Many contributors to the ToryDiary thread today on Gove's remarks about "lads mags" avowed themselves libertarian and said that Gove should shut up or even resign. They are quite wrong. In a free and tolerant society, Nuts and Zoo are free to publish, and Gove should be free to criticize them for what they publish. We need to move away from this miguided thought that legality equals approval. Many things that are legal are things that many of us want to criticize.
Those attacking Gove seem to me to have forgotten or misunderstood what a tolerant society is. A tolerant society is one in which we disagree with some things but live with their presence nonetheless. That does not mean that we accept them as inevitable or should feel unable to criticize them. The notion that liberalism means we must accept everything and criticize nothing has come to overwhelm us. Cameron cannot talk of right and wrong without being declared to have "launched an attack" upon the obese, idle and poor. Christians cannot disagree with (let alone criticize!) homosexual behaviour without being declared "bigots". And now Gove must "resign" if he asks lads mag publishers to consider what they are doing.
I have always been painfully aware that, as a committed Christian, much of what I believe is not widely shared. I do not expect society to accept me. Libertarians - I do not ask that of you! But I do hope that society will tolerate me, and allow me to conduct myself in accordance with my beliefs - conduct which includes, of necessity and indivisibly, criticizing certain things and attempting to persuade people that I am right. An all-accepting libertarian society could not tolerate me. So, for personal reasons as much as anything else, I hope that our society does not become all-accepting any time soon. Tolerance, not acceptance, is the proper aspiration of a liberal state.
