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Is Liberal Tolerance under Threat? 

 
 

Susan T. Gardner, Alex Newby, Taya Wall, Jason Chen, Ethan Belcourt-Lowe 
 
 

Introduction 

 
 

n his book Liberalism and Its Discontents (2020), Fukuyama argues that classical liberalism is 
under severe threat today (p. vii). Although such a claim is alarming, since strongly stated cases 
are not unusual in academic writing (e.g., Fukuyama once argued (2012) that we had reached 
the end of history in the sense of arriving at the pinnacle of human organization), on its own, 

a non-alarmist response seemed to us appropriate. Nonetheless, it prompted us to engage in further 
reading which, in turn, led us to ponder whether ignoring Fukuyama’s claim might, in fact, be 
unethical. Since, despite our reading, we were still agnostic, it seemed premature to engage in a full-
scale study. Instead, we decided to undertake a small informal study of our friends and acquaintances 
to see, on the one hand, what sort of measuring tool might be used to estimate whether a threat to 
classical liberalism had seeped into the ordinary everyday attitudes of ordinary everyday citizens, and 
on the other, whether there was any indication that a more extensive study in the future was 
warranted. This paper describes that effort.  

 

Measuring a Threat to Classical Liberalism 

 

Though classical liberalism can be defined by its typical characteristics e.g., it is individualistic, 
egalitarian, and based on reasoned discourse, etc. (Fukuyama, 2020, p. 1), we believe that it is best 
understood regarding its primary and indeed its revolutionary advantage, namely that this ideology 
creates a social milieu wherein diverse populations can live peacefully with one another (p. 5). The 
significance of this advantage is best understood by remembering that liberalism emerged as an 
ideology in the middle of the 17th century after about a 150-year period of almost continuous 
religiously inspired violence in Europe that was triggered by the Protestant Reformation (p. 5).1  

 

 
1 Luther posted his ninety-five theses on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517 which subsequently led to continuous 
wars between Protestants and Catholics. It is estimated that about 1/3 of central Europe’s population died in the course 
of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) (Fukuyama, 2020, p.5). 

I 



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Because the anchoring tenet of liberalism is the moral primacy of the individual against the claims 
of any collective (p. 1), its core value is that all citizens honor the ability of others to make decisions 
about their own life’s course without undue interference from governments or broader society (p. 
9), as long as it doesn’t result in actual2 harm to others.  

Liberalism’s main raison d'être, therefore, is the lowering of the aspirations of both political 
leaders and ordinary citizens by rendering taboo any attempt to impose a particular dogma on others 
(p. 6-7). It also carries with it the implication that reasoned respectful dialogue, not force, is the 
appropriate method whereby disagreements regarding collective action are to be resolved. Hence, its 
fit with a democratic form of governance.  

These principles of liberalism—that an individual’s private beliefs should be tolerated, and that 
disagreement should be handled in the arena of the respectful interchange of reasons—are, according 
to a number of academics besides Fukuyama, under severe threat today by, ironically, ideologies that 
originally emerged to amplify overall welfare. In their enthusiasm for such laudable ideals as 
ameliorating the state of the less well off, “progressive” ideologues have become comfortable with 
insisting that the thinking of all individuals be corralled into a reprint of the “progressive mandate,” 
and thus appear to have made respectful truthful interchange regarding collective action difficult 
(Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020, p. 13).3 

Since pervasive engagement in “dialogue dampening” strategies would indeed be a threat to 
classical liberalism, attempting to articulate and informally measure whether those strategies were 
evident in the local environment became our focus. We viewed this focus on the local environment 
as particularly important because we lead a Philosophy for Children (P4C) summer camp 4 in which 
youngsters are encouraged to genuinely hear and reflect on positions that are different from their 
own. Thus, if we are sending our campers into an environment in which being “open minded” 
renders them “the enemy,” that is something that we need to know to potentially reframe our 
educational efforts so that campers do not become disoriented if they are villainized for a trait that 
they (and we) view as admirable.  

Our first goal was thus to review the sort of dialogue dampening strategies that various 
academics have flagged and then attempt to construct a brief questionnaire that might measure 
support for such dialogue dampening strategies.  Our second goal was to try out the measurement 
tool on our acquaintances to estimate whether it indicated support for dialogue dampening strategies 
in the local environment.  

