Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. As children we Americans all learned about the first Thanksgiving, when the Pilgrims expressed their gratitude to God and to the local Indians for their survival in a harsh New World. The Pilgrims had come, we were taught, because they were not allowed to practice their religion freely in England. In the Europe of 1621, memories of heretics burned at the behest of the Church and massacred by mobs egged on by politicians were still fresh. And so, the story went, thanks to those hardy Pilgrims we now have freedom of religion.
Well, not quite. The story turned out to be a little more complex in high school, when it was admitted that the freely practicing Pilgrims took a dim view of anyone else freely practicing in a different way. They had no qualms about banishing a Roger Williams or an Anne Hutchinson and few about hanging the occasional Quaker, all for the sin of daring to differ on points of theology. It was some time before “freedom of religion” came to mean more than “freedom for my religion, probably not for yours,” and it didn’t come about easily.
Some decades ago the satirist Stan Freberg wrote a song about the first Thanksgiving. In it one of the Pilgrim settlers makes this suggestion to his companions:
Take an Indian to lunch this week.
Show him we’re a regular bunch this week.
Show him we’re as liberal as can be;
Let him know he’s almost as good as we.
The whole song can be heard here (the whole four minutes are hilarious):
“Toleration” is the name we give to the practice of acquiescing publicly in difference. Whatever his private opinions, the tolerant person accepts that persons of different appearance, heritage, viewpoint, and so on have exactly the same claim to the public space, to justice, to civility as he. Toleration is paid at least lip service as a good and necessary thing if a diverse society is to have both liberty and peace.
Freberg’s lyric nicely illustrates half of what I want to make note of: that there are two sorts of toleration. One, which we might call induced toleration, is a sort of behavior adopted in order to make a point or to avoid a penalty. Freberg’s Pilgrim is making a point: He’s parading what he believes to be his virtue. “See me? See me be tolerant? Aren’t I fine?” (Could there be a finer example of McHenry’s First Law?)
Another person might be induced to act in a tolerant way in order not to be criticized for being intolerant. He, too, wishes the good opinion of his neighbor and is willing to suffer a little in order to get it.
Induced toleration may, depending on the circumstances, require a little or much effort. As experienced by the dissimulator, the burden of effort may range from grin-and-bear-it at the easiest, through lip biting and muttering, to teeth-grinding determination at the most difficult. However hard it may be, we do it when we must. The “must” is the key word here.
But there is toleration of a different kind, the kind that arises from principle. Toleration in principle, it seems to me, grows naturally from humility. It is humility that enables a person to be skeptical even of his own beliefs, however dearly held, and to entertain the possibility that someone else’s contrary or merely different belief just might be equally or even more true or laudable. This sort of humility is hard to come by – as hard as any true virtues are said to be – and it requires tough-mindedness and daily exercise.
Some people would not rob a bank even if assured that they would not be caught or punished in any way. Others would, however; they don’t, on any given day, because they fear the consequences. In a well-run society, those consequences are sufficiently likely, even if not certain, that most of these pragmatists are successfully deterred. What happens to the few who aren’t and are subsequently caught serves to reinforce the fear that holds back the majority. We can agree, I think, that not robbing a bank is, for these people, simply a prudent choice.
Prudential or, as I have called it, induced toleration is a civic good but not a personal virtue. Genuine toleration, rooted in humility, is a virtue. Either will do for keeping the peace, though the former does so with a certain visible tension, and it is ever in danger of being jettisoned as soon as the coast seems clear.
Toward the end of Freberg’s Thanksgiving song are these lines:
We know everyone can’t be
As American as we.
Which notion the singer then amplifies in a spoken expostulation:
After all, we came over on the Mayflower.
Freberg here is spoofing the social pretensions of old New England families. The Lowells who spoke only to Cabots, who in turn spoke only to God, and their ilk are no longer figures of fun, but the underlying sentiment lingers on in nearly all of us. Most lately it emerged in the presidential campaign, when certain people were flattered when it was suggested to them by a candidate that they were somehow more truly American than certain unspecified others. So blatant an invitation to intolerance befouls the political process and ought to yield contempt rather than votes.
