Thread by @mattsheffield

I don't think there is any one phrase that so adequately summarizes the global moment we're living in than this one attributed to David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who died in 1776:

"Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."

I haven't been able to find which work of Hume's the phrase is from so if you know of it, please chime in. But let's talk a bit about what the phrase means and why it's so important.

The word "mistake" here is not explicitly a reference to any person or group's particular dogma but rather to how society acts upon religious or moral concepts.

Humans individually and collectively are fallible so thus the biggest error is fundamentalism.

In physics, the word "tolerance" is used to mean how much force an object can be subjected to before it breaks. This was the analogy that John Locke was making in his "A Letter Concerning Toleration."

Societies must have tolerance because humans make mistakes.

The biggest problem in American society is that people have forgotten the purpose of tolerance.

Tolerance is the idea that because we all make mistakes, no single perspective should exclude those of others. It's not that people need to listen rapturously to your idiocy.

If you want to believe that atheists deserve to go to hell or that non-Muslims deserve jahannam. Those are intellectually & morally repugnant ideas but you have the right to think them. But if you want the govt to enact them, you deserve no tolerance bc you want to kill tolerance

American conservatism is descending into madness because most of its leaders never forcefully have stated that Christian supremacy is wrong. And thus, millions of people believe this.

Trump has the power he does bc he tapped into the anger that wishes to preserve it.

This is the animating anger behind why so many people support Trump and the GOP, even though they don't support slashing the govt. Read this research if you disagree

navigatorresearch.org/public-opinion…

When you look over the statements of Trump's top surrogates who are promoting his deranged and dangerous lies about a "stolen" election, almost without exception, they will claim that God himself is telling them to do this.

Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Eric Metaxas, etc. Even Trump himself regularly invokes God as a justification for destroying democracy.

It's obvious why they do. Because if the rules say you've lost, if God says you should win, then breaking the rules is justified.

This is why contemporary U.S. conservatism is so dangerous. In the 50s, it portrayed the United States in a death-struggle with the Satanic, godless USSR. To fight that battle, *anything* was ok.

Barry Goldwater said it best, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

During the Cold War, this extremist core of conservatism was less dangerous bc it had little power in the GOP and the USSR was a legit threat.

But now, the lunatics are ruling, and there is no global threat. The danger has turned inward.

John Quincy Adams wisely warned the young United States to avoid going abroad "in search of monsters to destroy" because it would harm unity at home.

But with the Cold War ended, hawkish conservatives are now looking at home for monsters to destroy.

But at home, the only people to be destroyed are fellow Americans. And thus, it is you who are the monsters.

If you are secular, a feminist, a racial/sexual/religious minority, your very existence makes you a monster unless you genuflect to the old order.

In particular, LGBT people and those who have left religious fundamentalism are the very worst monsters, according to this worldview. Because you prove by living a good life that fundamentalism isn't true.

This is the mentality that powers Trump & that powers the reborn alt-right that is even bigger than in 2016 but tragically no longer covered by the media. It is the same mentality that led to the birth of Wahhabism, a politico-religious cult that emerged in Islam.

Many North Americans and Europeans hold the view that cultic politics could never come to their countries to the degree that Islamic extremism threatens the Middle East.

This view is as foolish and naive as it is racist and provincial.

The religious fundamentalist hatred for toleration, for women's rights, for LGBT freedom, and for minority protection knows no limits of time, race, politics, geography, or faith. It is universal. And it must be recognized before it can be dealt with.

We must also realize that Plato's allegory of the cave and the importance of education has never stopped being true since he proposed it thousands of years ago.

Education has freed some of us from perceiving that shadows of reality are reality itself but many more are imprisoned

That imprisonment takes many forms. Some, like Trump and others, deliberately keep people trapped through lies. Others imprison through threats and violence.

But there are people that willfully remain imprisoned. Because they don't believe there is an outside.

There is no hope for those who have been outside the cave or seen it and returned. But we mustn't give up hope for those who don't know that they live only on shadows. Many can and will see the light.

This can be a painful and long process. But can you expect otherwise?

Understanding that you've been imprisoned of your own free will is a dangerous idea to those who've only seen shadows. If you've never seen the sun, its light is dangerous and bewildering.

But we cannot truly rescue others from their mental imprisonment if we do not release ourselves. Caring for the mistaken but never enabling intolerance is the only way.

I invite you to follow me and retweet this. We have a long journey ahead. /end