Something to think about as we struggle with the idea of "tolerance" as an absolute and clamor for some form of speech management in an increasingly pluralized society. ...
Today, for example, we encounter this paradox in the concept of 'militant democracy': no freedom for the enemies of freedom. However, from this example we can also learn that the straight deconstruction of the concept of tolerance falls into a trap, since the constitutional state contradicts precisely the premise from which the paternalistic sense of the traditional concept of 'tolerance' derives. Within a democratic community whose citizens reciprocally grant one another equal rights, no room is left for an authority allowed to one-sidedly determine the boundaries of what is to be tolerated. On the basis of the citizens' equal rights and reciprocal respect for each other, nobody possesses the privilege of setting the boundaries of tolerance from the viewpoint of their own preferences and value-orientations.
- Jurgen Habermas
More on morality and ethics in postmodern culture.
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