The paradox of tolerance: how to manage it

 The “paradox of tolerance” (Popper): an open society must not grant unlimited tolerance to movements that aim to abolish openness through coercion or violence. 

There is no way to “solve” the tolerance dilemma once-and-for-all. Any rule that defends a tolerant order against intolerant actors must itself use coercion and discretion, which introduces new risks (error, abuse, ratchets). What you can do is manage it by choosing institutional rules that trade off two errors: tolerating the genuinely dangerous vs. suppressing the merely unpopular. Different designs shift where the costs fall.

Praxeological core (structural implications; Class A/B)

• Individuals act to achieve ends with scarce means. “Tolerance” is a rule that withholds coercion for a wide domain of speech/association; “intolerance” policies deploy coercion earlier in the chain of action.
• If the cost of organizing coercive takeover falls (because the tolerant order does not sanction early organizing, propaganda, or paramilitary preparation), actors who prefer domination face lower expected costs → more such activity (directionally certain).
• Any counter-measure (bans, proscriptions, censorship, surveillance) requires agents, budgets, and rules. Bureaucracies lack profit/loss tests and operate by rules; vague mandates (“combat intolerance”) invite expansion and selective enforcement.
• Classification is unavoidable: someone must decide who is “intolerant.” With imperfect information, you get false positives (punish innocents) and false negatives (miss threats). Shifting thresholds moves these errors; it cannot eliminate both.
• Collective choice has no single coherent “social preference.” Outcomes reflect procedural rules (who reviews, evidence standards, supermajorities) and the actions of specific officials and litigants, not a unitary “will of the people.”

Empirical calibration (magnitudes/patterns; Class C)

• Militant democracy works sometimes, but not automatically. Post‑war West Germany embedded self‑defense (party bans, oaths, constitutional court review). It deterred explicit anti‑constitutional parties, though later party-ban attempts (e.g., NPD) faced high evidentiary bars and mixed effects.
• Strong speech protections with narrow incitement standards (e.g., US Brandenburg) have not prevented extremist mobilization entirely, but most extremist speech remains marginal; violent plots are primarily countered by criminal and conspiracy laws rather than ideology bans.
• Proscription of violent organizations can reduce open recruitment and financing but often displaces activity to adjacent groups or encrypted channels. Repression of nonviolent radicals sometimes backfires by increasing grievance and clandestinity (research on “repression–dissent” shows U‑shaped or contingent effects).
• Electoral rules matter: higher thresholds can keep micro‑extremist parties out of legislatures but may radicalize supporters outside institutions; inclusion can sometimes moderate via office‑seeking incentives, but evidence is mixed and context‑dependent.

Why actors push one path (thymology; Class D)

• Incumbents value self‑preservation, reputations for security, and the ability to label rivals as “intolerant.” Bureaucracies value clearer mandates, bigger budgets, and broader monitoring powers. Voters under threat salience trade liberties for security; activists may provoke overreach to gain attention and martyr narratives.

Design options (means–ends tradeoffs)
If your end is “minimize the chance that intolerant actors capture the state,” consider:

1. Militant democracy with hard legal triggers

   • Tools: party bans for groups seeking to abolish constitutional order; civil‑service loyalty rules; prohibition of paramilitaries; proscription of violent orgs.
   • Safeguards to limit abuse: narrow statutory definitions tied to imminent violent/subversive action; independent courts; high evidentiary thresholds; supermajority triggers; periodic sunset/review.
   • Tradeoffs: more Type I errors (suppressing some non‑threats), bureaucratic expansion, and potential chilling effects.

2. Liberal tolerance with violence-focused enforcement

   • Tools: robust viewpoint‑neutral speech protection; punish only direct incitement to imminent lawless action, conspiracy, material support for violence, and actual violence; protect counter‑speech and association/exit.
   • Safeguards: bright‑line, content‑neutral rules; due process; transparency; penalties for official overreach.
   • Tradeoffs: more Type II errors (greater room for hostile organizing and propaganda), requiring strong policing of violence and high social capacity for counterspeech.

3. Institutional “frictions” that raise the cost of capture without speech policing

   • Tools: federalism and decentralization; staggered terms; bicameralism; supermajorities for constitutional change; independent judiciaries; professionalized but apolitical electoral administration.
   • Tradeoffs: gridlock and status‑quo bias; can also entrench incumbents.

