The Vice and Virtue of Tolerance as a Core Value in America

Paul A. Swift

Abstract: When one attempts to identify the core values of contemporary culture in America there is a difficulty in terms of making cultural generalizations. While one might argue that there is internal diversity in all peoples, there is more diversity within the United States due to its heritage as a“melting pot”of different people. Beginning with the concept of culture, this paper hopes to share some of the challenges American citizens share in trying to live together harmoniously, with commentary on the significance of tolerance as an ethical and legal concept.

Keywords: culture; diversity; tolerance; value

I would like to thank my generous hosts for inviting me here today. To contribute to the Forum for Contemporary World Culture Development I would like to offer some reflections about a core value of America and some brief comments about the nature of culture. In my presentation I hope to share with you some of the challenges American citizens share in trying to live together harmoniously, with commentary on the significance of tolerance as an ethical and legal concept.

When one attempts to identify the core values of contemporary culture in America there is a difficulty in terms of making cultural generalizations. While one might argue that there is internal diversity in all peoples, there is more diversity within the United States due to its heritage as a“melting pot”of different people. James Clifford and others have pointed out how the concept of culture depends upon highlighting certain features and disregarding others, a point to which I shall return. Before I address some aspects of culture in America, it would be helpful for the purpose of clarifying some things about values to pose the questions: what kind of concept is culture? What kind of being does culture have？

In English the word culture is sometimes related to“the arts”as a term to describe a type of cultivation（often-but not always-associated with the distinction between high and low art）. Many parents say they don't want their kids to grow up“uncultured”in the United States. The concept of Bildung in German is similar to this so a lack of culture means something like not having the ability to appreciate, have fluency in, or be able understand certain types of experiences. Sometimes those who pursue the development of this sense of culture are jokingly referred to as“culture vultures”, persons who seek out an appreciation of art, classical music, etc.

However, there is also a distinct second definition of culture which is used to describe a pattern exhibited by a people, group, subgroup, etc. along the lines of what anthropologists study, often including the customs of the people, what foods they eat, what histories they tell about themselves, etc. This sense of culture would also include consideration of music, but in a descriptive sense, rather than music in the evaluative sense employed in the first definition of culture above. Anthropologists describe what styles of music occur rather than evaluate the aesthetic merits of music.

Additionally there is a third sense of culture as ethnicity and/or race: people refer to Black culture or Hispanic culture in the US, but also Asian culture as well. There is a fourth definition of culture which is used to describe any practice broadly defined—The Pittsburgh Steelers have a culture of winning, TV watching culture, media culture, rave culture, gaming culture, sports culture，biker culture, gun culture, gay culture, etc. These might be thought of better as subcultures, i. e. patterns of behavior. Not everyone participates in these types of cultures, but enough do to recognize a specific pattern of some group. It is not clear how big a group needs to be in order to be recognized as a culture, a point of ambiguity to be addressed further. The difference between a small group of deviant individuals and a subculture is murky, but at the very minimum, to have a culture or subculture, it must be made up of more than one person.

Identifying core values of the US poses a challenge since there is so much internal diversity about what people think is important in a nation of immigrants which is intentionally multi-cultural. It is difficult to make claims about core values when there is little consensus about fundamental values in general. There is less homogeneity in the US since there are virtually no rituals which everyone shares and there is no food everyone eats. As a general rule there is a lack of agreement about politics, religion, and the appropriate role of America in the world.

In the US, there is also in popular media the term“culture wars”which refer to the conflicts in the political arena where people argue about conservative vs. liberal values. These can be especially contentious disputes which require people who disagree with each other about fundamental values to at least listen to each other. There is widespread adoption of tolerance towards others' viewpoints in America, at least when it comes to speaking in the public space. This type of tolerance has a pragmatic function since it is a precondition for different people who have conflicting views to get along with some degree of harmony. It is undoubtedly related to the US Constitution's first amendment which guarantees freedom of expression.

There are good and bad things about this kind of tolerance. It is good in that it tries to keep open conversation with others and give everyone the space to voice their opinions about public policy, ethics, etc. However, there are downsides of it: US Secretary of State John Kerry told German students earlier this year that“Americans have a right to be stupid”. Tolerance of stupidity and the accompanying perspective that all views are worthy of being heard can produce negative results.

