Liberalism as Imperialism

Silverfiddle Rant!

Tolerance... Diversity... Conformity...  

What do these words mean in today's Western society? Yoram Hazony detects a "dogmatic utopianism" gripping the West, hostile to dissent, stifling freedom of expression, and threatening rational discourse. 

"One of the most striking features of public life in contemporary America and Europe is the way that the Western nations are now afflicted by public-shaming campaigns and heresy hunts whose purpose is to stigmatize and render illegitimate one or another person or group of people, opinion or policy, that is perceived as having the ability to mount any kind of meaningful resistance to liberal doctrine.

[…]

"These increasingly insistent demands for conformity to a single universal standard in speech and religion are the predictable outcome of the transition away from the Protestant construction of the West, with its fundamental principle of national independence and self-determination.

"This principle, had, after all, mandated a diversity of constitutional and religious standpoints within the order of nation states, which entailed a toleration of profoundly divergent views:

"Catholics had to tolerate the existence of Protestant regimes, monarchists had to tolerate republican regimes, and rulers concerned with tightly regulating their subjects’ affairs had to tolerate regimes affording more extensive liberties — and in each case, the reverse was true as well. This formal grant of legitimacy to political and religious diversity among the nations then became the basis for the toleration of dissenting communities within the state as well."

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Has Western society become more tolerant over the past few decades? Or less?