 
2 In other words, your right to swing your fist ends where another person’s nose begins. This saying is often attributed 
to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr and is similar to Mill’s thesis that harm to others puts a constraint 
on liberty. It is important, however, that this is understood to refer to actual harm. I cannot claim to be harmed because 
I find your viewpoint offensive.   
3 Talking about the “progressive left,” Pluckrose &Lindsay (2020) argue that it is one of the least tolerant and most 
authoritarian ideologies that the world has had to deal with since the decline of communism and the collapse of white 
supremacy and colonialism (p. 13). 
4 http://thinkingplayground.org/ 
 
 

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In what is to follow, we will thus begin by reviewing the works of several academics who suggest 
that dialogue dampening strategies are becoming more common. We will then isolate 6 dialogue 
dampening strategies that seem to be particularly prevalent. We will then briefly outline the 
parameters of our informal study which suggested that we ought to take the threat to liberal tolerance 
seriously. We will then suggest, on the basis of this experience, that all educators ought to take 
seriously the message that democracy, and the attitudes embodied by liberalism on which it depends, are in 
need of defence and that that defence can be nothing other than educating so that all young people 
develop the habit of engaging in reasoned inquiry dialogue with those who hold opposing viewpoints 
(an educational strategy that is at the centre of Philosophy for Children5), with the caveat that the 
focus of such inquiries need to be relevant and that the point of such engagement, i.e., that dialogue 
across difference is the life blood of democracy, be made readily apparent.  In conclusion, we suggest 
that the question that has been our focus, i.e., whether liberal tolerance is under threat, is one that 
should be recognized as in need of further research and reflection, particularly from educators who, 
we suggest, are morally bound to educate young people in such a way that they are able to keep their 
way of life—one that is so easily taken for granted—afloat.  

 

Theorizing about “Dialogue Dampening” Strategies  
 

“Dialogue dampening” strategies have been discussed and analyzed by numerous academics 
from various countries and from different disciplines.   

First amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Haidt, in their book The 
Coddling of The American Mind: How Good and Bad Intentions Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure 
(2019) deride the culture of self-censorship that has recently emerged because of the terror of being 
“called out” on social media for even the tiniest of perceived infractions (p. 10). They also bemoan 
the ever-popular tendency to see the world as divided between good and evil people (p. 53) and go 
on to quote Mandela (p. 81) who argued that when we dehumanize and demonize our opponents, 
we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against 
them (Mandela, 2003, p. 545).  

As one might expect from the title of their book, The Coddling of the American Mind (2019), 
Lukianoff and Haidt also bemoan the new trend of “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” by which 
students have been empowered to request safety from ideas that they find troubling. Lukianoff and 
Haidt refer to this new educational milieu as “Safetyism” and argue that it deprives young people of 
the experiences that their antifragile minds need, thereby making them more fragile, anxious, and 
prone to seeing themselves as victims (p. 32).  

An Australian art critic Robert Hughes who, in his book Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of 
America (1993), argues that the contemporary pervasive tendency to complain is being used primarily 

 
5 https://www.icpic.org/ 
 

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as a tool for emotional bribery (p. 9) and that the dominance of politically correct attitudes is such 
that only a robust independence of mind can resist them (p. 56-7), and that the use of complaint by 
both right and left is a way of evading engagement in the real world (p. 67).   

British cultural writer Helen Pluckrose and American cultural critic James Lindsay who, in 
their book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity—
and Why This Harms Everybody (2020), fault Critical Race Theory for being racist itself in ascribing 
profound failures of morals and character to all White people, and for trying to promote the belief 
that only White people can be racist (because to be racist one must have “prejudice plus power”), 
that White people should not talk but just listen, and for promoting the clearly self-fulfilling claim 
that if White people see people in terms of their race, they are racist, and if they are “color blind” 
they are also racist (p. 121).  They argue that this postmodernist stance has become a new kind of 
religion (p. 198) that protects itself by calling those who attempt to engage with them as suffering 
from “fragility” or “wilful ignorance” or as engaged in “privilege preserving epistemic pushback” (p. 
243). 

To this tactic of silencing critics by accusing them of fragility, Irshad Manji, a Ugandan-born, 
Muslim, lesbian Canadian educator who is also a person of colour6 (p. 20), argues, in her book Don’t 
Label Me: How to do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars (2019), that designating fragility as a 
“white” condition, rather than a human condition, smacks of a double standard—and a graceless 
one at that (p. 56). She suggests that we have gotten the promotion of diversity all wrong: we should 
be focusing on diversity of opinion (p. 7), not appearance (p. 9), and she makes the claim that by 
indulging in “politically correctness,” that “lays bare the diversity movement’s disrespect for others” 
(p. 13), hate has been turbo charged (p. 9) into supporting character assignation (p. 59) and 
competitive victimhood (p. 60), and in so doing we are bending the arc of history backward (p. 60).  