There is a phrase, “we can agree to disagree”which reflects part of the challenge of tolerance. People often have different viewpoints and part of tolerance has to do with tolerating differences: it is ok if everyone does not agree on everything. However, there must be limits of tolerance to preserve itself as a virtue. If a society tolerates everything, it has no means to assert itself against those who want to eliminate tolerance itself. Philosophers like Anthony Appiah thus suggest that every form of tolerance requires some form of intolerance. At the minimum, if one wants to preserve tolerance, one must be intolerant of those who want to eliminate tolerance.

The broad protection of speech in general in the US assumes that people will need to be both patient and tolerant for the good of the community. We cannot be tolerant of persons who yell“fire”in a crowded theatre since it is likely to cause immediately harm and injury through stampeding. There is tolerance of most other types of speech in the US, providing the speech does not do immediate physical harm. One of the difficulties which follows from this, however, is that there is tolerance for forms of extremely distasteful or offensive speech.

One example of this is that there is tolerance and legal protection of the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church, even though almost all Americans dislike this fringe group. One of their leaders, Reverend Phelps, obsessively protests against gay people in the United States. After the US military began to allow gay people to serve their country openly, Phelps orchestrated several protests of military funerals of those killed in combat. Because his group obeyed the letter of the law in terms of keeping the correct distance from funeral processions, they were legally able to do this, in spite of the increased emotional pain it causes grieving relatives who have lost their loved ones. Here we have a case where something is legally permitted but is ethically suspected.

The relationship between what is ethically permitted and what is legally permitted will always be a tricky issue, but there is a risk with tolerance where it creates a space for stupidity to flourish. In 2005 the Kansas Board of Education voted to include intelligent design theory to be taught in high school curricula alongside with Darwinian evolution, a move which tried to install a nonscientific theory to be included in Kansas schools with Darwinism: at bottom, intelligent design theory is basically creationism in disguise. President George W. Bush at the time stated, “I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.... You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes. ” The problem here with staying open-minded is that some ideas are not worth taking seriously intellectually. So the idea of“open-mindedness”as a virtue can be rhetorically abused to defend stupidity. If one is too close-minded, one risks a type of stupidity, yet if one is too open-minded, one's brain may fall out of his head！

In America, there is a widespread tolerance for religion. The broader context of considering history's lessons that people can kill each other for theological reasons informs this tradition. Even if younger people are more accepting of atheism, America still remains a very religious country compared to northern Europe. It is difficult to make generalizations, but younger people have much to do with changing attitudes, many of which are resisted in the culture war with the older generation's values.

Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, younger people were agents of change to reshape the next generation's attitude. There is always racism, but elimination of legalized racism helped to change attitudes, often couched in theological terms since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came from a background in theology which proclaimed that all citizens are equal in the eyes of God. Studies indicate that the most progressive advocates for change in values and public policy then（and now）were younger people, under the age of 30.

In the twenty first century a similar shift in attitudes has transpired which mirrors the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, but has instead to do with granting equal status under the law for gay persons and the transgendered community. In some way the struggle for gay rights has been a much more difficult struggle to advance since the moral arguments are much harder to justify by appeals to Biblical views which specifically condemn homosexuality. It is not only Biblical teachings which account for the lack of equality for gay persons;after all, Russia is not religious at all but has anti-gay laws as well, a recent point of contention between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin at the September, 2013 G20 summit.

Unpopular speech is protected in the United States, even toward religion. The US has many different religious groups and even if it is considered to be in bad taste to make fun of religion or religions in general, no one will be punished for it the way folks might be in theocratic states. Depicting the prophet Mohammed in a negative light is not encouraged, but it is permitted, just as there is tolerance for satire or criticism of other religious figures or doctrines.

There are practical, legal, and moral“oughts”of what one should do in the United States and speech is considered differently than action in terms of what one does. There are times when speech may become harmful but the broad protection of speech in general（even when it is unpopular）is a value held by most Americans, one which requires tolerance. There are limits for tolerance since there is no tolerance for child pornography in the United States because that is viewed as crossing the line of protected expression. Recipes for small pox are not viewed as a type of protected speech either.

