The Demise of Tolerance

I saw three murders this week: A young Ukrainian immigrant on public transportation, a beloved political figure shot during a speech on campus, and the Tolerance of the Right.

Two of them were murdered by violence.

The third by calousness.

When I was young, the Right was intolerant, and the Left was very tolerant.

About fifteen years ago, it switched. The Left has been intolerant, and the Right extremely tolerant. Not every individual, obviously, but politically and in general, the Right welcomed everyone, supported many things they disagreed with, etc.

I believe in tolerance. Real tolerance. As in being tolerant of things YOU do not agree with. I watched sadly as my fellow (at the time) Liberals began to interpret tolerance to mean supporting things they believed SOMEONE ELSE did not agree with.

They would declare that the fascist, evil, Nazi left did not support X (this is why I don’t like the name X for Twitter. It makes it confusing when we use it in its meaning of ‘a random thing’. I mean the second. Not Twitter) and then they would crow about how they did support this X thing: First it was those with special needs, then Blacks, then gays, then transexuals, etc. etc.

But most of the Right either agreed with them by this point or were perfectly happy to let people do as they wished.

Only, the Left couldn’t leave it that way.

They needed the threat of the intolerant Right to keep their base scared and in line. So when it didn’t exist, they bought the media and used the news to invent it.

The Right grumbled about this, but they did not take it very seriously.

But the Left kept screaming about the intolerance of the Right. It makes their base feel brave to think they are defying someone. They shout about how the Right wants to kill them or put them in camps, and then congratulate each other on their extreme bravery in defying this threat.

But actual people on the Right objecting to them—when anyone objected at all—have been very lowkey, mainly just speechifying.

But on 9/11/2025, all that changed. I saw the Right snap back to intolerance.

Notice, I said on the eleventh, not on the tenth, when Charlie Kirk was shot.

Because this sea change on the Right was not motivated by the murder of this man they admired, but by the people who cheered his death.

They saw one of their most even-tempered and tolerant members murdered, and then his murder celebrated.

They saw someone murdered for speaking aloud exactly what they believed.*

* I mean what Charlie Kirk actually stood for, not the ridiculous list of cherry-picked things he “said” that is going around, which includes things he stated in the process of objecting to or disproving them.

This was a huge shock for many. People who swore no one on the Left would be happy about a murder had to come back and apologize.

I saw people swear they would speak out. I saw people decide to go back to church.

But I also saw people say that they cut their Democratic neighbors for the first time, ever. They were done. They did not want to keep supporting people who had just probed that they truly hated them.

For two decades, they had put up with being called evil and fascists and the like...and now they realized that the Left had come to actually believe these lies.

Then, like a switch flipping, they were done.

For a decade, they had watched their own be canceled and driven from jobs, particularly from academia, but they had refused to behave thus in turn.

Now, suddenly, a coordinated effort began to get everyone who praised murder fired…especially in academia. The idea of sending their children to be taught by people who believed that those who agreed with them should be killed was a bridge too far.

Saddest thing is...the Left will never understand that this reaction is entirely of their own creation. They will go through their days believing that the Right was always thus and never see that the monster is of their own creating.

It was a sad day. I have no idea what it means for the future.

And yet…

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26)