More examples of the open-minded left.

Fragile leftists cancel NYT subscription because a columnist said to listen to all sides on the subject of Global Warming:

"Adriana Heguy, a genomics scientist and professor of pathology at NYU, urged her colleagues to scrap their subscriptions, as well.

“Composing my letter to the editor today and canceling @nytimes,” she tweeted. “‘Balance’ means a VALID alternative opinion, not pseudoscience. I’m so sad.”

Seems like an overreaction.

However, in other news, a recent study of the attitudes of Dartmouth students surprisingly discovers that Democrats are less tolerant of opposing views:


//The left loves embracing the idea of "tolerance," yet the rest of us have long observed that all the Left ever seems tolerant of is itself. A new survey from Dartmouth College provides yet more evidence that the volatile political divide in this country is being caused by the intolerant left:

In the campus-wide field survey, students of all political stripes were asked how comfortable they would be about living with a roommate who holds opposing political views. Of the 432 students surveyed, only 39 percent of students who identified as Democrats said they would feel comfortable living with a Republican, 16 percent said they felt neutral about the proposed arrangement, while 45 percent, a plurality, said they felt uncomfortable.

A majority of students who identified as Republicans (69 percent) said they were comfortable living with someone of opposing political views, 19 percent said they felt neutral about it, and only 12 percent said they felt uncomfortable. Among Independent students, 61 percent said they felt comfortable living with someone with opposite views, 22 percent were neutral about it, and 16 percent were uncomfortable.

Yup. The side that is currently breeding violence against speech they disagree with happens to be intolerant of opposing views. They've practically built an entire movement on preaching "tolerance," while those of us who didn't fall for it recognized it as Orwell's "newspeak."

Republicans don't routinely assault people who disagree with them. When is the last time you saw a group of conservatives hold a riot, or threaten a speaker? Tolerance does not mean acceptance. It means upholding the civil society. You do you, I'll do me, and we won't sweat anything else.//

Well, that's surprising.

Given the last 20 years.

And the rioting.

And the suppression of free speech by the left.

And the demand for "safe spaces."

Liberal Intolerance.

The fact that conservatives are more tolerant gets proven in study after study, like this recent Pew Study.

//A large Pew survey shows that Donald Trump’s supporters are more tolerant, open-minded, respectful and understanding than are Hillary Clinton’s vibrantly diverse supporters in her coalition of ethnic, sexual, professional and progressive factions.
“Clinton backers – particularly highly educated ones – have more difficulty respecting Trump supporters than the other way around,” Pew acknowledged in the Nov. 1 report.

That data is a mirror image of the media-magnified portrayal of Trump’s supporters that Democratic partisans have constructed throughout the 2016 campaign.

That image has been fostered by undercover Democratic groups which used extensive funding to arrange camera-ready fights at Trump’s rallies, by Clinton’s scripted eagerness to portray Trump’s supporters as irredeemable or insanely hostile to gays, migrant foreigners and Islamic believers, and by the media’s eagerness to showcase conflict at Trump rallies.

But Pew’s data shows that:

nearly six-in-ten registered voters who back Clinton (58%) say they have a “hard time” respecting someone who supports Trump for president; 40% say they have “no trouble” with it. Nearly the opposite is true among Trump supporters, with 56% saying they have no trouble respecting someone who backs Clinton and 40% saying they do have trouble with it.

That’s a 17-point tolerance difference between the two parties.//

I repeat my observation: conservatives are used to dealing with liberals. They are habituated to dealing with the Other at school, in movies, in concerts, now in sports, and in society generally.

Liberals can live in a cocoon where they never have to interact with anyone who disagrees with them. They are never exposed to different ideas.

Thus, liberals are able to pride themselves on their "tolerance" while being intolerant in practice.

But no hate crime charge?

Santa Barbara Professor who assaulted pro-life student charged with battery, assault and theft.

Tolerance - The moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another

Diversity training for a non-diverse workforce.

