Dalrymple’s dilemma

Continuing from the earlier blog entry on Theodore Dalrymple, here is why a supposed conservative who says, as Dalrymple says, that he “believes in a tolerant society” is in fact a liberal who will have great difficulty taking a non-liberal position on immigration.

To say that one believes in Britain as a tolerant society implies that Britain should be tolerant of everything. It should open itself to everything. But that’s the same as saying that Britain should cease to exist as a distinct entity. All human societies, ranging from a family to a tribe to a political party to a modern nation-state, define themselves by what they accept, and what they don’t accept. They accept those things that are compatible with or helpful to their existence and they don’t accept things that are incompatible with or harmful to their existence. To say that a tribe, country, political party, or family should be “tolerant” means an openness to everything that would destroy that tribe, country, party, or family as an entity.

People might reply: “Well, being tolerant doesn’t mean being tolerant of everything.” But if that’s their view, they shouldn’t speak of their belief in a “tolerant” society, should they? After all, even a non-liberal society, say Tsarist Russia, would be tolerant of some things and intolerant of others. So the real question is not, “Are we a tolerant society or not?” The real question is, “What is the substantive character of our society”? And from the answer to that question, the knowledge of what the society should tolerate and not tolerate will automatically flow.

By contrast with the above traditionalist approach, which is based on clearly stated principles and therefore is (to use the contemporary term) transparent, the tolerance approach is hopelessly murky. This is because the concept of tolerance contains no principle by which the tolerance can be limited. Therefore the rule of tolerance can only be limited by an unprincipled exception to itself, that is, an exception that is not based on liberal principle.

And that is Dalrymple’s dilemma. On one hand, his statement that Britain is a tolerant society makes him a liberal—not just a classical, traditional liberal, but a modern, openness liberal. On the other hand, his increasing fear and mistrust of Islam forces him to make an exception to his philosophy of liberal tolerance. But, because he has not broken with his philosophy of liberal tolerance, he can find no solid intellectual and moral basis for his desire to exclude Muslims. So his position is tortured, ambivalent.

- end of initial entry -

Zachary W. writes:

Your conclusion is strong: “the rule of tolerance can only be limited by an unprincipled exception to itself.”

But is Dalrymple saying tolerance should “rule”? That it should be England’s raison d’etre? Or does he just consider tolerance, on the whole, to be a Good Thing. Does he not just lament that, because of a few bad Muslim apples, Britain may no longer be able to judge an entire group of people on their own merit, as individuals?

Of course, he lays it on a little thick with “the wisdom of Solomon,” but this is, after all, the L.A. Times. (Or perhaps he agrees with you that Muslims should be forcefully removed, and by the “wisdom of Solomon” he means that the ones who don’t put up a fight will thereby prove themselves worthy of English citizenship?)

By the way, here’s a Dalrymple quote from Wikipedia (about people “at the lower end of the social scale” in Britain): “There is no religion, there is no belief that the country is involved in a transcendental purpose, so there is very little left for them; they live in their own soap opera, actually.”

Sounds a lot like you …

LA replies:

“Sounds a lot like you…”

Except, as I said, that Dalrymple is an atheist. That’s one reason his cultural critiques are so popular with the American establicons. They love people who complain about a loss of belief in society who are themselves not believers.

Zachary replies:

Yup, pretty silly.

I guess by bemoaning that the common man has “no religion [&] no belief that his country is involved in a transcendental purpose,” Dalrymple feels absolved from having to specify what that “transcendental purpose” should be.

LA writes:

However, I haven’t yet replied to your question: Am I correct that Dalrymple is saying that tolerance should rule and be England’s raison d’etre?

First, I point to the strangeness (which we can only see when we step back from our absorption in the present moment and its fashions) of the idea that one ought to “believe in a tolerant society.” People simply would not have spoken that way two generations ago, let alone a physician with an exuberantly grim view of human nature. But today everyone talks that way, and so does Dalrymple. It is the default thought-form of the modern world, adopted by everyone except for those who consciously resist it. Therefore the phrase can only be properly understood by seeing it in its contemporary context. That context is today’s Britain, where tolerance is indeed the ruling principle of society, as I have demonstrated in many blog entries since July 2005. That was when I first realized to my horror and amazement that the automatic response of all British people to any ethnic problem was to say, “We believe in a tolerant society.” I realized that, whereas in America we had started out with the idea of assimilation but had gradually given it up over several decades and moved toward multiculturalism, though there was still a tension between neoconservatism and multiculturalism, in Britain they had leaped directly from traditional society to multiculturalism with no intermediate stage of neoconservatism. The British had no notion of a common national idea, identity, or standard, to which they expected anyone to adhere. It was pure tolerance and openness. What was true only on the left side of America, was true of all of Britain. This was the abyss that opened before my eyes when I contemplated Britain in the aftermath of the July 2005 bombings.

So when Dalrymple without a thought spoke about “believing in a tolerant society,” he was simply giving voice to Britain’s left-liberal orthodoxy as his own.

Now, some people will say, “But he didn’t mean it, it’s just a phrase, he’s really conservative. And he’s trying to restrict immigration.” My answer is that people define themselves politically by the ideas to which they publicly subscribe. A man who says, “I believe in a tolerant society,” and portrays any possible departure from the rule of absolute tolerance as a descent into Nazi-like evil, is a left-liberal who identifies openness with the Good and sees it as the ruling principle of society. Only under the most extreme circumstance, such as the present Islamic war against Britain, will he, with great reluctance, modify slightly his belief in absolute tolerance.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 12, 2007 07:33 AM | Send