There is an old saying, “Sticks and Stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me. ”Names and unpopular speech are not viewed as something which must culminate in violence. At this late date, America continues to have diverse cultural conflicts. Attitudes about equality under the law for gay people have undergone a shift, largely, but not exclusively, backed by young people. The legality of gay marriage is largely supported by people under the age of 30 but rejected by the majority of those over age 60.

America continues to be a fusion of diverse subcultures, making generalizations tricky. What is true of the whole is not necessarily true of every part. Contrary to most assessments, Carlin Romano has argued in America the Philosophical that America is actually more philosophical than most assessments which hold that Americans are anti-intellectual and anti-philosophical. There are many competing ideas of what America is and what goals she should aim for, but most of its citizenry still support a pragmatic tolerance for ideas of all kinds to be heard, even if they are unpopular. This allows everyone in principle to be considered in public discourse, but it also creates a space for unpopular expression which hopefully does no real harm.

AFTERWORD

Sometimes there is a dispute among ethicists about the status of ethical relativism, a position which takes two forms: there is cultural ethical relativism（also known as conventional relativism）which maintains that ethics vary fundamentally from culture to culture. There is also extreme ethical relativism（also known as subjective relativism）, a position that maintains that what is right or wrong varies fundamentally from person to person. Many persons accept the former view of ethical relativism, but almost none accept the latter（extreme ethical relativism）, since the latter seems like no moral theory at all. Somehow there is more respect for cultural ethical relativism, but not extreme ethical relativism. Louis Pojman has pointed out that this is strange since he claims that conventional ethical relativism ultimately boils down to extreme ethical relativism: the only real difference is that cultural ethical relativism has“cultural”before its name. As indicated in my introduction, the definition of culture at some level is somewhat arbitrarily reified. It depends ultimately on how big of a group one has before the group is recognized as a culture.

Anthropologists such as Isabel Fonseca have studied the Gypsy people: in Gypsy culture, many steal and lie to outsiders and it is accepted by the group as appropriate conduct.Consider if you will whether that kind of behavior is ethically justified. If an individual steals and lies, he is usually considered unethical, deviant, and unworthy of respect. However, if a large enough group practices that same behavior, many persons are willing to accept it in the name of cultural tolerance. The Gypsies are a very unusual culture, but the point here is to raise the question, how large of a group does one need in order to have the group recognized as a culture? At what point does a deviant small group gain the status of being a culture？

Pojman also points out that there are differences in cultures, independently of ethical issues. Different cultures have different customs and practices: this is the diversity thesis which is purely descriptive, based on anthropological observation. The question about ethics is whether ethics depends on those practices or not. Some thinkers claim that ethics depends on the culture: Pojman calls this the dependency thesis. If one accepts the proposition that ethics depends on the culture, then one is a cultural ethical relativist. However, one can be a cultural relativist without being an ethical relativist: cultural relativism in this view makes no claim about ethics, but merely recognizes that different cultures have different practices. Observing that these differences exist does not mean that one needs to adopt the position of cultural ethical relativism.

One argument against cultural ethical relativism is that if it is the case that whatever a culture claims is ethically correct actually is what is actually correct by definition, then there is no means to account for cultural reform. A similar problem exists for legalism as the basis of ethics: if whatever the law says is correct is identical to what is ethically correct, how can one account for any types of reform? Reform is based on being able to criticize the law or public policy. Having the tolerance for speech to consider how we can make our governing institutions more just indicates that we are able to change. If legalism were true as an ethical theory, by definition the law would be identical to what is ethically correct. Yet we know there have been reforms and this presupposes a space and tolerance for criticism. This tolerance can be used as a basis to make changes for the better, thus suggesting that what is legally permissible is not identical to what is ethically permissible.

Legalism and the position of conventional ethical relativism are similar in that neither of these theories can account for how reform of their position could be possible. In some ways Plato may have anticipated some of this in his Euthyphro dialogue where he asks, is it pious because the gods love it? Or do the gods love it because it is pious? A similar line of thought could ask: Is it right because the law says it is?（or）does the law say it because it is right？

It is tough to make claims about core values of America: to make generalizations requires one to selectively ignore those who do not fit into one's claims about culture. The internal diversity and multi-cultural identity of the US make it difficult to speak about what everyone values. However, there is a sense in which it is important to preserve the ability to speak, even if it means tolerating minority or unpopular speech. This value does not require everyone to agree which each other, but it does require the patience for tolerance.