“The claim for individual toleration cannot extend to cancelling other people’s right to judge as they will what a given individual does. Much of the modern demand for individualism—including John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’—is a plea for exemption from social feedback from those negatively judging individual behaviour. Such an exemption is especially inconsistent when it emanates from those actively criticizing the rest of society. However democratic the language in which it is phrased, it is not a demand for equal rights, or a general freedom, but for a non-reciprocal special privilege.”
Under threat of sanction with “hate speech” laws, we are constantly admonished by the anointed to remove the “stigma” (formerly, and more appropriately, called shame) associated with behaviours that in the recent past would have been considered unnatural and abhorrent. Instead, we are told to “normalize” them. But this requirement for toleration runs only in one direction. In trenchant fashion typical of his genius, Sowell cuts through misdirection and bullshittery with clear insight and plain language.
