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There are several glaring faults with this argument. First, a huge lack of overly tolerated intolerants.

But if you have ever tried to live your life this way, you will have seen it fail: “Why won’t you tolerate my intolerance?” This comes in all sorts of forms: accepting a person’s actively antisocial behavior because it’s just part of being an accepting group of friends; being told that prejudice against Nazis is the same as prejudice against Black people; watching people try to give “equal time” to a religious (or irreligious) group whose guiding principle is that everyone must join them or else.

Let's start with the antisocial behavior person.

Khallow.

As to the "equal time" example, this is more a routine ploy to harvest eyeballs for a news story. Start with the facts and then present as a token counterexample, some batshit crazy. As a bonus, you might be able to get some sweet pull quotes and headlines. It will continue because people will keep reading it.

Khallow.

which genocidal fucking psychopaths are being overly tolerated?

Khallow.

Same with "can't behave like a civilized human being". Routinely misapplied. Even when it is a problem, intolerating (such as via ostracization) such behavior can make it worse.

Khallow.

The second fault is that there's no rational basis for defining what intolerance should be targeted and even if there were, it's easy to set up a web of delusion so that you think you're rationally doing something, but not.

Khallow.

I already have listed [soylentnews.org] an example of Hitler's early views on antisemitism. He already had a huge array of excuses.

Khallow.

If these had been real, then they would have qualified. If a group actually were doing the things he claimed Jews were doing, then some sort of defensive action would be justified.

Fantacizing Khallow. Substitute "liberals" or "progressives" for Jews.

Third fault, intolerance tit for tat makes genuine problems worse because the intolerant are better at the game.

Khallow.

For example, a common behavior of cults (depending on your definition of cults, sometimes this is a key part of the definition of a cult) is that they isolate their members from the rest of society. . . . Here's an example of both: in nearby Montana there's a religious sect called the Church Universal and Triumphant [wikipedia.org] or CUT for short. CUT has all the typical trappings of a cult - isolationist, thinks doomsday is around the corner, and prolific preppers (bunkers all over the place).

Oh, dear! Eliz Claire Prophet? And Khallow? Sitting on a Super-Volcano? Does not bode well.

So you have yourself a typical intolerant cult. Solution is simple, right? Intolerate them back! . . . The intolerance only worked one way. Even if somehow the locals could maintain a system of intolerance, it would work to CUT's advantage - because a key part of maintaining a cult is isolating the members from outside ideas and information.

Khallow.

Engagement remains the better strategy.

Nope, not going to get engaged to you, khallow. Go find your own bride.

Being exposed to the groups that one is intolerant of shows that the basis for intolerance is a lie.

Khallow.

The person can continue to ignore that, but I find it has an effect just the same. If you can't manage that due to lack of time or interest, ignoring the problem will work better than feeding the problem.

Khallow.

That leads to my fourth observation: namely that intolerance of intolerance doesn't move us in a positive direction. It's just a brazen display of hypocrisy and delusion.

Khallow. A profound lack of self-awareness is a very scary thing.

How about instead of being part of the problem, let's do stuff that works?

OK, at long last, khallow suggests that we stop trying to argue with him, since that never works, and instead do something else the does work. Like coddling Runaway 1956 or spam modding suspected aristarchoi. Or, we could tolerate religions that find sex to be really icky, and want to ban trans and gay and uppity women.