Politics

On the Paradox of Tolerance, from The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. 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.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.…We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law. And we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

If you use the Internet, you probably have heard about Net Neutrality. Essentially, the big telecommunication corporations are in cohoots with the FCC, specifically the current chairman, Tom Wheeler a prior telecom CEO, to allow ISPs to extort websites for full access to their visitors’ bandwidth. This is the letter I sent via Dear FCC. I urge you to be as loud as possible about our fight.