TOLERANCE AND PROGRESS
November 16, 2004

by Joe Sobran

     Nothing is quite so tiresome and toothless as the 
Latest Thinking. We've been barraged with it for more 
than a century, by such advanced apostles of Progress as 
George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice 
Webb, and Bertrand Russell, to name only a few of those 
who are still remembered at all. Their ideas have been 
adopted with disastrous results, but their faith goes 
droning on.

     One of the founding fathers of the Latest Thinking 
is the American sex researcher Albert Kinsey, hero of a 
new movie. Kinsey's famous 1948 study, SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN 
THE HUMAN MALE, has taught two generations that all 
sexual practices are natural, therefore okay. He 
professed to be a pure, value-neutral scientist, but it 
has since transpired that he was a pretty kinky guy 
himself who had an interest in abolishing distinctions 
between the normal and the abnormal. His study included 
sexual experiments on little kids, which, though highly 
illegal, was for some reason overlooked by the law. Maybe 
the magic word "science" immunized him.

     In any case, the book's implicit moral was hardly 
value-neutral, as everyone now sees. It was a thorough 
rejection of the very idea of virtue in the realm of 
carnal relations. Kinsey was an enemy of chastity, 
virginity, and innocence itself. The movie, judging by 
the reviews, plays down his own -- what's the term? -- 
sado-masochism, as well as the kiddy sex. But then 
Hollywood has a long tradition of beautifying heroes, and 
the real Kinsey requires a lot of beautifying.

     Socialism, once a cornerstone of the Latest 
Thinking, has been a bit tarnished by modern history, but 
the sexual revolution -- once known as "free love" -- is 
still going strong. Hey, if it feels good, do it. You can 
always get an abortion or penicillin later.

     Those who still hold out against this revolution, 
which might also be called the Kinsey ethic, are now 
accused of "intolerance." You see this every day on the 
op-ed pages, where red-state Christians who oppose 
abortion and same-sex "marriage" are said to be acting 
contrary to Christ's teachings. Christ, after all, taught 
tolerance, which these people sorely lack. So we are 
told.

     Actually, Christ never preached anything as mushy 
and undefined as tolerance, let alone Kinsey-style 
tolerance. He taught mercy, patience, charity -- which 
cover a lot of ground, but are a long way from 
Kinseyland. He also condemned divorce, adultery, and even 
looking at women with lust. Pretty intolerant, according 
to the Latest Thinking. "Go, and sin no more." These are 
sweet but stern words of forgiveness, even encouragement, 
but far from "Anything goes."

     Why is tolerance supposed to be an unqualified 
virtue? Dr. Samuel Johnson, always ready to take a stand 
against the Latest Thinking in his own day, had tough 
words about "unlimited toleration." As he put it to 
Boswell and other friends, "Old Baxter [the Reverend 
Richard Baxter, 1615-1691], I remember, maintains that 
the magistrate should 'tolerate all things that are 
tolerable.' This is no good definition of toleration upon 
any principle; but it shows that he thought some things 
were not tolerable."

     Unless we want to say that everything is tolerable, 
there must be some limits; and we should ask ourselves 
whether we have already tolerated too much. The answer 
depends on questions about human nature about which the 
Latest Thinking is itself none too tolerant. Do we have 
immortal souls? If so, are we at risk of damnation? And 
what sins increase the risk? Could sexual sins be among 
them?

     The Latest Thinking answers such questions in the 
negative; or rather, it presumes negative answers. The 
Christian takes them seriously. If we are essentially 
more than animals, they have to be confronted.

     Never mind the poor diseased and deserted losers of 
the sexual revolution, let alone the dead unborn. What 
about the winners? Does anyone really look up to such 
masturbation moguls as Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt? Have 
you ever heard anyone express admiration for these men?      

     We're now living in the ruins of false Progressive 
hopes, in moral as in political matters. Yet such is the 
sway of these banal ideas that hardly anyone dares 
suggest that we reconsider the merits of such alleged 
advances as divorce and contraception, whose effects are 
worse than any pessimist predicted.

     Tolerance may yet be the death of us. The Latest 
Thinking needs a lot of rethinking.

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