Unlimited tolerance destroys tolerance, so a tolerant order must be able to refuse something, and deciding what is the hard part.
Popper stated it in a 1945 footnote, and it is more qualified than its usual citation: he argued intolerant movements should be countered by argument while they can be, and suppressed only when they refuse to argue.
In practice
- A residents' meeting hears an objector out for twenty minutes and stops him at the point he begins shouting down the next speaker.
- A forum that permits every position finds the most aggressive drive out the rest, and permissiveness has produced a narrower forum.
- Standing
- Cited by all sides, each drawing the line in a different place. Compare Sen's liberal paradox, the same tension proved as a theorem.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- The paradoxes of democracy and the quips of partisans