You have always been very kind to me, Prof. Kantrowitz, so it pains me to ask you this, but is this really what the History Department thinks of me? Is this what you think of me? I am not sure who selected the readings or crafted the itinerary for the diversity session, but, as they must have done so with the full sanction of the History Department, one can only conclude that the Department agrees with such wild accusations, and supports them. Am I to understand that this is how the white people who work in this Department are viewed? If so, I cannot help but wonder why in the world the Department hired any of us in the first place. Would not anyone be better?

There is one further issue. At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students”. At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.

Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.
It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion. I am not in graduate school to learn how to encourage poor souls in their sexual experimentation, nor am I receiving generous stipends of taxpayer monies from the good people of the Great State of Wisconsin to play along with fantasies or accommodate public cross-dressing. To all and sundry alike I explicate, as best I can, such things as the clash between the Taira and the Minamoto, the rise of the Kamakura shogunate, and the decline of the imperial house in twelfth-century Japan. Everyone is welcome in my classroom, but, whether directly or indirectly, I will not implicate myself in my students’ fetishes, whatever those might be. What they do on their own time is their business; I will not be a party to it. I am exercising my right here to say, “Enough is enough.” One grows used to being thought a snarling racist–after all, others’ opinions are not my affair–but one draws the line at assisting students in their private proclivities. That is a bridge too far, and one that I, at least, will not cross.

I regret that this leaves us in an awkward situation. After having been accused of virulent racism and, now, assured that I will next learn how to parse the taxonomy of “Genderqueers”, I am afraid that I will disappoint those who expect me to attend any further diversity sessions. When a Virginia-based research firm came to campus a couple of years ago to present findings from their study of campus diversity, then-Diversity Officer Damon Williams sent a gaggle of shouting, sign-waving undergraduates to the meeting, disrupting the proceedings so badly that the meeting was cancelled. In a final break with such so-called “diversity”, I will not be storming your office or shouting into a megaphone outside your window. Instead, I respectfully inform you hereby that I am disinclined to join in any more mandatory radicalism. I have, thank God, many more important things to do. I also request that diversity training be made optional for all TAs, effective immediately. In my humble opinion, neither the Department nor the university has any right to subject anyone to such intellectual tyranny.

Tolerance - The Moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Father Baron is not given to hyperbole.

Last week two outrageously anti-Catholic outbursts took place in the public forum. The first was an article in U.S. News and World Report by syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm. Ms. Stiehm argued that the Supreme Court was dangerously packed with Catholics, who have, she averred, a terribly difficult time separating church from state and who just can’t refrain from imposing their views on others. Her meditations were prompted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s granting some legal breathing space to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who were objecting to the provisions of the HHS mandate. As even a moment’s thoughtful consideration would reveal, this decision hadn’t a thing to do with the intrusion of the “church” into the state, in fact just the contrary. Moreover, the appeal of American citizens (who happen to be Catholic nuns) and the decision of a justice of the Supreme Court in no way constitute an “imposition” on anyone. The very irrationality of Stiehm’s argument is precisely what has led many to conclude that her column was prompted by a visceral anti-Catholicism which stubbornly persists in our society.

The second eruption of anti-Catholicism was even more startling. In the course of a radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo blithely declared that anyone who is pro-life on the issue of abortion or who is opposed to gay marriage is “not welcome” in his state of New York. Mind you, the governor did not simply say that such people are wrong-headed or misguided; he didn’t say that they should be opposed politically or that good arguments against their position should be mounted; he said they should be actively excluded from civil society! As many commentators have already pointed out, Governor Cuomo was thereby excluding roughly half of the citizens of the United States and, presumably, his own father, Mario Cuomo, who once famously declared that he was personally opposed to abortion. Again, the very hysterical quality of this statement suggests that an irrational prejudice gave rise to it.