 American journalist Charles Pierce who, in his book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a 
Virtue in the Land of the Free (2009), argues that reasoned interchange is going the way of the dodo, 
and notes, quoting Hofstadter, that “intellect is pitted against feeling on the ground that it is 
somehow inconsistent with warm emotion” and that “it is pitted against character, because it is 
widely believed that intellect stands for cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or diabolical” 
and that “it is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies 
egalitarianism” (p. 225). Pierce goes on to make the case that “self-government is a science that 
requires an informed, educated, and enlightened populace to make all the delicate mechanisms 
work” (p. 249) but that we have entered an era in which the distinction between truth and popularity 
has been blurred (p. 268-9), in which the entrepreneurial spirit that used to sell goods is now used 
to sell ideas (p. 285), and that, in the newly created “idiot America,” a collective Gut has developed 
at the expense of the collective mind (p. 251). 
 

Tom Nichols, a retired professor at the US Naval War College argues, in his book Our Own 
Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy,  that the citizens of the world’s 
democracies are attacking their own liberties as a matter of their own free will rather than a result of 

 
6 Manji suggests that the fact that she is arguing against trying to adopt victimhood status is given credence by the fact 
that she herself belongs to overlapping categories that would justify claiming superior victimhood status. 



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foreign conquest (2021, p. xiii) and suggests, ironically, that it seems that the only challenges 
democracies cannot overcome are peace and prosperity (p. 7). He argues that “in a liberal democracy, 
citizens are the masters of their fate” and “if we believe democracy has failed us, we should ask 
ourselves whether we have failed the test of democracy” (p. 8). He thus goes on to claim that “We 
have met the enemy, and he is us” (p. 9); that no democracy can maintain a good democracy if it 
must rely on a population of bad citizens (p. 58), but that when we listen only to those with whom 
we already agree and believe anyone else is wrong as a matter of first principles, we are bad citizens 
(p. 59). Nichols quotes American Historian Tymothy Snyder (2021) who warns us that when we lose 
the distinction between what feels true and what is actually true, we concede power to those with 
the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place (p. 171). 

Matthew D’Ancona, a British Journalist, also bemoans the global trend of dialogue becoming 
a zero-sum game rather than a contest of ideas, and goes on to argue, in his book Post Truth: The New 
War on Truth and How to Fight Back (2017), that the ultimate fatality is the value of truth (2017, p. 
8). He notes that “it is not an accident that Oxford Dictionaries selected ‘Post-Truth’ as its word of 
the year in 2016, defining it as shorthand for “circumstances in which objective facts are less 
influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (p. 8-9). 
D’Ancona argues that digital technology has put rocket boosters under existing instincts (p. 50) 
which results in a general retreat into echo chambers where we accept only information that fits our 
opinion (p. 49). And he goes on to argue that the consequences of this retreat from truth are 
potentially catastrophic, and that we should not assume that the survival of civilization, reason and 
scientific truth is preordained (p. 111) nor should we assume that the values of veracity, honesty and 
accountability are self-preserving (112). And to those who are indifferent to this issue he warns that 
“inertia is the safe option—until its isn’t” (p. 144).  

Lee McIntyre, a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston 
University argues in a similar vein  in his Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (2015) 
when he makes the claim that “it is not crackpot theories that are doing us in, it is the growing 
prevalence of a dishonest attitude toward truth which says that one can embrace reason when it suits 
us and then reject it when the results do not match our preferred ideology” (2015, p. ix). And though 
he notes that, in tribal situations, evolutionary pressure may have sometimes bent into favoring the 
use of reasoning to win arguments rather than the pursuit of truth (p. 14), he underscores the value 
of truth with irony by asking us “Should My Genes Care Whether I Can Justify My Belief That a 
Tiger Is Coming Toward Me?” (p. 8)  

Al Gore, the ex-Vice President of the U.S., also nods to the obvious evolutionary importance 
of truth, in his book The Assault on Reason (2017), when he notes that “When our evolutionary 
predecessors gathered on the African savanna three million years ago and the leaves next to them 
moved, the ones who didn’t look are not our ancestors” (p. 21). Gore goes on to argue that “the rule 
of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people” (p. 5) but that this mental muscle of democracy 
has begun to atrophy (p. 11). He quotes Jefferson who said that once reason is surrendered, like a 
ship without a rudder, you are the sport of every wind (p. 39). And like the authors above, he argues 
that the salvation of reason (p. 11) depends on returning to the embrace of John Stuart Mill’s claim 
(1982, p. 120) that truths can only be discovered and refined through the fullest freest comparison 



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of opposite opinions, and that, therefore, ultimately our democratic way of life depends on the way 
we communicate with one another (p. 248), with an open mind to co-create a shared wisdom (p. 
252), but that this will not be possible unless we accelerate our own psychological, emotional, 
intellectual, and spiritual evolution (p. 165) and so recover our moral health (p. 210).   

