What’s good for the goose is good for the gander is Fair Play.
Fair Play, economist Steven Landsburg states this eloquently in a passage on the importance of rights, tolerance, and pluralism (p. 92):
You and I disapprove of bigotry. But the private virtue of tolerance and the public virtue of pluralism require us to countenance things we do not approve. Tolerance means accepting the fact that other people’s values might be very different than your own. Pluralism means eschewing the use of political power as a means for ‘correcting’ those values.
The idea of tolerating intolerance sounds suspiciously paradoxical, but so do a lot of other good ideas—like freedom of speech for advocates of censorship. In fact, freedom of speech has a lot in common with tolerance: Neither of them means a thing unless it applies equally to those we applaud and those who offend us most viscerally.
Tolerance is ennobling, which is why we should teach it to our children. Pluralism is insurance against tyranny, which is why we should demand it of our government. To speak up for even the most despised minorities is both morally right and politically prudent.
Tags: Fair Play, Steven Landsburg