One does not have to search very far, of course, to find the source of this prejudice deep in the American national consciousness. Many of the Founding Fathers harbored suspicions of Catholicism that came from their intellectual formation in both Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism. Read John Adams’s remarkable reaction to a Catholic Mass that he attended in Philadelphia to sense the texture of this prejudice. As the waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Southern Europe arrived on American soil in the 19th century, many figures in the political and cultural establishment feared that an influx of Catholics would compromise the integrity of American society. Accordingly, they organized political parties the platforms of which were specifically and virulently anti-Catholic. It is startling to realize that this political anti-Catholicism was not the exclusive preserve of yahoos and extremists. Prominent and mainstream figures such as Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson were vehement in their opposition to the Catholic Church. Many have argued that the election of the Catholic John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960 signaled a sea-change in American attitudes toward the Church, but we have to be cautious, for Kennedy represented, more or less, a privatized Catholicism that posed no real threat to the societal status quo.

What is particularly troubling today is the manner in which this deep-seated anti-Catholicism is finding expression precisely through that most enduring and powerful of American institutions, namely the law. We are a famously litigious society: The law shapes our identity, protects our rights, and functions as a sanction against those things we find dangerous. Increasingly, Catholics are finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, especially in regard to issues of sexual freedom. The HHS mandate is predicated upon the assumption that access to contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs is a fundamental right, and therefore to stand against facilitating this access, as the Church must, puts Catholics athwart the law. The same is true in regard to gay marriage. To oppose this practice is not only unpopular or impolitic, but, increasingly, contrary to legal statute. Already, in the context of the military, chaplains are encouraged and in some cases explicitly forbidden to condemn gay marriage, as this would constitute a violation of human rights.

And this is why the remarks by Andrew Cuomo are especially chilling. That a governor of a major state — one of the chief executives in our country — could call for the exclusion of pro-lifers and those opposed to gay marriage suggests that the law could be used to harass, restrict, and, at the limit, attack Catholics. Further, the attitude demonstrated by the son of Mario Cuomo suggests that there is a short path indeed from the privatization of Catholic moral convictions to the active attempt to eliminate those convictions from the public arena. I would hope, of course, that it is obvious how this aggression against Catholics in the political sphere ought deeply to concern everyone in a supposedly open society. If the legal establishment can use the law to aggress Catholics, it can use it, another day, to aggress anyone else.

— Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the rector/president of Mundelein Seminary. He is the creator of the award-winning documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization. 

How does another person's marriage affect anyone else?

Catholic student ejected for answering question in officially unapproved way:

Federal District Judge Patrick J. Duggan of the Eastern District of Michigan declared the teacher’s actions in punishing Daniel Glowacki violated his First Amendment Rights.

"While the Court certainly recognizes that schools are empowered to regulate speech to prevent students from invading the rights of other students, people do not have a legal right to prevent criticism of their beliefs or for that matter their way of life," Judge Duggan stated in his decision.

"Simply put, the law does not establish a generalized hurt feelings defense to a high school’s violation of the First Amendment rights of its students."

The incident that led to the lawsuit occurred on October 20, 2010.

That day during Daniel’s economics class, teacher Johnson McDowell wore a purple “Tyler’s Army” t-shirt, as part of a national campaign promoted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to highlight “bullying” of homosexuals.

In testimony at the trial, the court heard that McDowell initiated a discussion about homosexuality when, after telling a female student he was offended by her confederate flag belt buckle and ordering her to remove it, he went on to explain the purple “Tyler’s army” shirt he was wearing was meant to promote tolerance of homosexuality.

The court heard that the teacher specifically asked Daniel about his feelings on homosexuals. When the boy responded that as a Catholic he was offended by the gay and lesbian lifestyle, Daniel was ordered to leave the classroom under threat of suspension.

In an interview with Damian Goddard of the National Organization for Marriage’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance, Daniel recounted what happened:

“I raised my hand and I asked him what the difference was between him wearing a purple shirt and explaining that to us, but Danielle (another classmate) couldn’t wear her rebel flag belt buckle,” Daniel said. “He asked me if I was really against the homosexual lifestyle and I told him that the homosexual lifestyle was against my Catholic religion.”

An altercation ensued, and Daniel said he quietly left the classroom after McDowell told him “we lost our right to free speech once we stepped inside his classroom.” 

I've been surprised about Kirsten Power's (moderate) pro-life positions.

Apparently, she converted from atheism to Christianity.

