Halloween

The Nightly Build...

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Rod Dreher Rants About Trick-or-Treaters

Tying up some loose ends while waiting for election returns...
Rod Dreher posted a racist rant this morning complaining about Latinos driving their kids around for trick-or-treating, what Dreher calls "trawling in some other neighborhood's waters." Dreher says "it's no skin off my nose" in a tone that clearly indicates that he thinks it is. So much so that he turned his porchlight out and "put a bench at the top of the steps to discourage trick or treaters". What makes this different from the standard old man "get off my lawn" type complaining is Rod Dreher's habit of always bringing race into the matter ("they're always Latino folks").

That Dreher assumes it's a racist thing is sad. Needless to say, many commenters pointed out, in more polite language than I would use, that this practice is not confined to "Latino folks," but is done by non-Hispanic whites and African-Americans, too. Some expressed displeasure at the practice, but others excused it on the assumption that some of the offenders are parents who live in less safe neighborhoods who want to give their kids a taste of safe trick-or-treating, too. Jim Schutze, who speaks with the wisdom that comes from experience, says:

"This is acually a recurring phenomenon in East Dallas -- the white new arrival who doesn't understand why so many Mexican kids come to his house at Halloween. We did a terrific story about this at the Times-Herald when it happened on Swiss Avenue in the 1980s. I am proud that a majority of Swiss Avenue Historic District residents stood up and told the newly arrived ethnophobes, 'They were here first, and, anyway, we love them and want more of them to come for Halloween.' Mr. Dreher is a type I know all too well."

Look ethnophobe up in the dictionary and I wouldn't be surprised if "crunchy con" didn't appear somewhere in one of the definitions. Rod Dreher, not knowing when to retreat, puts down Schutze as a "sanctimonious liberal who wears his 'tolerance' on his sleeve as a badge of honor."

I grew up thinking tolerance was a virtue. I thought everyone did. More recently, it's slowly dawned on me that tolerance is not valued by conservatives, especially by the religious right, who believe they are blessed with revealed Truth. Diversity of opinion (diversity, there's another word that conservatives despise) is bad because there can be one and only one Truth, and they know what it is.

Yet tolerance is at the heart of the American experience. It was religious intolerance that many of the early settlers were fleeing. Liberty demands tolerance. I've come to believe that this is what is behind conservative's antipathy to government, to an impartial press, to academia. These institutions enshrine tolerance and that is anathema to conservatives.

I've often been troubled by an inherent contradiction in liberalism's love of tolerance. One trait liberalism cannot tolerate is intolerance. Conservatives intuitively pick up on this contradiction and accuse liberals of hypocrisy, since liberals don't let conservatives practice intolerance. I have no good answer for that. It's a valid criticism.

Most recently, I've realized that conservatives offer a solution to this paradox, or at least libertarians do. Libertarians say that, as long as they have their guns, they don't care what others do, whether they practice tolerance or intolerance. As long as the libertarian can blast anyone who infringes on his space, he's willing to let society at large do what it wants. This isn't the kind of Wild West society I want to live in, but it does seem to be internally consistent. That's not a bad thing. As for me, I'm still wearing tolerance on my sleeve as a badge of honor.