(This piece first appeared in The Herald on 24 December 2015)
I don’t
really give too much thought to the war in Syria. There’s just too much else to
think about all the time. I mean right now I am facing a real dilemma: do I buy
the silver baubles for the Christmas
tree or do I get those shiny red ones with a picture of a snow man on them? …..And
what about the Christmas lights? Do I get the white flickering ones my wife
wants to match the candles she bought for the table or do I get the brightly
coloured blinky lights that remind me of my child hood?
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| As children we're taught to tolerate nonsense for the "sake of peace" |
What I can
say about the war in Syria though is that Isis has given intolerance a bad
name. Realistically, Isis are just the last in a series of zealots, warlords and dictators
that have left most thinking people rejecting any and all tendencies toward
intolerance. The Spanish Inquisition, Robben Island and Stalin’s Gulags are all
recorded testimony of murderous path down which unchecked intolerance leads. Nixon
could not tolerate the idea of the Vietnamese choosing to live under communism
so he bombed Hanoi back into the dark ages. Bush could not tolerate Saddam, so
he bombed Bagdad.
So I completely
understand how it is that the mindful and well-mannered people spend much of
their time advocating “tolerance”. For much of my life too, I have argued for
“tolerance”, but I have now begun to re-think
You see, in a
very real way “tolerance” means putting up with what I know is wrong “for the
sake of peace”. But I have come to see that this is really a very short term
solution. In fact, what I am calling for now, on this Christmas Eve, is a
healthy dollop of “Intolerance”. Let
me explain. I am making this call to all good people, all patriots and all
lovers of this beautiful ecosystem of which we are an indivisible part. I encourage you all to take inspiration from
the students who this year said: “We will
not tolerate Universities being for rich people only” or from the banks and
unions who forced our president to backtrack when they said: ”We will not tolerate you destroying our
economy”. I encourage you to become intolerant in your home, in the street
in which you live, in your shopping centre parking lot. Because it is the poor and defenceless that
carry most of the cost when our society tolerates lawlessness. It is the poor
and defenceless that cannot afford short term insurance, it is the poor and
defenceless who must tolerate starvation because their chickens are stolen from
their back yard. It is the poor and defenceless who can’t get the time off
their dead-end jobs to tolerate being sent from pillar to post by brutally
mindless corporations and institutions.
So, where you
witness drunkenness, littering, late coming, rudeness, cold cappuccino or institutional
nonsense; don’t tolerate it. Make a scene. Find the courage to speak out. If
each of us does this every day, we will be victorious. Mayor Giuliani proved in New York, that by
becoming intolerant of little “crimes” we create environment where the bigger,
more serious crimes begin to dwindle. We can’t expect our overstretched Police
to deal with the small stuff. There is just too much really serious crime going
on. So it’s up to you and I to become intolerant today.
Go now and rest;
but rest with one eye open for that drunk uncle that may be thinking of
stepping out of line. And when you put him in his place and correct his
behaviour know that it is no less than your patriotic duty to have done so.