Thanksgiving is a time when we consider the abundance with which we are blessed. One form of abundance for which it may not occur to us to be thankful is the wealth of private voluntary associations to which we may choose to belong. These are the clubs, fraternities, service organizations, churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, ashrams, communal farms, charitable groups, veterans’ groups, bowling leagues, and on and on, that weave the web of sociability that makes for a peaceful and productive nation. Each of us can choose to belong or not to belong to any of them that will have us. And if they won’t have us, we are free to create our own and keep everybody else out. Hence “private” and hence “voluntary.” It is in this private and voluntary space that intolerance is permitted to express itself. You don’t like one-eyed non-veteran non-religious former editors from Missouri? Fine. No problem. Bar me from your clubhouse. And you can’t come into mine.
Sometimes, however, a private voluntary association loses its humility and begins to believe that its charter of principles is not only binding on the members but ought to be on everybody else, too. It ought to be, the reasoning goes, because – quite unlike the charters of other groups – it comprises the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The impulse to carry the truth outside the clubhouse is more often than not amplified by another human weakness, the desire to exercise power over as many other people as can be reached. The rationale is dazzling in its perversity: We are saving them from sin and error. It’s for their own good.
Over the millennia a terrible lot of people have been killed for their own good. The excuse ought to have worn thin by now, but it’s still being used to clothe quite base impulses. Most recently, just as a random example, we’ve seen this in the campaign for Proposition 8 here in California.
When the private voluntary association moves as a body into the public sphere, the rules change. Intolerance is no longer a privilege. One’s formerly private beliefs and behavior become matter for public and perhaps hostile discussion. And the public space becomes a little less sociable.
For this, no thanks.
译文:
感恩节随想：宽容