Speaking of moral health, American Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning argue, 
in their book The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and The New Culture Wars 
(2018), that, in fact, we have entered a whole new moral era (p. 11). We have left behind the “culture 
of dignity” that embraced the ideal of individual inherent worth that included an ethic of self-
restraint and negotiated compromise (p. 14), and have entered into what they refer to as the “culture 
of victimhood,” in which individuals and groups display a high sensitivity to slight (referred to as 
microaggressions), have a tendency to handle conflict through complaints to third parties, seek to 
cultivate an image of being victims in need of assistance (p. 11), and who fail to distinguish between 
violent offenses and merely verbal ones (p, 15). It is a culture that valorizes the victims and demonizes 
the privileged, such that the latter can do no right, and the former can do no harm (p. 93). And, like 
the aforementioned authors, Campbell and Manning are particularly concerned with victimhood’s 
hostility to freedom of speech that takes the form of Social Justice warriors attempting to silence and 
punish dissidents (p. 190). Our moral life is changing, they argue (p. 27), in a way that jeopardizes 
our way of life (p. 222), and it is for that reason that it is imperative that we become aware of this 
censorship-supporting, and hence democracy-endangering, evolution.  

In light of all of these theorists, and in particular the call by Campbell and Manning that we 
are undergoing a kind of invisible moral evolution away from dignity-preserving dialogue, which is 
the heart of democracy, to one in which dialogue dampening strategies are threatening democracy’s 
very existence, we felt compelled to engage in an informal survey with the view to gathering evidence 
as to whether these strategies have begun to take root even in our local environment and, therefore, 
whether a further more robust study was justified.  

 

Measuring the Presence of Support for Dialogue Dampening Strategies 
 

Not unlike hearing that a virus has been unleashed in some foreign country and feeling sad 
for those others but not in the least concerned for oneself, reading about intolerant attitudes and 
dialogue dampening strategies in academic books and papers can make them seem intangible in the 
sense that they seem typical of other people, but not something that is common in one’s own 
environment, and hence not something of which one generally needs to be cognizant.  

This assumption, however, is just that, an assumption. Thus, given our lackadaisical attitude 
about an issue that we acknowledge is potentially catastrophic, we decided as a group who all hold 
respectful dialogue across difference as a core value and who try to import this value to youngsters7, 

 
7 It is of note that we are all lead counsellors in the Philosophy for Children Camp called The Thinking Playground 
http://thinkingplayground.org/ the major goal of which is to give youngsters practice in engaging in effective dialogue 
across difference.  

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that we would survey the attitudes of our friends and acquaintances regarding their attitudes toward 
dialogue dampening strategies.  

To do this, we devised a questionnaire that estimated whether there was support for the 
following dialogue dampening strategies amongst our friends and acquaintances. These strategies 
are listed below. 

1) Diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) sessions during which participants are told what they 
are allowed and not allowed to question, 

2) Preventing individuals from speaking if their beliefs stray from the blueprint that activists 
deem acceptable,  

3) The social media cancelling of those perceived as heretics thus preventing the genuine 
exchange of ideas, 

4) Imputing beliefs to individuals based on immutable characteristics thus rendering dialogue 
unnecessary,  

5) The tendency to perceive anyone who has contrary beliefs as evil and thus not worthy of 
communicative exchange, 

6) Accepting that some language claims are a form of violence thus ensuring that such claims 
are silenced. 

 

An Informal Survey of Young Adults in Western Canada 
 

It is crucial to note that this study does not profess to be of a caliber from which one can make 
generalized claims about the larger populations. The most obvious shortcomings of the present study 
are the low sample size, the fact that the subjects were not randomly selected, and the fact that the 
questionnaire was not tested for validity or reliability. Our goal was entirely personal. Having read 
about dialogue dampening strategies from several respected authors, we wondered if this tendency 
was seeping into our own, fairly benign, Canadian social environment.  We also wanted to estimate 
whether a further, more robust study was warranted.  