4. Electoral engineering

   • Tools: thresholds or districting that reduce representation of fringe micro‑parties; or deliberate inclusion to channel extremists into parliamentary bargaining where office‑seeking moderates them.
   • Tradeoffs: thresholds risk disenfranchising minorities and pushing activism outside institutions; inclusion risks legitimizing illiberal platforms.

5. Non-state governance

   • Tools: allow private platforms, universities, and associations to set their own tolerance standards; promote plural ecosystems so exit and competition discipline excesses.
   • Tradeoffs: heterogeneity and fragmentation; private overreach possible but mitigated by competition and user exit where feasible.

Operational heuristics (to manage, not “solve,” the dilemma)

• Define the target by behavior, not belief: prioritize bans/sanctions for organizing, financing, or inciting imminent violence or for building coercive capacity (paramilitaries), not for heterodox opinions.
• Use narrow, reviewable rules: clear statutes, judicial oversight, adversarial process, and transparent evidence. Avoid vague categories like “extremism” without objective behavioral criteria.
• Build anti‑ratchet features: sunsets, periodic legislative reauthorization, independent audits, and personal liability for abusive enforcement.
• Strengthen generic state capacity against violence: competent policing, intelligence with warrants and minimization, and swift prosecution of violent acts, while protecting peaceful advocacy.
• Increase the opportunity cost of intolerance: civic norms, cross‑cutting associations, and economic inclusion make radical participation costlier; these are slower but reduce the need for coercive measures.

Synthesis with graded certainty

• Class A/B (directionally certain): Total tolerance of violent organizing lowers its costs and will increase it; any enforcement regime introduces discretion and thus risks of error and abuse.
• Class C: The intensity of these effects varies by context—state capacity, legal clarity, social trust, and party systems materially change outcomes.
• Class D: In concrete cases, expect strategic behavior: authorities may stretch definitions under pressure; radicals may seek overreactions to galvanize support.

Bottom line: You cannot eliminate the paradox, only manage it by choosing where to place the guardrails and how to constrain the guardians. A defensible approach, if your end is to preserve a tolerant order with minimal abuse risk, is to combine: (a) robust protection for speech and association, (b) narrow, behavior‑based sanctions against imminent violence and coercive capacity‑building, and (c) constitutional and electoral frictions that raise the cost of institutional capture—backed by strict oversight and sunset mechanisms. References: Popper (Open Society), Loewenstein (militant democracy), Mises (Bureaucracy; Human Action) on institutional incentives, and empirical repression–dissent literature (e.g., Davenport).

What should be done about the spread of statist ideas that will eventually destroy freedom, such as socialism, communism, marxism, fascism, and mohammedanism?

Neutral framing and scope

• Treat these as ideational competitors for control over coercive institutions. They differ: “socialism/communism/Marxism” (varieties of political allocation), “fascism” (authoritarian corporatism/nationalism), and religiously informed politics (very heterogeneous; political Islam/Islamism is distinct from the broad religion of Islam). Labels aside, the problem is how a liberal order manages movements that would expand coercion over voluntary domains.

Praxeological core (structural implications; Class A/B)

• Ideas shift individual preferences → votes → rules. Suppressing ideas uses coercion, which expands discretionary power and invites Type I errors (punishing non‑threats) and strategic abuse (branding rivals “extremist”).
• Permitting nonviolent advocacy lowers the cost of organizing for illiberal projects, but punishing only conduct that builds coercive capacity (violence, paramilitaries, conspiracies) preserves a wide speech domain while raising the cost of actual takeover.
• Institutions that add “frictions” (federalism, bicameralism, supermajorities, judicial review, staggered terms) raise the price of capture regardless of which ideology tries.
• Bureaucracies lack profit/loss tests; vague mandates like “combat dangerous ideas” predict expansion, selective enforcement, and ratchets.

