Machan's Musings - Respecting Another's Ideas
by Tibor R. Machan
It’s often said that people of one faith or set of convictions respect the ideas of those with whom they disagree. Say, you are a Roman Catholic, I a Lutheran or Muslim. Do we really respect each other’s beliefs?
It may appear so because in some regions and historical periods of the world when large numbers of one faith witnessed those of another, the former would give the latter no peace at all. Holy crusades and the Inquisition are just the most glaring cases in point.
What we witness in some Muslim countries resembles these familiar episodes—people certainly show no respect for the beliefs of others when these others are physically attacked for what they think, say, draw, write, and so forth. But we might ask, are people in the more liberal Western countries really respectful toward each other’s beliefs? Doesn't that show disrespect for their own?
Arguably they are not. What they do respect is not others' ideas—Roman Catholics or Lutherans or Jews or agnostics really do not much respect each other’s position when they frankly consider them false and to lead people astray—but others’ right to choose for themselves what to believe. We tend to respect—or perhaps a better term for this would be “acknowledge”—that people need to figure out for themselves what to believe, what not to believe. It’s their task to reach these serious conclusions, to go through whatever it takes to reach their convictions.
It’s a bit like what many of us think of the ideas of our children—we often reject them but also realize that as they come of age, they are in charge, not their elders any longer, as far as their beliefs go.
But this means that on one issue that has a major impact on our lives many people in the world understand certain matters to be true regardless their particular religion—namely, that adult human beings get to choose what they will believe and how they will live, even if they are possibly very wrong. Yes, there is a right to be wrong—which means when another holds false views, no one may interfere other than peacefully. They may be approached only in civilized ways. They may be implored, requested, asked, pleaded with, even ostracized or boycotted, but never coerced with the aim to change their minds.
This is evidence of the fact that certain ideas have transcended many others as far as guiding people in their conduct toward one another. Yes, sometimes these ideas have become part of one’s faith itself—in certain religions it is imperative that the faithful freely commit themselves to the tenets. But even in those when one may “compel them to come in,” compelling is strongly discouraged by an overriding political idea that every adult human being is sovereign when it comes to the ideas he or she will use to guide how to live. Whatever else may be vital to believe, it is ever so vital to acknowledge that adult human beings are in charge of their own lives.
This is the fundamental tenet of the classical liberalism that constitutes the substance of American political theory and what the USA has made so prominent in the world. And this, more than other things, also explains why the USA is so widely denounced by those who are in a position to speak out in many countries like Iran and Palestine. Freedom, as one picture shows a hooded man holding up a placard stating, is to be crushed! Freedom is the enemy of attempts to impose uniform beliefs on people and leave those who champion these ideas in charge of everyone. Freedom threatens tyrants of all kinds.
What is especially revealing in this stubborn, reactionary opposition to freedom is what it implies about these tyrants, namely, they have no confidence in their own ideas to carry the day without the use of physical coercion and its threat. If ideas seem to those who hold them without the capacity to be convincing but require police state methods for their maintenance, these ideas are pretty much discredited. And those who hold such ideas can be seen to hold out hope only for desperate measures to try to preserve them, as we witness in so many places these days.
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