Will intolerance be tolerated?

I have read many posts on Gather and on the web in general about the politics of Obama and McCain. Unfortunately, there's something that many supporters of both candidates have in common: a total disregard and disrespect for others' opinions. It's incredibly sad that so many people have turned to bashing one another in an attempt to be heard. Just because someone in the opposing 'side' doesn't agree with their thoughts, they feel surely the other person will see their point of view and agree with it, if they can just explain it often enough or harshly enough. When that doesn't happen, the fangs come out.

Suddenly, the person who has a different opinion is the enemy. They're 'idiots', 'imbecile's', 'stupid' ...you name it. But the 'big one' that seems to always come up sooner or later is that they are 'intolerant'. They don't see that by bashing the other person's opinion, because it is different than their own, that they are being intolerant themselves. They accuse the other person of intolerance, of narrow-mindedness, and yet they suffer the same affliction!

The online Merriam Webster dictionary defines intolerance: 2 a: unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression especially in religious matters b: unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights

It doesn't only happen in politics. It happens when people have diverse thoughts on pretty much any issue: religion...your choice of schooling, whether it be public, private or homeschool... within homeschooling you have divides amongst unschoolers and those who use a curriculum...whether to buy a purebred or get a mutt...it's everywhere!

It happens in SO many situations, and it's just ...well...pathetic. Those who play the 'intolerance card' are typically doing the exact thing that they accuse the person they don't agree with of doing. Their tempers flare. They get ugly with one another. Soon, they're no longer friends. One removes the other from their friend's list - often to 'get even' or prove a point, sometimes just because it's too difficult to be in touch with this person anymore. They often become bitter toward one another and the relationship has no hope of survival. Yet they can only see the intolerance in others. Not in themselves.

We live in a world where you will have others not agree with you, and you won't agree with everybody else. It would be wonderful, in this last 2 weeks before the election, if people would treat one another with respect. If they would be tolerant of others' viewpoints, even if they differ from their own. I'm not asking anyone to compromise their beliefs. Just to understand that others may think vastly differently than you. It's so easy to forget that the person you're typing to online is indeed another person. They have opinions. They have feelings - often not unlike your own. Please try to respect them.

The following quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) sums it up nicely:
"I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance"

Or this one by George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it"

and Harry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) said:
"Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often, as intolerance"

We all are intolerant of certain things, certain ideas. We have lines we won't cross. That's fine. It's expected. It is how it should be. But before we turn it into personal attacks, shouldn't we step back and agree to disagree? To allow others to have their own views? To perhaps afford others an opinion that doesn't match our own?