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Tolerance Was A Lie The Left Used To Get Power

By: Nicole Russell
9 min read
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When you tear out a man’s tongue, you’re not proving him a liar, you’re telling the world you fear what he might say.” Tyrion Lannister, “Game of Thrones”

For decades, liberals, with the help of the mainstream media, have championed tolerance of people groups and ideas, specifically on race, sexuality, and social welfare programs. Much of their success has been due to their claimed love for tolerance and big-tent pretense.

Yet it’s becoming increasingly clear many liberals don’t actually practice the very tolerance they advocate. They hold a double standard for one set of progressives—the elite media and politicians—and another for the rest of society, which undermines the Left’s credibility. That once-banner statement for liberalism—“I disagree but will defend to the death your right to say what you think”—is now dead, replaced with a naked, de-principled thirst for power. Those slogans were useful bait while they lasted. Now for the reality show.

Some Lives Matter

One of the most persuasive ways the Left has garnered votes is to repeatedly chide the Right for supposedly leaving minority groups out in the cold, insisting they will pick up the slack and offer a helping hand to those ostracized. They claim that, whether through social programs, advocacy groups, or even Hollywood storytelling, they will help minorities through difficult times.

In his speech last week at the memorial in Dallas for five police officers killed by a black man, President Barack Obama addressed himself African Americans in this spirit.

And so when African Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have ‘the talk’ about how to respond if stopped by a police officer – ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir’ — but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door…we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism.’

Much of the mainstream media applauded Obama’s speech as timely and on-point. But how does the media feel about another black man, who is a medical doctor, conservative, and former candidate for president? Then his race is not good enough to overcome the evils of his beliefs. Ben Carson’s “minority” status becomes irrelevant, and GQ doesn’t hold back from attacking this “bad black person.” It’s clear it’s not enough to be African American: one must be liberal, perhaps with a chip in your shoulder, to be heralded by a mainstream magazine.


So much for diversity. It appears the Left only wants to celebrate and tolerate different races when they can exploit them.

The recent racial strife between cops and minorities and the cop murders that have followed show such a bias against law enforcement it’s unbelievable. These same people will praise law enforcement if it behooves them—say, at a televised ceremony—or if said member of law enforcement is a minority, but in reality, mainstream media has little respect for the men and women who are police officers or members of our military, who daily put their lives on the line for our collective safety.

Zack Ford, an editor at Think Progress, tweeted about the recent cop killings, “Given how police haven’t been held accountable for murdering black people, it’s no surprise some are taking justice into their own hands.” (The original tweet has since been deleted.) Jesse Benn, a writer at Huffington Post, recently wrote about the same killings:

Last week five Dallas cops were killed by Micah Xavier Johnson, a Black man who was allegedly motivated to take such drastic action after continually watching the US legal system refuse to hold killer cops to account. Naturally, bootlickers across the globe are unquestioningly celebrating the slain officers as heroes, innocents, and protectors. But what if one of those dead cops was a white supremacist—is he still a hero?

After Pat Smith, the mother of one of the men killed in the Benghazi attack, spoke at the Republican National Convention, GQ writer Bethlehem Shoals tweeted, “I don’t care how many children Pat Smith lost I would like to beat her to death.” After being called out for inciting violence against a grieving mother, Shoals has since deleted and apologized for the tweet.

Liberals often view families of blacks, veterans, or cops with disdain and zero tolerance if they are conservative, a stark contrast from the messaging from any liberal political candidate or mainstream media outlet. This undermines their credibility, especially on the campaign trail. Their relationship is selectively beneficial based on political gain or media hits. As a friend of mine, Nick Short, said on Twitter, “They practice marcuse repressive tolerance: intolerance against movements from right and tolerance of movements from the left.”

Progressives, especially during elections, advertise they welcome all minorities, that they support law enforcement and our military, yet in reality they do nothing of the sort. Those are empty words to garner votes. If liberals really cared about free speech, diversity, or tolerance, they would speak out against illiberal behavior like this, and against bigger expressions of it such as government efforts to silence churches and small businesses based on ideas about sexuality.

Twitter Bans Milo

Similarly, Twitter, a platform that claims to encourage free expression and exchange of ideas, is increasingly proving it will tolerate ideas coming from the Left, but not tolerate ideas coming from the Right side of the political aisle.

Last Tuesday, Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart tech editor and outspoken gay libertarian whose tweets are a mix of politics, photos of himself, and jokes about liberals, feminists, or anyone else with whom he disagrees. A self-proclaimed friend to the “alt-right” movement, Yiannopoulos’ narcissism and provocateur attitude can be egregious and annoying. Still, he’s outspoken against the dangers of feminism, the Left’s hypocritical stance on gays, and “social justice warriors.” Although his behavior is over the top, he’s never outright threatened a person online.

After engaging in several contentious tweets with Ghostbuster actress Leslie Jones, Twitter deemed Yiannopoulos’s  comments harassment and banned him from the site. A company spokesman told Buzzfeed News, “People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.” However, upon reading the tweet that put Yiannopoulos over the edge, it’s unclear how it constitutes harassment, much less anything worse than the string of examples on Twitter that include death threats, race-baiting, and misogyny.

And compare it to Leslie’s tweets:

Here are just a few examples of truly offensive and outrageous tweets whose users seem to remain unbanned and active:

Intolerance Is Hypocritical

Let’s face it: Everyone struggles with hypocrisy, flawed humans that we are. However, in the political realm (as is sometimes true personally) double standards like these should come with consequences. If a political party and a slew of media outlets continue to say one thing yet do the opposite, they should lose credibility, at least on those issues. Instead of gaining power, Americans should be voting these guys out of office, or at least questioning their decisions via petitions, legislation, and the like. We should not live under a government set up by progressives who live by one standard set for themselves yet force the rest of us to live by another completely different standard.

These examples show just how hypocritical the Left is and how far they will go to increase their own political power. Like Jekyll and Hyde, liberals and much of the mainstream media express tolerance, affection, and open-mindedness toward people who will vote for them, pay their salary, or otherwise boost their cause. Yet these same progressives will mock the very groups they claim to support, if those groups happen to embrace conservative ideas.

It’s so blatantly obvious it’s actually quite surprising minorities and other groups seldom call them out for it. This very hypocrisy has given us both our first black president and movements of people who believe they are so ostracized they must lash out in violent protests. While this hypocrisy may do progressives good in the short term, it does no one or this country any good long term.

After working in Republican politics in Minnesota, Nicole Russell moved near Washington, DC and began her journalism career. Her work has appeared in the The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator's Young Journalist Award and she resides in northern Virginia with her four kids. Follow her on Twitter @russell_nm.
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Nicole Russell
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