THE CRITIQUE OF PURE TOLERANCE IS A LOGIC BOMB.

I'm probably doing the subtleties of the arguments in Critique of Pure Tolerance some violence when I summarize it that way.  But if you're going to suggest that open inquiry and tolerance of opposing points of view is repressive, because it gives people doing things you dislike the opportunity to defend those things, even (or especially) if you view yourself as on the side of the angels, or whatever their secular equivalents are, and they are standing in your way, and you therefore have the obligation to suppress them and their arguments, sooner or later the suppressors are going to come for you.

I found a Bari Weiss essay in Commentary that gets to the heart of the matter.

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon.

It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools. And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

And the point, argues Robert Pondiscio, is to dismantle the master's house.

Education Week’s Stephen Sawchuk observed, “Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism.” Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, two founders of the CRT movement, write in their book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, “Critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

To put the matter as mildly as possible, it would be strange to think that a system of thought that questions the “very foundations of the liberal order” would be regarded as anything other than an existential threat to an education system built on that very order. It should be obvious that these foundational concepts are key to understanding why reasonable people might have reservations about introducing CRT to the classroom. But CRT’s skepticism of rational thought, liberalism, universal values, and objective knowledge was mentioned in less than 5 percent of CRT news articles. Eliding this is particularly egregious, since the failure to note any intellectual objection leaves readers free to assume that objections to CRT are rooted in racism, not rationality or a defense of Enlightenment views and values. One doesn’t need a study—eyes and ears will suffice—to acknowledge that this is precisely how the debate has played out. CRT is not “just teaching honest history,” it’s a revolutionary doctrine.

The logic bomb detonates. Is anybody surprised that denying coherent beliefs might generate incoherence, or counterrevolution?