明天就是感恩节，当我们还是孩子的时候，我们美国人都听说第一次感恩节的故事，那时候清教徒的移民们表达了他们对上帝，对当地印第安人的感谢，感谢他们能够在一个严酷的新世界生存下来。我们还知道，清教徒们之所以来这里，是因为在英国，他们无法表由地表达自己的宗教信仰。在1621年的欧洲，人们还记得持异端者会在教堂的命令下被活活烧死，或者被那些由政客驱使的无知暴民打死。然后，故事继续，多亏了这些清教徒的移民，今天我们才能够得以自由信教。
但也并非完全是这样。在高中里，这个故事变得有点复杂，有人承认在当时自由信教的清教徒对自由信其它教的人并没有好感。他们对驱逐罗杰·威廉和安妮·哈钦森并没有感到不安，对吊死一些公谊会教徒也的场景也不觉得有什么，因为他们都是因为犯了信仰异教的罪名而受到惩罚。在“自由信教”之前其实还有一段时间是‘我可以自由信教，但你不行’，而且自由信教的最后实现也是来之不易。
几十年前，讽刺作家斯坦·弗雷伯格曾经写过一首关于第一次感恩节的歌。在里面一个清教徒的迁徒者对他的同伙建议说：
这周带一个印第安人到家里吃饭，
这周让他们看到我们是一个集体。
让他们看到我们有无限的自由，
让他知道他和我们其实是平等的。
整首歌可以在这里听到（四分钟长的歌曲听起来很有意思）：
“宽容”的意思是我们勉强同意一些公然的发表的一些不同的言论。不管他心里是怎么想的，宽容的人接受了他的外貌，他的传统习惯，他的观点，因些对公共场所，法律，礼仪了有着共同的主张。如果一个多样性的社会要同时拥有自由和和平的话，那么宽容就是不能只是口头上的事情。
弗雷伯格的抒情诗很好地阐述了我所想要解释的一部分观点：宽容可以分为两种，一种可以称为被引导的宽容，是一种用来达成一种共识或避免暴力的行为。弗雷伯格的诗里面的清教徒在表达一种观念：他在把他的信仰说成一种优点，“看到了吗，看到我的宽容了吗？我是不是很好呢？”（这是不是麦克亨利的第一部法律的更好例子呢？）
而另一部分人则会被引导着做得宽容，为了不因为自己的不宽容而受到责备。他也希望他周围的人对他心存好并且为了搏得好感不惜做出一点小小的牺牲。
取决于所处的环境，被引导的宽容需要付出或多或少的代价。对于伪善的人，做出努力的程度会从最简单的逆来顺受，到磨嘴皮，到轻声报怨，到最困难的咬牙切齿的决心。不论有多难，在我们必须要做的时候我们就得去做。“必须”在这里是关键词。
但还有一种不一样的宽容，这种宽容建立在自已的原则之上。在原则上的宽容，在我看来，是从谦卑自然滋长起来的。正是谦卑使人觉得，甚至自己的信仰都有可能值得怀疑，无论这个信仰他守得有多紧。然后他会觉得别人的完全不同或几乎不一样的信仰是地位平等的甚至是更加真实或更值得赞美的。这样的谦卑并不容易产生，就像一些人们所说的真正的美德那样难得——这要求有坚韧的意志和夜以继日的练习。
有些人就算是被告知抢了某个银行之后可以不被捉住或不被惩罚他也不会去抢银行的。而有些人则会，他们之所以在别的日子不去，因为他们害怕后果。在一个运行良好的社会里，结果很可能，就算是不很肯定，会被一些见义勇为的人成功制止。一小部分之前没有被捉但后来受到逮捕的人的结果增强了大部分人的恐惧使他们望而却步。我想，我们都会同意，对于那些选择不抢很行的人，这是一个简单而明智的选择。
审慎，或者如我所说的被引导性的宽容，对社会有好处但并不是一种美德。来自真心的宽容，源于谦卑的，才是一种美德。这两种行为都对保持和平起着作用，虽然前者是在某种可以察觉的压力下做出来的决定，而且还存在着一但划清界线就马上会抛弃的可能。
弗雷伯格的感恩之歌的最后几句话是：
我们知道不可能每个人
都会像我们美利坚人这样
作者所要表达的观点最后由一个口头的谏言放大：
不管怎样，我们都乖着五月花而来。
弗雷伯格在这里是在劝说那些来自英格兰的自命不凡的人。那些只同卡伯特家伙说话的劳维斯家族，他们对和上帝交谈，这些姿态滑稽地出现，但他们的一些思想切一直存在于我们所有人中。再最近的一些总统竞选中就出现了这种思想，当某个人被指出比未指明名字的某人更具有美国血统里，某些人就更奉承他。这种对不宽容的引导的事件进程是多么无耻，人们屈从的是轻蔑，而不是选票。
感恩节是一个我们对很多的人和事表示关心和受之庇护的时节，其中有一些我们可能不受我们感激的就是我们所参加的一些私人自愿加入的协会的，这些争别是俱乐部，兄弟会，服务机构，教堂，清真寺，犹太教堂，寺庙，印度教的静修处，社区农场，慈善机构，退伍军人组织，保龄球俱乐部，等等，这些东西编织成了一张保持国家稳定和富饶的大网。我们每个人都可以选择进或不进其中的任何一个机构，而如果它们不接受我们，我们也可以自由地创立一个机构不让别的任何人加入。因此它是“独立的”，“自愿的”。就是在这些独立和自愿的机构中我们的不宽容得以表达。你不喜欢那个从密苏里州来的独眼的原是退伍军人的前编辑？那行。
但是，有的时候，一个独立的自愿的机构可能会丧失它的谦卑而认为：他们的纲领原则不但对成员适用，也应该应用于每个人，这是很应该的，因为它不像别的协会，它包含了真理，全部的真理，而且除了真理之外没有别的。这种想把真理带到俱乐部以外的想法经常被人类的缺陷所放大，既而想要控制他们所能控制的所有人。在他们出现反常的时候他们的逻辑是混乱不清的，他们认为：我们是把他们从罪恶和错误中解救出来，这是为什么们好。
在过去的数千年里有很多人被杀，因为那是为了他们好。现在这样的借口应该很单薄了，但仍然被一些基层的冲动者所利用。在最近，一个随机的例子，我们在加利福尼亚目睹了争取8点主张的运动。
当独立自愿的机构以一个个体的形式进入公共领域的时候，规则就改变了，不宽容不再是一种特权，一个曾经是个人的信仰和行为会变成所有人的事还可能发展成为互带敌意的争论，公共场所场的友善气氛将会大大减少。
对于这些，不用感恩。