Both Sides of the Tolerance Coin.  There are moments in life that pass us by and we do not realize until later how very significant they might have been.  I’m not certain about this, but we (America) may have just had one of those moments.

 “The Book of Mormon” is a popular play currently on Broadway that satirizes the Mormon faith and Christianity in general.  It has either won or been nominated for, I think, nine Tony awards.  There are numerous instances over the last couple of decades where the National Endowment for the Arts has not only sponsored, but openly supported anti-Christian works of art all across this nation (Loveland?).  Hardly a month goes by without a State, County, or Local school board taking some type of action to make certain that our children are learning the valuable lesson of religious and cultural tolerance, yet we continue to see many of the tenets of the Christian faith, the faith that nourished the founding of our nation, removed from our schools and public facilities.  Now don’t get me wrong; I heartily support the separation of church and state when governing is considered in practice.  What I do not understand is how we give awards to a pair of gentlemen who produce a play that ridicules the Mormon faith while we drag a man out of his home in the dark of night in front of his family and friends for producing a trailer that ridicules the Muslim/Islam faith.  And now, to cap it all off, and following a litany of apologies for even feigning to defame the Muslim/Islam faith, our government officials are spending $70,000 to produce an apology film for any offense that “may have been” perpetrated by any particular Muslim-related piece of film, satire, or documentary emanating from America.  What the #$@* is wrong with this picture?

Webster defines tolerance as “being tolerant of others’ values, beliefs, practices, etc.”  How can we, as a nation, accept a premise that on the one hand demands tolerance beyond all reproach and question and, at the same time, practices extreme intolerance of any beliefs other than its own?  That is what we are seeing with the Muslim/Islam issues today.  While Muslim/Islam believers openly practice their faith in America, build their abodes of worship, and recruit newcomers to their beliefs, Christians across the Middle East are being persecuted.  That persecution extends not only to public distain and ridicule, but to the point of open hostility to the extreme of homicide and the destruction of their houses of worship.  Maher, Leno, Daly, Letterman, Saturday Night Live, Mad Magazine….the list goes on and on.  We have not only a history of tolerance in this country; we have a history of extreme tolerance.  Why is it that we demand anything less from the governments that we prop up with our foreign aid and political capital? 

There is political pragmatism and there is rank hypocrisy; I fear that what we are now seeing play out in this current Middle East crisis is not only the latter, but a total and unashamed abandonment of some of this great nation’s most precious principles.  The widening chasm between the political parties is another symptom of this trend.  Somehow, someway…a leader(s) must emerge to bridge the gulf and bring some semblance of function back to our government.  And we, as individuals, must further accept the fundamental truth that, as espoused by  liberals, there is a fundamental role for government in our lives and there are things that can be better served by government than the private sector.   There is also the right to live one’s life, as long as it does not infringe on the lives of others, in the legal fashion that they might choose to be personally and morally appropriate.  By the same token, liberals must better accept the fact that many conservatives value the founding documents of this nation dearly and would like to see a much greater adherence to those documents than we are currently witnessing.  The government is not the answer to all of society’s ills and America is heading towards a nanny-state condition.  Much like some middle-eastern governments, liberals must understand that if they demand tolerance for cultural decisions, they must in turn tolerate those who choose not agree with decisions.  I think the word I am looking for here is “civility”.  The tragedy is not so much that it has ceased to exist in America; the tragedy is that nobody seems to be looking for it.