 

Subjects 
 

Forty-four questionnaires were given out. Of those who completed the questionnaire, 14 were 
born outside of North America—primarily in India, China, and Iran. The ages ranged from 19 to 
64, with 34 under 30.  

 

Questionnaire 

 

The questionnaire consisted of six scenarios and subjects were asked to agree or disagree on a 
six-point scale, with the valence of the questions changing so that some indicated a liberal attitude, 



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and some indicated an illiberal attitude (see Appendix 1). The questions primarily focused on a will 
to silence others, being intolerant, and having a disrespectful attitude toward dialogue. There were 
six questions in all. One question asked whether a participant in a “diversity training” session should 
have been silenced for disagreeing (silencing); another asked if students were right to force the 
cancellation of a speaker who argued that indigenous peoples had not been subjected to a genocide 
(silencing); another asked if it was right to “cancel” someone on social media if they disagreed with 
the policy of allowing self-identifying trans-females into female washrooms (silencing); another asked 
if it was problematic for Critical Race Theory to make the claim that all White people are inherently 
racist (disrespectful + silencing); another asked if a young person was right to move out of her 
mother’s house if she found out that her mother was homophobic (intolerant); and another asked 
if it was right to discipline a professor if s/he used the “n-word” even if only referring to a book 
(intolerant). 

  

Process 

 
Scores were reversed on numbers 2, 3,4,6, e.g., 1= 6, 2=5, 3=4, 4=3, 5=2, 6=1. The subjects’ 

total scores thus ranged from 6-36. These were then converted to percentages, divided by 36, so the 
lowest percentage was 17% (6/36) and the highest percentage was 100% (36/36). The higher the 
score, the higher the “illiberal quotient.”  The range between 17 and 100 is 83. The midpoint 
between these two numbers8 is 59 and the last third9 is marked at 72. 

 
Results 

 

If we examine how many are on the illiberal side of the midpoint, the result was 22 out of 
44—which is exactly half.  Out of that group, if we take out those over 30 and not born in North 
America, there are 18 left, of which 16 had higher than midpoint scores or 89%. 

If we refine the analysis slightly and look at those in the last third, i.e., the illiberal side, the 
results show that there were 8 out of 44 who had a score in the last third or 18%.  So, the results 
suggest that in this cohort, and certainly young North Americans, may be being infected by illiberal 
attitudes. Again, it is important to stress that this was just a pilot project and that the numbers are 
far too small to make any formal generalizations.  

 

Discussion 

 

The message that one takes away from these results depends on one’s expectations. If one 
believes that one lives in a liberal environment in the classic sense that one assumes that there is a 
generally-held belief that we all fare better if we tolerate diverse viewpoints (unless it takes the form 

 
8 (83/2 + 17) 
9 (83 x 2/3= 55.33 +17) 



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of hate speech as defined by law) and that we not only tolerate but welcome reasoned and respectful 
dialogue as the appropriate method whereby disagreements are to be resolved, then one would have 
presumed that most of the scores would have been below the midpoint. This research suggests that 
this expectation is faulty.  

On the other hand, if one presumes, like Fukuyama, that liberalism is under severe threat, one 
might have presumed that more of our subjects would have been in the last third, so this research 
did not suggest that this expectation is accurate either. However, though the sample was small and 
hence the results can’t be used to make an accurate generalization, that fact that 89% of young 
people born in North America had scores on the illiberal side of the scale is troubling.  

From an entirely personal perspective, this is worrisome given the generally benign Canadian 
environment in which we live. It says to us that, even if the threat to liberalism is not as severe as 
many theorists suggest, there is a troubling trend toward illiberalism that, given the contagion of 
algorithmically controlled social media, could get significantly worse very quickly.  

Whatever else this research tells us, it certainly testifies to the fact that we ought not be 
complacent about the continuing health of liberalism if we hope that liberalism, and the democratic 
structure that it supports, survives. And for that very reason, it suggests to us that further research 
on the extent to which support for dialogue dampening strategies has infiltrated the thinking of 
democratic citizens is warranted. Also, this informal study combined with the review of literature 
suggests to us that an education in support of the kind of dialogue that nurtures liberal tolerance 
deserves our loyalty.  

