[Mb-civic] Setting Limits on Tolerance - Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Setting Limits on Tolerance

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 12, 2005; Page A19

In 1977, when a bunch of neo-Nazis decided to march through Skokie, a 
suburb of Chicago heavily populated with Holocaust survivors, there was 
controversy as to whether they should be allowed. I thought they should. 
Why? Because neo-Nazis are utterly powerless.

Had they not been -- had they been a party on the rise, as in late-1920s 
Germany -- I would have been for not only banning the march but also for 
practically every measure of harassment and persecution from deportation 
to imprisonment. A tolerant society has an obligation to be tolerant. 
Except to those so intolerant that they themselves would abolish tolerance.

Call it situational libertarianism: Liberties should be as unlimited as 
possible -- unless and until there arises a real threat to the open 
society. Neo-Nazis are pathetic losers. Why curtail civil liberties to 
stop them? But when a real threat -- such as jihadism -- arises, a 
liberal democratic society must deploy every resource, including the 
repressive powers of the state, to deter and defeat those who would 
abolish liberal democracy.

Civil libertarians go crazy when you make this argument. Beware the 
slippery slope, they warn. You start with a snoop in a library, and you 
end up with Big Brother in your living room.

<>The problem with this argument is that it is refuted by American 
history. There is no slippery slope, only a shifting line between 
liberty and security that responds to existential threats.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101757.html
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