Should We Tolerate the Intolerant?
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
08/24/23
•29m
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"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies Financial Times.
Popper, an Austrian philosopher who had fled the Nazis, wrote those words as he came to grips with how the Nazis had infiltrated and overrun liberal European societies. Fast forward to today. Elisabeth Braw, writing in the Financial Times, cited Popper’s thinking about the risks of tolerating the intolerant as she explained the recent explosion of terror threats on Sweden following incidents of Koran burnings. Although the Swedish government condemned the burnings, it could not prevent them essentially because of freedom of speech protections in Swedish law.
So Sweden finds itself in a double bind: it badly wants to stop Koran burnings, but to do so it would have to undermine a key aspect of its liberal democracy. Of course, that dilemma is not unique to Sweden in this era of violent hyper-partisanship.
Braw is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Listen as she explores the potential consequences of being too tolerant in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.
What do you think? If Sweden could find a way to outlaw desecration of the Koran (and other holy books), would the terror threat disappear? And would that justify limiting freedom of expression?
Link to article in the Financial Times that is referred to in the podcast (the article is behind a paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/0ac9e1a9-2aad-47d9-83fb-4839e9b31b33
Previous Episode
Worth Repeating: Is India Back?
August 17, 2023
•37m
India's backstory is largely unknown in the West. Between the 1st and 17th centuries AD, the country had the world's largest economy, controlling as much as one-third of global wealth. But that seemingly endless prosperity was followed by almost 500 years of decline as India was plundered and pushed aside by modern powers.
Fast forward to 2023: India is the world's most populous nation with one of the largest economies. The three trillion dollar Indian economy is expected to grow faster this year than any other major country in the world. Foreign investment is pouring in, partly looking for a safe haven from China's geopolitical ambitions and partly seeking to participate in India's new dynamism.
The man who has presided over this renaissance—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in office since May 2014—is a global rock star. Indeed, some pollsters make the case that he is the most popular leader in the world. He has brought a degree of stability to a country where political violence used to be endemic and somehow produced an economically and geopolitically resurgent India. His and the country's importance are recognized by India's 2023 presidency of the G-20, as well as the West's aggressive courting of Modi and India as rivals to Xi and China.
Yet Western (as well as some Indian) critics worry that Modi's version of democracy is too autocratic and inward-looking, too rooted in Hindu nationalism to be sustainable. And they are skeptical that India has an economic model that can sustain the kind of outsize growth that transformed China from a country with lots of people to an economic superpower. Is India's continuing rise inevitable? Can India leverage all those people and their aspirations into supersized economic growth and power? Or might the underlying centrifugal forces of religion, inequality, and nationalism—and the sheer weight of almost 1.5 billion people—overwhelm what Modi and other Indian public and private sector leaders have set in motion? Could India really become an alternative to China?
Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and an accomplished India watcher. He shared some answers in a recent New Thinking for a New World podcast.
What do you think: Will India continue its evolution to become a global power?
This podcast was first published on May 18, 2023
Next Episode
Diplomatically Speaking
September 7, 2023
•33m
"There is nothing dramatic in the success of a diplomatist. His victories are made up of a series of microscopic advantages: of a judicious suggestion here, of an opportune civility there, of a wise concession at one moment and a far-sighted persistence at another; of sleepless tact, immovable calmness and patience that no folly, no provocation, no blunder can shake.” Lord Salisbury, British statesman of the 19th century
Ambassador Ashok Mirpuri has just completed 12 years, an unusually long period, as Singapore's ambassador to the United States, the capstone to a four decade stellar diplomatic career. He retired from his diplomatic service this summer and is now back in Singapore.
What do ambassadors actually do? Twenty-first century technology removes diplomats from the immediate transmission of messages and developments but imposes a far more difficult task: understanding and explaining the realities and dynamics of his host country to his own country’s leaders. In practice for Ambassador Mirpuri this has meant sorting through the behaviors of Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden and trying to make sense of what America’s complications mean for Singapore. No easy task during such a turbulent period!
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