Empirical calibration (magnitudes/patterns; Class C)

• Censorship/deplatforming reduces public reach but often displaces mobilization to adjacent platforms and can increase grievance/commitment among core adherents. Effects vary by capacity and clarity of rules.
• Militant-democracy tools (e.g., party bans tied to anti‑constitutional aims) can deter explicit advocacy of overthrow but require high evidentiary standards to avoid politicization; mixed results across cases.
• Robust speech protection with narrow incitement standards (US-style) has coexisted with extremist scenes, but violence is mainly contained by ordinary criminal, conspiracy, and material‑support laws.
• Economic downturns, status loss, and rapid social change increase receptivity to radical programs; durable prosperity and broad inclusion reduce it. Civic/market‑economics education correlates with lower support for heavy political allocation, though causation is difficult to pin down.

Design options (means–ends tradeoffs)
If the end is to preserve a wide sphere of voluntary action and prevent capture by coercive ideologies:

1. Behavior-not-belief law

   • Protect viewpoint-neutral speech and association.
   • Criminalize only direct incitement to imminent lawless action, paramilitary organization, violent conspiracy, and material support for violence.
   • Use clear statutes, judicial oversight, adversarial process, and transparency. Include sunsets and audits to avoid ratchets.

2. Constitutional and electoral frictions

   • Supermajorities for constitutional change and major expansions of taxing/spending/controls.
   • Independent courts and professional, apolitical electoral/military bureaucracies.
   • Federalism/decentralization to enable exit and policy competition; staggered terms and bicameralism to slow capture.

3. Fiscal and administrative guardrails

   • Debt brakes, PAYGO, and tax‑salience rules so expansive programs face immediate costs rather than hidden finance.
   • Sunset clauses and mandatory ex post policy evaluation to expose non‑performing interventions.

4. Open contestation with systematic counterspeech

   • Compete in the marketplace of ideas: expose tradeoffs, opportunity costs, and historical performance of proposals.
   • Promote literacy in basic political economy (knowledge problem, calculation, public choice) and civic process.
   • Independent evaluation units (audit courts, fiscal councils) produce nonpartisan performance data for public use.

5. Civil society and plural private governance

   • Encourage dense associational life and cross‑cutting identities; these raise the opportunity cost of radical engagement.
   • Let private platforms/universities set their own standards; ensure plural ecosystems so exit and competition discipline excesses.

6. Target grievances that fuel radical recruitment

   • Competent, even‑handed policing; reduce corruption; predictable legal processes.
   • Policies that broaden opportunity (work and housing supply, entry barriers reduction) dampen demand for radical redistributive or authoritarian solutions.

Thymology (Class D) cautions

• Politicians/bureaucracies have incentives to stretch “dangerous ideas” definitions to hobble rivals; radicals may court overreaction to gain martyr narratives. Design rules with these motives in mind: narrow definitions, independent review, penalties for overreach.

Graded synthesis

• Class A/B: You cannot eliminate ideological competition without empowering guardians who then pose their own risks. Laws keyed to violent conduct rather than viewpoints, plus institutional frictions, reliably raise capture costs while preserving open debate.
• Class C: The success of any mix depends on state capacity, social trust, prosperity, and legal clarity.
• Class D: Expect strategic adaptation on both sides; build anti‑ratchet and transparency features.

Bottom line

• Don’t fight ideas with vague bans; fight coercion with precise, reviewable law. Pair that with constitutional frictions, fiscal/administrative guardrails, plural civil society, and sustained counterspeech and policy evaluation. This configuration minimizes both the risk of takeover by illiberal projects and the abuse risk from the defenders.

In addition:

If your end is to slow or limit expansion of political allocation (“statism”) while preserving open debate, the most consistent tools are structural constraints on taxing, spending, regulation, and delegation—not viewpoint bans.

Praxeological baseline (directionally certain)

• Viewpoint bans expand discretionary coercion and create abuse risk; they chill benign speech along with the targeted ideas.
• Structural frictions raise the resource, coalition, and time costs of expanding state power regardless of ideology.

Amendment templates that target structure, not speech (with tradeoffs)

1. Fiscal “debt brake” + supermajority finance rules

• Content: Cyclically adjusted balanced-budget rule; supermajority for new taxes, new borrowing, or permanent spending baselines; independent fiscal council scoring; automatic correction if off‑track.
• Effects: Slows fiscal expansion; improves salience of costs.
• Risks: Workarounds (off‑budget entities, “fees”), pro‑cyclicality if poorly designed, judicialization of budgeting.
• Empirical calibration: Swiss debt brake improved balances with some creative accounting; Colorado TABOR constrained growth but induced fee shifts and frequent voter overrides.

