The other day, I had the privilege of watching the television while a smarmy Muslim condescendingly downplayed the significance of the 9/11 mosque controversy.  His argument consisted of something along the lines of “Is this what our national dialogue has been reduced to?”  As though almost to say that Americans were too culturally insensitive and bigoted to allow the building of a mosque which would overlook Ground Zero.  And to be sure, most people who support the building of the mosque adopt this pompous position, pretending that if we truly are tolerant and accepting of other cultures, we should be able to accept the building of an Islamic temple over a building ruined by an Islamically-motivated mass-murder.  Surely, they argue, we are beyond squabblings and sensitivities, and we should be able to just accept cohabitation with other cultures.

It is this attitude which precisely highlights the problem with the doctrine of tolerance.  While those who accept a multicultural postmodern perspective agree that acceptance must hypothetically occur amongst all in a racially diverse and religiously pluralistic society, the logical mechanics of tolerance suggest that the direction of tolerance can only exist toward one group in any clash of cultures.  For instance, if we do accept the concept that cultures are different, which predicates the concept of multiculturalism, then we must be willing to accept that every single culture both holds views which are offensive to others, and is offended by others’ views.   This is where the term “tolerance” originates: within the toleration of offensive standards and behaviors; for if standards and behaviors were all acceptable, there would be no need for tolerance.

The question is, who tolerates first?

While this question might at first seem a little silly, if we’ve already accepted the idea that all cultures offend other cultures in one way or another, then the concept of tolerance always necessitates one group’s abandonment of a cultural norm.  For instance, if group A is culturally offended by group B’s behavior, does tolerance demand the abandonment of group A’s cultural expectations or group B’s cultural behavior?  Although multiculturalists enjoy pretending that everyone can win in a diverse environment, tolerance demands that one culture always sacrifice for another.  Thus, if cultural sensitivity and acceptance for everyone really are the goals of diversity, then multiculturalism is a failure not just in application, but also in theory.

Once we’ve accepted that no such thing as fair tolerance exists, we must ask whether the majority should sacrifice for the minority, or the minority should sacrifice for the majority. While many Leftists would immediately claim neither, their actions have been clear from the beginning: minority cultures are to be protected from the cultural norms of the majority, at the expense of the heritage and social cohesion of the majority culture.   So while this kind of legislation may have the original appearance of egalitarianism and tolerance, the functional inapplicability of true multicultural tolerance refutes both purposes, suggesting that someone’s culture–a culture which multiculturalism asserts is neither superior nor inferior, but equally worthy–is being forcefully dismantled.  And even if there can be an argument that these laws also occasionally force minority cultures to sacrifice their norms for the majority, the overwhelming number of instances in which to offend and override the majority’s cultural standards mathematically asserts that an equal application of tolerance between majority and minority groups is impossible, even when civil rights legislation’s group-neutral wording attempts to suggest otherwise.  There are simply too many majority-owned businesses and institutions to believe that both minority and majority sue with equal frequency.  Simply put, the majority culture suffers most from tolerance legislation.

Last, Westerners must face the fact–either now or in a far more hostile future–that there can be no such thing as complete tolerance.  Even those who claim to be strict “constitutionalists” find themselves [1] concocting doctrines for how the very plainly-stated first amendment is to be applied, since the first amendment guarantees an unabated freedom to practice religion, but few would like their neighbor to sacrifice a baby to Molech.  This kind of immense hypocrisy is adopted by both sides, from people who pretend to be accepting to all, but are very clear that the line will eventually be drawn, regardless of the cultures of others, and that someone from a very particular culture will draw the line.  And furthermore, the very existence of law even suggests a cultural “intolerance,” since those who culturally disagree with it are still subject to it. And although most American laws maintain a secular nature under the guise of tolerance, these laws, though irreligious, are still concocted from worldviews and cultures not representative of everyone.

So whose law will we have?

That first depends upon who you as a people are.  English philosopher Roger Scruton [2] once said of society, “Every society depends on an experience of membership: a sense of who ‘we’ are, why we belong together, and what we share. This experience is pre-political: it precedes all political institutions, and provides our reason for accepting them. It unites left and right, blue-collar and white-collar, man and woman, parent and child.  To threaten this ‘first-person plural’ is to open the way to atomisation, as people cease to recognize any general duty to their neighbours, and set out to pillage the accumulated resources while they can.”  Our very survival and success demand that we must not be a nation of cacophonous everybodys, with 300 million “equally valid” opposing values, but a nation of cohesive somebodys: a real people with real cultural expectations.  But in order to be a nation of somebodys, we cannot continue pretending that the American cultural majority are nobodys.

Therefore, since (1) “tolerance” always necessitates the trampling of a culture’s boundaries, and since (2) a trampling of the majority culture would not only be intolerant, but would result in the implosion and forceful restructuring of a valid cultural people, and since (3) law necessitates that cultural standards be set by a particular worldview, the right to self-determination and the cause of liberty necessitate that we–as a free people–rightfully reestablish our own [3] original states’ standards in spite of the world’s opinions.  A free society is not one which governmentally persecutes cultural expectations, but one which is created by a particular people for a particular people, a government emanating from the grass-roots upward instead of from “enlightened” elites who mandate sensitivity and cohesion from the top-down.  There must be a standard, so as a free people, let it be ours.

So when that smug Muslim man demanded that we toss aside our cultural sensitivity–the very right to feel uncomfortable about a Mosque overlooking Ground Zero, a perceived victory for every Al-Qaeda operative in the world–our answer should be simple: he needs to learn tolerance for the feelings of the American people.  This is our land, these are our feelings, those were our sons and daughters who died.  If he is enlightened enough to suggest the putting-aside of feelings, then he should be a leader and take the first step.

America is the only country in the world where Americans can truly be American, but our liberty-laden homeland is not an eternal guarantee.  If maintaining these liberties is in any way important to us, three simple solutions remain:

First, we must repeal the unworkable 14th amendment, which strips Americans of states’ rights, legalizes anchor babies, and makes our [4] first amendment virtually inapplicable.

Second, we need to repeal the [5] Hart-Cellar act of 1965, which denies Americans the ability to choose from which nations we import, thus dismantling the maintenance of our cultural heritage and flooding us with people who oppose the very purpose of America.

Third, we must repeal all anti-discrimination legislation, since it overwhelmingly discriminates against the cultural expectations of the American majority, and forces us to place the oftentimes undeserving into positions of authority.