The Road to the Dark Ages is Paved by Irrational Tolerance

The proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions. The regressive road back to the Dark Ages may well be paved by irrational tolerance that is being imposed on society by ironically labeled “progressives” who have seized control of a modern day American political party and many leading universities.

Unlike the reference to hell, the danger of returning some aspects of the Dark Ages is very real, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor at New York University Medical School. In a chilling op-ed published in The Hill, Dr. Siegel warns that “Diseases are reemerging in some parts of America, including Los Angeles County, that we haven’t commonly seen since the Middle Ages.” Among the diseases that are staging a comeback in 21^st Century America are typhus and leprosy.

Siegel focuses on Los Angeles, a city that wears its proclivity for irrational tolerance as a badge of honor. (He could just as easily have held up San Francisco, New York, Seattle, or any number of other irrationally progressive cities as examples.) In the name of tolerance, Los Angeles countenances limitless violations of U.S. immigration law. In addition to all the other negative effects of mass illegal immigration, Siegel notes that nearly all cases of leprosy reported in Los Angeles County between 1973 and 2018 were found in people who arrived from Mexico.

As the flow of illegal immigration has changed in recent years, public health risks have increased. “Leprosy is still more prevalent in Central America and South America, with more than 20,000 new cases per year. Given that, there is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border undetected,” Siegel writes.

Irrational tolerance is also responsible for some 60,000 people living on the streets of LA, while city and county officials spend their time and the taxpayers’ money providing services to illegal aliens. In yet another display of irrational tolerance, LA, like many other cities, will not force the homeless into shelters for their own good and for the good of everyone else in the community. As former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, commenting on current conditions in his city, said, “I had a rule that streets were not for living” and, in the interest of the greater good, ordered the NYPD to move vagrants off the streets and into shelters.

Tolerance is a virtue. Our nation’s founders bequeathed us a Constitution that protects the rights of minorities and the powerless, and it has served us well. Irrational tolerance is worse than a vice; it’s a danger. “Progressive” irrational tolerance asserts rights that do not exist, and dictates that those contrived rights must always take precedence over the interests of society as a whole.

When that philosophy takes hold, as it has in many of our major cities, Dr. Siegel’s question, “Is a Dark Ages disease the new American plague threat?” ceases to be rhetorical.