It is not a “given” today that all views will be tolerated in the public sphere. Can claims to normative truth and ultimate reality —claims that offend ancient, modern, and ultra-modern sensibilities alike—still be made? To deny that there is an objective moral reality to which our social and political life must align is to prepare the way for totalitarianism.

Along with its sibling “diversity,” “tolerance” has achieved the status of being our culture’s reigning virtue. Given its omnipresence, it is incumbent upon us to be morally serious about its definition and character when applied in the public sphere. The current cultural climate, however, militates against this—a climate in which at times grotesquely distorted forms of “diversity” are being mandated by government, education, as well as business, as in, the key sectors of American society.

Tolerance originally denoted a policy of forbearance in the presence of something not acceptable to all. It was foremost a political virtue and, at bottom, demonstrated a government’s readiness to permit a variety of religious beliefs. John Locke argues that government should not enforce a specific religion in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and Two Treatises of Government (1689).

Removed from its religio-political context and understanding, however, tolerance ceases to be a virtue. Indeed, it becomes a vice if and where it ceases to care for truth, ignores what is good, and disdains the values that uphold a community. The culture in which we Americans presently find ourselves is one in which almost everything is tolerated. It is a culture in which people believe nothing, possess no clear concept of right and wrong and, ultimately, are indifferent to this precarious state of affairs. The challenge before us, then, is learning how to purify tolerance so that it remains a virtue, without succumbing to the centripetal forces of relativism in a vacuum of moral chaos.

Tolerance, properly conceived, has private as well as public dimensions. While we may disagree with another’s opinion or lifestyle, we extend, in principle, that person’s “right” to live according to his conscience. Religious and non-religious people of all varieties tolerate one another’s differences because of what they share in common—the laws of nature, an acknowledgement of what is acceptable and unacceptable, and a desire for humans in community to flourish. When, however, someone in the name of “tolerance” is making claims on the public square that lie outside these bounds, we do not tolerate those views. Why? Because those views undermine the common good.

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