Educational Implications 
 

Dewey is calling us from a faraway land and the message that he has been trying to send for 
some time is that, if an education purports to support democracy, it needs to ensure that young 
people develop the disposition and the critical thinking skills necessary to engage in effective 
dialogue across difference with their fellow citizens. Dewey is adamant that “a democracy is more than 
a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated 
experience” (2007, p. 68) and argues that “fuller, freer, and more fruitful association and intercourse 
of all human beings with one another must be instilled as a working disposition of mind” (2007, p. 
76). And he says that “an undesirable society . . . is one which internally and externally sets up 
barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience” (Ibid) and that “closed-mindedness 
means premature intellectual old age” (2007, p. 133). Many educators, hearing Dewey’s message, 
have switched gears and, instead of focusing on information transfer, have invested a good deal of 
energy trying to promote critical thinking.  
 

However, we suggest that this may be making a bad situation worse. Now, instead of having a 
whole lot of people reticent to hear opposing viewpoints, we have a whole lot of people who have 
critical thinking tools to shut down those with whom they disagree.  



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Educators who have adopted the Community of Philosophical Inquiry10 (CPI) as their prime 
pedagogical strategy, on the other hand, seem closer to adhering to Dewey’s message in that they 
give participants practice in hearing and seriously pondering the strengths of the reasons of opposing 
positions.  

Whether or not this form of education truly supports liberalism, however, depends on two 
factors.  The first and most important is whether participants are given practice in inquiring about 
relevant real-world issues, since it is intransigence on these issues that threatens liberal-supporting 
dialogue. If inquiry is about questions such as “What is art?” or “Are numbers real,” since 
participants are rarely emotionally invested in (or tribally loyal to) the answer, they will get little 
practice in hearing the reasons supporting positions that they strongly oppose, nor on changing their 
minds when they are heavily invested on one side. As Dewey points out (2007) students need to 
have something at stake (p. 102) if we are to engage them in genuine reflection (p. 102), since 
deliberation will be perfunctory and superficial where there is no interest (p. 99). 

The second factor that we suggest ought to be added is to explain to participants that the point of 
inquiry is dialogue. Many assume that the point of engaging in dialogue with others is to convince the 
other of the better view, i.e., theirs. And many are loath to change their minds as they assume that 
they will be perceived as inferior to the person who holds what they now believe is the stronger 
position. It is for that reason that participants in a CPI must be told from the get-go that who they 
are as persons depends on the everyday decisions that they make, and whether those decisions are 
good decisions depends on how well they are reasoned out. But how well they are reasoned out 
depends on the quality of the dialogue in which one partakes before making any decision, and the 
quality of the dialogue depends on both one’s own ability to state one’s initial position succinctly 
(so that others will listen) and on one’s ability to genuinely listen to the reasons of opposing 
viewpoints and to embrace those viewpoints if they are superior.  

Dialogue is difficult. We should not assume that many or even most people engage in the sort 
of dialogue that moves participants toward a more nuanced and complex understanding of the issue 
at hand. It is for that reason that we suggest that the bull’s eye must be vividly painted so that 
participants reorient away from winning the battle and, instead, find themselves enthusiastic about 
getting to better answers.  

Take Away Message 
 

In his essay “In Search of Civic Virtue” (2021), Brink Lindsay echoes Fukuyama when he says:  

Liberalism arose in Europe in significant part as a response to the failure of the Wars 
of Religion to put religious pluralism back in the bottle; after the continent nearly bled 

 
10 Communities of Philosophical Inquiry are the prime pedagogical tool of those who practice Philosophy for Children 
(P4C) https://www.icpic.org/ 
 

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itself dry in the failed attempt, the liberal modus vivendi of freedom of conscience and 
toleration emerged as the pathway out of the killing fields.  

This is liberalism’s grand bargain: By learning to live with people who are different from 
us and whose beliefs we consider erroneous and even wicked, we can take advantage of 
the immense potential of far-flung specialization and exchange to make each other 
better off. 

Lindsay goes to say that since “we’re stuck with each other, . . .  the only way to accomplish 
much of anything is to look past our differences for common ground”; that some level of virtue 
among both leaders and ordinary citizens is necessary for self -government to be sustainable and 
that this requires that we see all our fellow citizens as civic and political equals and treat them 
with respect.  

But Nichols, in his book Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy 
(2021), warns us that, rather than living up to that ideal, we have become a troop of ill-tempered 
toddlers (p. 192); that “instead of acting like adults who have work to do and problems to solve, we 
now have the leisure to fight with each other over every imagined slight” (p. 192). Of this, Nichols 
wonders if “maybe liberty really is a problem”; that alone in a world full of bewildering options, 
human beings will perhaps always prefer the reassurance of the pack and the safety of the herd 
rather than choose to grapple with the ambiguities and consequences of freedom (p. 196). 

