Every so often, a particularly unpleasant email lands in my inbox or social media message appears on my feed. Sometimes it is simply abusive.
Occasionally it questions my motives rather than my arguments. Sometimes it suggests I change the moisturiser I use. More often than not, it serves as a reminder of how quickly disagreement can become personal.
After receiving one such message recently, I found myself reflecting on whether tolerance has become one of the most underrated virtues in public life.
And rather appropriately, the unpleasant message arrived just as I was reading Helena Rosenblatt’s, ‘The Lost History of Liberalism,’ a fascinating account of how Liberalism developed long before it became associated with free markets and tax rates. Rosenblatt argues that liberalism was originally understood as a moral and civic tradition concerned with generosity, pluralism, and the difficult business of living together despite our differences. It was never intended to be simply a doctrine of individual rights. Early Liberals talked about obligations, character, and civic virtue. They believed freedom depended not only on what governments did, but on how citizens treated one another.
That idea feels oddly absent from contemporary politics and reading the book while reflecting on the increasingly hostile tone of public debate, has left me thinking about tolerance as a political choice. Perhaps in modern New Zealand, one of the bravest choices available to us.
Much of our debate now revolves around division. Homeowners versus renters. Public servants versus taxpayers. Rural New Zealand versus urban New Zealand. Auckland versus almost everyone else. Divisions that many political actors are keen to stoke.
Yet New Zealand has generally been at its best when we have resisted such simple black and white characterisation. Some of the great achievements in our history, from giving women the vote to creating a public health system, from homosexual law reform to pay equity, were built on a recognition that individual and collective well-being were not opposing concepts. A true liberal society is a place where people recognise collective goals and shared responsibilities.
An important thing about shared responsibilities is that a tolerant approach to managing them is not the same thing as agreement about their various aspects. A significant element of MMP is that it institutionalises disagreement, meaning that tolerance is fundamental to its effective practice. Its success depends on participants accepting that those with different political views can be intelligent, principled, and acting in good faith without abandoning their own convictions. It requires enough confidence in those convictions to engage respectfully with opposing views rather than questioning motives or caricaturing opponents.
Another aspect of true liberalism that Rosenblatt presents as particularly relevant today is that it has always been concerned with human flourishing. Historically, liberals were deeply interested in education, opportunity and social progress. They wanted people not merely to be free from interference, but to have genuine opportunities to develop their talents and participate fully in society.
Christopher Luxon says he wants us to stop being ‘a very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking country’ but his government has magnificently failed to articulate a vision for us to achieve that. There has been considerable emphasis on fiscal discipline, regulatory reform and public sector restraint. Those conversations matter, of course, but balance sheets are not a national purpose or a blueprint for flourishing.
If we are, or aim to become, a liberal society in the truest sense, the important question is not whether we are balancing the books but whether or not we are expanding opportunity for future generations. Whether we are building enough homes, creating jobs and keeping people well, conditions in which people thrive. A liberal politics worthy of the name should care about all these things, not because government can solve every problem, but because flourishing societies require more than efficient administration. They also depend on a culture of tolerance that allows people with profound differences to work together in seeking solutions.
The nastier moments of public life and the politics of division, however, make it tempting to abandon the idea of tolerance and respond in kind. They encourage us to see disagreement as hostility and opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens. That is precisely why hanging on to tolerance matters, having the confidence to disagree without dehumanising, to argue without despising, and to remain part of a shared national conversation.
Rosenblatt is right. Tolerance is not some optional extra attached to liberal democracy. It is one of the pillars holding it up, and in a political age that rewards outrage and division, it may be one of the bravest choices we can make.
www.labour.org.nz/our-team/helen-white
