Tolerance - The New-Old Definition

What is "tolerance" and being "tolerant"? For ease of understanding I will use the very very simple definition. Tolerance is the ability to accept something while disapproving of it. This is definitely not the way tolerance is being described today by lefties and neo-liberals. Nowadays if you simply disapprove of something you are immediately being labeled a "hater" and intolerant and "backward". Take the example of homosexuality. In today's homo-tolerance debate you either have to be on the tolerant side (approve of homosexuality) or intolerant side (disapprove of homosexuality and want to ban it). Where is the place for people like me, who disapprove of homosexuality but don't want to ban or attack it per se? Where is the good old kind of Leckean tolerance, the kind where "You do what you want at your house, and I'll do what I want at mine." That kind of tolerance is long gone with the wind. The wind of socialism. Statists always want to promote social strife and conflict - and socialists are the more extreme statists. They know that real tolerance would lead to real cooperation without government coercion. There would be no war between, for example, homosexuals and Christians, just like there is no longer a war between Catholics and Protestants. They stay away from each other's Churches, but live in peace. If the government would stop looking into our bedrooms and inciting hatred I'm sure we'd get a lot more understanding in this world. After all, doesn't forcing someone to be tolerant (As the government does for example by banning "discrimination". See my earlier post on this here.) go against the very principle of toleration? I'm not a racist - but I'd like to think that as a tolerant individual I can tolerate racists, not put them in jail or hurt them for their beliefs (however false their beliefs may seem). And to the neo-liberals I say: Read John Locke, don't you yourselves claim him as the founder of your movement?

To quote Locke: If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come.