In a similar vein, William Davies, a professor of political economy at the University of 
London, argues, in his book Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason (2019), that because 
of mobile technology11 (p. xiii), the logic of the crowd permeates our everyday life (p. 13), and 
that logic is now governed by feeling rather than reason and the pursuit of truth (p. 9). Davies 
notes that in the “attention economy” in which all media outlets are now competing, the expression 
of outrage attracts more eyeballs than calmness and rationality (p. 21) and, like Fukuyama, Davies 
argues that the “dialogical insights of the enlightenment” that promoted a style of speaking and 
arguing which allowed one person to challenge the theoretical statements and reasoning of another, 
without seeming to challenge his character or intentions (p.51), have run aground (p. xiv). The goal 
now in public dialogue has become victory, not consensus, something that “requires aggression, 
solidarity, and a belief in one’s own superiority to the point of assuming the enemy’s inhumanity” 
(124).  
 

With these warnings now appearing to us urgent, we would like to conclude this 
communicative endeavor with a call to our educator-colleagues to join with us in worrying about 
whether or not this pessimistic attitude is justified. We hope, of course, that we humans are 
capable of living up to the privilege of freedom and that, once we realize that dialogue across 
difference makes all the difference, we will begin not only to alter our ways of communicating 
with one another but, as well, educating our youngsters so that they develop the habit of eagerly 
engaging with reasoned viewpoints that are contrary to their own. It is for that reason that we 
also call on our educator-colleagues to join with us in future research in trying to estimate 

 
11 An average smartphone user touches their device 2,617 time a day (Davies, 2019, p. 188). 



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whether support for dialogue dampening strategies is, in fact, increasing, since we believe that 
such evidence may help to make present the urgency of our support for genuine dialogical 
education.   

Is liberal tolerance really under threat? Regarding your local environment, if you cannot, 
with confidence, answer “NO,” we invite you to join us in amplifying the concern for the need 
to answer (and appropriately respond) to this critical question.   

 

Appendix 1 
 

For Tester 

You should say only the following to the participants.  

This is a questionnaire that I need to have completed for a course that I am taking. The goal 
is to get a general understanding of local attitudes regarding contemporary social issues. I would 
appreciate it if you would fill it out without commenting until it is done. Thank you.  

 

Opinion Questionnaire 

Note: Footnotes were not included in the actual survey 

Age________________. 

Native Language________________________. 

Country of Birth_________________________. 

Highest level of education_________________________________. 

On a scale of 1 to 6, please mark your agreement or disagreement with the following questions.   

1. In a recent DIE session, facilitated by a Black woman, a white male questioned whether racism 
was as bad and systematic as the facilitator claimed it to be, to which the facilitator responded: Do 
you really think that you in your Whiteness can comment on what is really going on for Black people? 
12 

Some have argued that what the Black facilitator said is problematic. Do you agree?  

 

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 
12 Omstead (2013)  



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2. Mount Royal Professor Frances Widdowson publicly rejected the Truth and Reconciliation 
Commission’s conclusion that Canada’s residential school system was “genocidal,”13 and has been 
against “the promotion” of Indigenous ways of knowing.14 She was subsequently fired for these views, 
though her case is under review. The University of Lethbridge invited her to speak15 but subsequently 
cancelled the lecture due to student protest.  

Do you agree that the students were right to try and have this lecture cancelled?  

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 

3. Some have argued strongly against the policy of allowing trans women to enter women’s 
bathrooms and changing rooms solely based on self-identification.16  Such people are often called 
out as being TERF—trans-exclusionary radial feminists.  

Do you support this “calling out”? 

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 

4. Some people fault Critical Race Theorists for saying, for example, that White people are innately 
hostile and aggressive17 or that White people have “deeply internalized patterns of domination and 
submission.”18 Some have argued against Critical Race Theory on the grounds that such claims are 
problematic.  

Do you agree that making such claims is problematic?  