2. Sunset and reauthorization requirements

• Content: Automatic expiration of federal statutes, regulations, and entitlements after N years unless re‑passed; staged review calendars; simple-majority continuations for status quo, supermajority for expansions.
• Effects: Forces periodic scrutiny; raises maintenance costs of expansive programs.
• Risks: Legislative backlog; cliff effects; bargaining leverage for minorities.
• Evidence: Many state sunsets underperform without strong gatekeepers; efficacy rises with hard deadlines and independent review.

3. Nondelegation/REINS-style amendment

• Content: No “major rule” (defined by GDP/compliance-cost thresholds) takes effect without an affirmative up‑or‑down vote of Congress; clear intelligible-principle requirement for all delegations.
• Effects: Re-centers accountability; slows regulatory growth.
• Risks: Congestion in Congress; pressure to understate impacts; courts gain power over what counts as “major.”
• Evidence: Where similar statutes exist (e.g., some countries require parliamentary votes for significant regulations), regulatory tempo slows.

4. Regulatory budget and takings protection

• Content: Annual cap on net regulatory compliance costs with one‑in/one‑out or two‑for‑one offsets; compensation for regulatory takings above a de minimis threshold.
• Effects: Raises marginal cost of new rules; discourages diffuse, low‑salience burdens.
• Risks: Measurement gaming; shift to guidance/enforcement rather than rules.
• Evidence: Canada/UK one‑in/one‑out cut measurable cost growth but saw reclassification games.

5. Strengthened economic‑liberty review

• Content: Heightened judicial scrutiny for laws restricting entry, pricing, or contract unless tied to concrete health/safety harms; revive Privileges or Immunities protections.
• Effects: Raises bar for rent‑seeking regulation; increases litigation costs for new controls.
• Risks: Courts become arbiters of economic policy margins; uncertainty in transition.
• Evidence: State‑level protections (e.g., against purely protectionist licensing) have rolled back some restrictions.

6. Federalism and anti‑coercion clauses

• Content: Bar conditional grants that coerce states; require programs to be financed at the level that mandates them; “no bailout” clause for states and federal entities.
• Effects: Reduces vertical fiscal illusions; increases policy competition and exit options.
• Risks: Harder national coordination; crisis management complications.
• Evidence: Anti‑commandeering doctrine already limits some coercion; stronger fiscal separation increases subnational experimentation but can widen disparities.

7. Tax salience and transparency rules

• Content: Prohibit hidden taxation via off‑budget mandates; require uniform, itemized disclosure of lifetime tax burdens on federal ballots or annual notices; supermajority for new tax expenditures (loopholes) as well as rates.
• Effects: Makes costs visible; reduces back‑door expansion through credits/deductions.
• Risks: Administrative complexity; cosmetic compliance.

What to avoid if you want to preserve a tolerant order

• Viewpoint- or ideology-specific prohibitions on advocacy. They lower the cost of discretionary repression, invite partisan relabeling of opponents as “statist,” and predictably spill over beyond the initial target. Empirically, such bans have mixed efficacy and frequent backfire.

Implementation details that determine whether any amendment “bites”

• Independent scorekeepers (fiscal/regulatory councils) with transparent methods.
• Clear definitions (what counts as “major rule,” “structural deficit,” “off‑budget entity”).
• Automatic correction mechanisms and standing to sue, with limited judicial remedies (e.g., sequestration triggers) to avoid endless litigation.
• Narrow emergency escape clauses: supermajority, time‑limited, and audited.

Synthesis

• Class A/B: Structural amendments can reliably raise the cost and slow the tempo of state expansion; speech bans expand discretionary coercion and create abuse risk.
• Class C: Magnitudes depend on enforcement design and political capacity; actors will seek workarounds.
• Class D: Expect strategic adaptation—governments reclassify spending/regulation; opposition reframes proposals to fit rules.

Bottom line: Amendments cannot end the spread of ideas, but a package that preserves robust speech while constitutionalizing fiscal/regulatory frictions, nondelegation, periodic sunsets, and stronger economic‑liberty review most directly raises the cost of translating expansive-state ideas into binding policy—at the price of more rigidity, more judicial involvement, and creative circumvention that must be anticipated in the design.