and balances depends on how well we draw these lines. However I believe that when an activity is borderline like say alcohol, marijuana laws and gun control we should be more tolerant.
Hopefully our collective wisdom in choosing which activities require government control (laws) and our Constitution will enable us to be tolerant of others and still remain relatively safe.
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word. until there is a compelling reason for society to ban something, it should be allowed. and in my opinion, 'its offensive to my religoius morals' is not a compelling reason (only bringing that up because that's often a reason for intolerence).