Also, this is a surprisingly candid, accidental and disturbing confession -

“When I went away to college, whatever little faith I had, I lost. I ended up graduating from college. I worked in the Clinton administration. All my friends were secular liberals. At this point, I really got even more deeply into an incredibly secular world because now, all my friends were basically atheists, or if they had any kind of spirituality, they were very hostile towards religion, Christianity in particular. So, I really didn’t have any interest in it.

So, despite what they say, secular liberals know they are hostile to Christianity.

Delightful.

Tolerance - the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Ed Feser provides an analytical break-down of the stages in the formation of a liberal dogma:

To the charge that liberals are (or, given their principles, should be) in favor of X [where X = legalizing abortion, liberalizing obscenity laws, banning smoking on private property, legalizing “same-sex marriage,” outlawing the public advocacy of traditional sexual morality, etc. etc.], the standard liberal response goes through about five stages (with, it seems, roughly 5-10 years passing between each stage, though sometimes the transition is much quicker than that). Here they are:

Stage 1: “Oh please. Only a far-right-wing nutjob would make such a paranoid and ridiculous accusation - I suppose next you’ll accuse us of wanting to poison your precious bodily fluids!”

Stage 2: “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as X. All the same, it’s good to be open-minded about these things. I mean, people used to think ending slavery was a crazy idea too…”

Stage 3: “Hey, the Europeans have had X for years and the sky hasn’t fallen. But no, I admit that this backward country probably isn’t ready for X yet.”

Stage 4: “Of course I’m in favor of X - it’s in the Constitution! Only a far-right-wing nutjob could possibly oppose it.”

Stage 5: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…”

It seems like a parody, but it's not.

Water is wet, the sky is blue and ...

...liberal academics discriminate against conservatives.

Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement - ‘Impossible lack of diversity’ reflects ideological intimidation on campus:

It’s not every day that left-leaning academics admit that they would discriminate against a minority.

But that was what they did in a peer-reviewed study of political diversity in the field of social psychology, which will be published in the September edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, surveyed a roughly representative sample of academics and scholars in social psychology and found that “In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.”

This finding surprised the researchers. The survey questions “were so blatant that I thought we’d get a much lower rate of agreement,” Mr. Inbar said. “Usually you have to be pretty tricky to get people to say they’d discriminate against minorities.”

One question, according to the researchers, “asked whether, in choosing between two equally qualified job candidates for one job opening, they would be inclined to vote for the more liberal candidate (i.e., over the conservative).”

More than a third of the respondents said they would discriminate against the conservative candidate. One respondent wrote in that if department members “could figure out who was a conservative, they would be sure not to hire them.”

Mr. Inbar, who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008, cautions that the finding reflects only what respondents said they would do — not necessarily what they actually would do in real life.

Generally speaking, the more liberal the respondent, the more willingness to discriminate and, paradoxically, the higher the assumption that conservatives do not face a hostile climate in the academy.

To Massimo Pigliucci, chairman of the philosophy department at the City University of New York-Lehman College, the problem is not that conservatives face discrimination; it’s that any hint of political bias, whether conservative or liberal, necessarily flouts the standards of objectivity to which scholarship must adhere.

“It is to be expected that people would reject papers and grant proposals that smacked of clear ideological bias,” he says. Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers, he says, should have examined the extent of bias against liberal-leaning papers and grant proposals. If the degree of bias against liberals and conservatives is similar, maybe the data on discrimination against conservatives would not be so alarming after all.

But Harvey Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard University, argues that the anti-conservative bias is real and pronounced. He says conservatism is “just not a respectable position to hold” in the academy, where Republicans are caricatured as Fox News enthusiasts who listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Beyond that, conservatives represent a distinct minority on college and university campuses. A 2007 report by sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons found that 80 percent of psychology professors at elite and non-elite universities are Democrats. Other studies reveal that 5 percent to 7 percent of faculty openly identify as Republicans. By contrast, about 20 percent of the general population are liberal and 40 percent are conservative.

Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers found that conservatives fear that revealing their political identity will have negative consequences. This is why New York University-based psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-described centrist, has compared the experience of being a conservative graduate student to being a closeted gay student in the 1980s.

In 2011, Mr. Haidt addressed this very issue at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology — the same group that Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammer surveyed. Mr. Haidt’s talk, “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” caused a stir. The professor, whose new book “The Righteous Mind” examines the moral roots of our political positions, asked the nearly 1,000 academics and students in the room to raise their hands if they were liberals. Nearly 80 percent of the hands went up. When he asked whether there were any conservatives in the house, just three hands — 0.3 percent — went up.

This is “a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Mr. Haidt said.

And this is a feature, not a bug, for the lack of diversity:

The statistical representation of self-reported conservatives in the study may be largely moot as long as they are intimidated by a hostile, discriminatory majority. After all, a silent minority can hardly function as the kind of check on the prevailing assumptions of their liberal colleagues essential for robust academic debate.

“Because of the way the confirmation bias works,” Mr. Haidt says, referring to the pervasive psychological tendency to seek only supporting evidence for one’s beliefs, “you need people around who don’t start with the same bias. You need some non-liberals, and ideally some conservatives.”

You.Must.Approve.

The Tolerance Police lines up on Chick-Fil-A for doubleplus ungoodthink:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston — possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail — after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

Chick-fil-A has been swept up in a growing national controversy over company president Dan Cathy’s remarks questioning gay marriage and lauding the traditional family.

But, but, but...the government is here to help businesses prosper.

This video brings together the themes of Leftist intolerance, narrow-mindedness, inability to engage in rational discussion and hypocrisy that we've explored in the last several months.

Doug Wilson is heckled by Diversity activists on a university campus. The best part of this is Wilson's comments after the de rigeur clown act leaves the building.

Science supports the conclusion that Leftists are more intolerant and more willing to change the narrative to make their team look good...

...so if you think you've noticed a wee propensity for those on the left to be narrow-minded and intellectually dishonest, such as by wildly changing good from bad depending on who the president is, then your experience is probably true.

According to the Daily Caller:

Pew’s new study echoes the results of many other reports and studies that show GOP supporters are better educated, more empathetic and more open to criticism than Democrats.

A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely that conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them.

“In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,” said the report, tiled “Social networking sites and politics.”

The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from their social networks after disagreeing with their politics.

A March Washington Post poll showed that Democrats were more willing to change their views about a subject to make their team look good. For example, in 2006, 73 percent of Democrats said the GOP-controlled White House could lower gas prices, but that number fell by more than half to 33 percent in 2012 once a Democrat was in the White House.

In contrast, the opinions of GOP supporters were more consistent. Their collective opinion shifted by only a third, according to the data. In 2006, 47 percent in believed the White House could influence gas prices. By 2012, that number had risen to 65 percent up 17 points compared to the Democrats’ 40 point shift.


Read more:

The science is settled - Liberal Intolerance, Part 2.

It gets better. According to Andrew Malcolm

The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That's double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.

And:

Of those who dropped or shunned someone over political disagreements, Pew asked a follow-up question:

-- 21% of them blocked, unfriended or hid a coworker,

-- 31% blocked, unfriended or hid a (formerly) close personal friend,

-- and 18% blocked, unfriended or hid an actual family member.

Bottomline, this study is obviously racist.

Also notice how the fear of shunning and ostracism rules the liberal end of the spectrum:

The science is settled...

...liberals are more intolerant when it comes to actual interaction on social networks...which comports with my anecdotal experience:

It’s a well-known fact that liberals are more tolerant than conservatives or moderates. Superior liberal tolerance is such a fact that they will scream at you if you dare to disagree or debate them, demand that your advertisers bail on you, and pressure the FCC to get you banned from the airwaves. Does that sound like tolerance to you? A new survey from Pew confirms that liberals are the least tolerant of differing opinions, at least on line (emphasis mine):

Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS [social networking sites] users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps by doing at least one of the following:

•10% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because that person posted too frequently about political subjects

•9% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive

•8% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they argued about political issues on the site with the user or someone the user knows

•5% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics that the user worried would offend other friends

•4% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they disagreed with something the user posted about politics
Of course, that means that 82% of SNS users have not taken any steps to ignore or disconnect from someone whose views are different – or have not encountered any views that would prompt such a move.

Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.

It’s not even all that close, as their chart shows:

Undoubtedly, this has a lot to do with the fact that liberals - cocooned by a liberal media and a liberal academia - have only recently been exposed to the reality that (a) there are people out there who don't agree with liberals; (b) liberals are actually in the minority and (c) liberals are viewed as obnoxious dicks by normal human beings.

Add that to the liberal penchant to "yell louder" when their prejudices are challenged and you have the explanation for the graph shown above.

Andrew Malcolm has some fun with the implications:

Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.

In a new study, the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life Project confirmed what most intelligent Americans had long sensed. That is, whenever they are challenged or confronted on the hollow falsity of their orthodoxy — such as, say, uniting diverse Americans — liberals tend to respond defensively with anger, even trying to shut off or silence critics. (i.e. photo above of President Obama reacting to Boston hecklers.)
The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That’s double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.

For some full disclosure, I’ve blocked more than a few people on Twitter. I didn’t do it for disagreements, but for being unpleasant about disagreements. I consider Twitter to be a true social network; I don’t hang out with unpleasant people in real life, and so I see no need to do so in virtual life. Twitter is my water cooler, my hangout in slack time between bursts of writing. I’m happy to have a debate, but when it gets insulting, unpleasant, and intellectually dishonest, I take a pass.

I've blocked one person on Facebook for being a dick. I had no problems with the fact that he held different opinions; I wanted him to explain his opinions. The problem was that he apparently thought that it was enough for him to announce his opinion ex cathedra and then get insulting when he was asked to provide argument or evidence in support of them. When he told me to take the "shitcorks from my ears," life was just too short.

Liberal Intolerance.

You. Must. Approve:

In 2008, Dr. Turek was hired by Cisco to design and conduct a leadership and teambuilding program for about fifty managers with your Remote Operations Services team. The program took about a year to conduct, during which he also conducted similar sessions for another business unit within Cisco. That training earned such high marks that in 2010 he was asked to design a similar program for about 200 managers within Global Technical Services. Ten separate eight-hour sessions were scheduled.


The morning after completing the seventh session earlier this year, a manager in that session —who was one of the better students in that class—phoned in a complaint. It had nothing to do with content of the course or how it was conducted. In fact, the manager commented that the course was “excellent” as did most who participated. His complaint regarded Dr. Turek’s political and religious views that were never mentioned during class, but that the manager learned by “googling” Dr. Turek after class.

The manager identified himself as gay and was upset that Dr. Turek had written this book providing evidence that maintaining our current marriage laws would be best for the country. Although the manager didn’t read the book, he said that the author’s view was inconsistent with “Cisco values” and could not be tolerated. (Dr. Turek is aware of this because he was in the room when his call came in.) The manager then contacted an experienced HR professional at Cisco who had Dr. Turek fired that day without ever speaking to him. The HR professional also commended the manager for “outing” Dr. Turek.

This firing had nothing to do with course content—the program earned very high marks from participants. It had nothing to do with budget constraints—the original contract was paid in full recently. A man was fired simply because of his personal political and religious beliefs—beliefs that are undoubtedly shared by thousands of your very large and diverse workforce.

I assume the intent of Cisco’s value of “inclusion and diversity” is to ensure that people in that diverse workforce will work together cordially and professionally even when they inevitably disagree on certain political, moral or religious questions. Please note that Dr. Turek agrees with that value and was demonstrating it. The manager and HR professional were not. Dr. Turek was being inclusive working with them. They were being exclusive by refusing to work with him, even though his viewpoint was never discussed during his work at Cisco. (Ironically, the people who say they are fighting for “tolerance” are often the most intolerant!).

This is story that demontrates Windthorst's "organizing principle of liberalism" - "Freedom protects everything except unfreedom, and tolerance endures everything except intolerance"...."unfreedom" and "intolerance' being defined as "people who disagree with us."