Real tolerance is not acceptance. There is nothing about tolerance that implies that a tolerant person condones or supports a particular behavior. People tend to think that a tolerant nation is one in which everyone respects the thoughts and opinions of everyone else, and that is how things should work. The truth is that this pop-tolerance is hypocritical in many instances and silly in all of them.

As I make my way through the education system, I realize that many of my teachers, especially my professors, are wrong on some things. However, every professor is entitled to his or her point of view, and professors are required to tolerate opinions with which they disagree. It would be wholly disappointing, though, if every professor began to teach that all views on the same matter are correct. When you apply this practice to religious views, moral views or any other type of hot-button view that we are all taught to be tolerant of differences in, people get upset.

Ann Coulter recently stated on MSNBC’s “The Big Idea” that in her perfect America, everyone would be a Christian. The host, Donny Deutsch, is Jewish and took great offense at this, as did many others. They claim that she is being anti-Semitic. They already see a lapse back to the -isms that people are trying to do away with. But their position is just silly.

Ann Coulter is a Christian, and as a Christian she believes that her faith is the one true faith. She believes that being a Christian is the only way to get to heaven and that it is her responsibility to try to share Christianity with others. It would be hypocritical of her to state she is a Christian and not say that in her perfect America, everyone would be a Christian.

Ann Coulter’s statement is anti-Semitic on the grounds that her ideal nation is one in which Judaism, or any other non-Christian theology, does not exist. The Christian way of achieving this is not through murder, relocation or eugenics. Rather, it is through persuasion. Coulter’s ideal nation is one in which everyone has come to agree with her, and, because everyone agrees with her that Christianity is the way to go, there are no Jews, Muslims, Hindus or anything else.

Disagreeing with a group of people and hoping to persuade that group to join your own is an anti-ThatGroup position, but it is a far cry from cattle cars and concentration camps.

Tolerance is being preached all over America, but it is only tolerance in name. What it really should be called is not having a position. In order to be tolerant in the way that people are told to think of tolerance, one has to concede that an opinion in direct opposition to your own is equally valid and worthy of consideration. If we were practicing real tolerance, we would only concede that someone else has a right to hold their opinion. We would still be able to tell them that they are wrong and why.

It is only by true tolerance that research can be conducted. One researcher tries to convince another that the former is right and the latter is wrong. However, neither forms a lynch mob to persecute the other.

They both tolerate the other person holding a different opinion, but they do not give any validity to it. That is how real tolerance works; you assault the abstract concepts a person holds dear, not the physical or, to an extent, emotional well-being of another person.

Tolerance is being pushed on children harder than any other drug on the market. But it’s not the pure tolerance that allows people to co-exist until one convinces the other that they were correct. It is the type cut with a blind equality that, by the virtue of its nature, makes everything smooth. Like a cliff face, the only way to climb a mountain of fact is by being able to push off of wrong ideas to grab on to right ones. If today’s brand of tolerance prevails, we will all be sitting at the base of the mountain forever, equals.