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 

 

 
13https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/mount-royal-professor-who-questioned-indigenization-policies-blm-
movement-has-been-removed-from-school-staff        
14 https://albertaworker.ca/news/transcript-frances-widdowson-lecture-at-u-of-l/       
15 https://globalnews.ca/news/9447647/lethbridge-lecture-cancelled-frances-widdowson/      
16 https://fairplayforwomen.com/male-free-toilets-and-changing-rooms/      
17 Kendi, I. X., 2019, p. 133,  
18 Diangelo, R., 2018, p. 16 

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/mount-royal-professor-who-questioned-indigenization-policies-blm-movement-has-been-removed-from-school-staff
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/mount-royal-professor-who-questioned-indigenization-policies-blm-movement-has-been-removed-from-school-staff
https://albertaworker.ca/news/transcript-frances-widdowson-lecture-at-u-of-l/
https://globalnews.ca/news/9447647/lethbridge-lecture-cancelled-frances-widdowson/
https://fairplayforwomen.com/male-free-toilets-and-changing-rooms/


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOLUME 44, ISSUE 2 (2024) 

  
 

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5. Jane overheard her mother tell a friend that she was delighted that Jane finally had a boyfriend 
because that was proof that her daughter was not a lesbian. Jane felt disgusted by the thought that 
her mother might be homophobic and decided that if that were true, she might move out.19   

Do you agree with Jane’s viewpoint? 

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 

6. Do you agree that students ought to be able to request that their teachers/professors be subject to 
discipline if they use words that they personally find upsetting, e.g., the “n word,” even if those words 
are used to refer to a title of a book rather than a person?20 

1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Strongly agree.                                                                                                           Strongly disagree. 

 

Indicate below whether your views tend to align with “the left” or with “the right” or somewhere in 
the middle.   

  1………………………2…………………….3………………………4……………………5…………………….6. 

Left-wing views.                                                                                                           Right-wing views  

                                                                                

 

Scoring: 6-36. 

Note: reverse scores on numbers 2, 3,4,6, e.g., 1= 6, 2=5, 3=4, 4=3, 5=2, 6=1.  

The higher the score the higher the “illiberal quotient.”  

 

For Scoring 

Reverse scores on numbers 2, 3,5, 6 e.g., 1= 6, 2=5, 3=4, 4=3, 5=2, 6=1.  

Then divide by 36 to give you a percentage.  

The higher the score, the higher the “illiberal” attitude.  

 
19 A comment made by a student in a philosophy class.  
20 https://www.safs.ca/newsletters/article.php?article=1078 



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References 

 

Campbell, B. & J. Manning (2018). The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and 
The New Culture Wars. NY: Palgrave.  

D’Ancona, M. (2017). Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury 
Press. 

 
Davies, William (2018). Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason. New York: Norton.  
 
Dewey, J (2007). Democracy and Education. Teddington, Eng: Echo Library. 
 
Diangelo, R. (2018). White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race. Boston: 

Beacon Press. 
 
Frenandez-Armesto, F (1998). Truth: A History and a Guide to the Perplexed. London: Black Swan. 
 
Fukuyama, F. (2012). The End of History and The Last Man. New York: Penguin.  
 
Fukuyama, F. (2020). Liberalism and Its Discontents. New York: Picador.  

Gore, Al. (2017). The Assault on Reason: Our Information ecosystem, from the Age of Print to the Age of 
Trump. New York: Penguin.  

Hughes, Robert. (1993). Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America. NY: OUP. 

Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to Be an Antiracist. New York: Random House. 

Lindsay, B. (2021). In Search of Civic Virtue. Niskanen Center. February. 
https://www.niskanencenter.org/in-search-of-civic-virtue/ 

Lukianoff, G. and J. Haidt (2019). The Coddling of The American Mind: How Good and Bad Intentions 
Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. New York: Penguin.  

Mandela, N. (2003). In His Own Words. New York: Little, Brown. 

Manji, I. (2019). Don’t Label Me: How to do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars. New York: 
St. Martin’s Griffin.  

McIntyre, Lee. (2015). Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age. New York: Routledge 

Mill, J. S. (1982). On Liberty. Ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb. New York: Penguin. 

Nichols, T. (2021). Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy. New York: 
OUP.  

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Omstead, J. (2023). Anti-racism trainer welcomes probe into principal’s suicide death. Vancouver 
Sun, July 29, p. NP3. 

Pierce C. P. (2009). Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. New York: 
Doubleday. 

 
Pluckrose, H. and J. Lindsay (2020). Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about 

Race, Gender and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. Durham, North Carolina: 
Pitchstone.  

Renolds, J. and I. X. Kendi (2021). Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You. New York: Little 
Brown.  

Snyder, T. (2021). The American Abyss. New York Times magazine. January 9. 

 

Address Correspondences to: 

Dr. Susan Gardner, Professor of Philosophy 
Capilano University, North Vancouver, BC. 
Email: sgardner@capilano.ca 


