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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank

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To: Lane3 who wrote (31224)10/8/2001 1:06:20 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 82486
 
I can't get my head around the notion of tolerance of the majority. Isn't that, like, an oxymoron?

Not at all. Sometimes the minority has more power and can use that power against the majority without tolerating their differences. More often the majority doesn't have more power but it is intolerant and either seethes about the differences without doing anything, or tries to act against the ideas held by the more powerful majority.

The IRA is certainly not tolerant about Northern Ireland's majority opinion that Northern Ireland should stay part of the UK. During Apartheid many of the minority white's where not tolerant of the desire of blacks not to be second class citizens with very restricted legal rights (and those rights often infringed on, or changed arbitrarily). I could come up with a number of other examples.

Tolerence for the minority is a concept that is talked about more often because an intolerant majority might be more likely to abuse a minority then a minority is to abuse the majority, but sometimes a minority can abuse the majority, and other times they have no power to do so but are still intolerant.

Tim
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