That is a good point. If we analyze this article called “Tolerance Isn’t A Moral Precept” with the understanding that it is arguing under the assertion that it actually is a moral precept and then imagine in our minds an enormous number of people that have no concept of “clear and present danger” at all, it is very troublesome indeed. In a vein that has very similar relevance to the article and discussion at hand, the fact that there is a Popemobile in Cars 2 means that the failed 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II didn’t just theoretically happen in the Cars universe, it objectively happened in the Cars universe. Now, it is clear that we do not know if that pope was man or Car but we must posit tha
"clear and present danger" is a concept used by the legal system to define when speech is or isn't legal, and the bar used is generally fairly high. Still, we usually deploy a jury or a team of judges to determine this in order to really be sure to get it right. It is not something that is easily defined in an objective sense.
"clear, specific and concrete danger" is something that may be a better set of criteria. If one can not specify the danger, or if it is not concrete, then its arguable not very clear or present.
Exactly! If we imagine that people only exist on paper then we can pretend that these made up people that have no real-world counterparts don’t know what a clear and present danger is. With that in mind it is obvious that tolerance isn’t possible.
Now, once you consider that the people that I’m imagining are nearly-spherical but covered in spikes and all of them are in the bottom of a big slippery bowl, you can see how they’re always causing harm to one another. Also in this scenario they can only communicate in grunts and as such they rely on me - the dungeon master judge - to resolve conflicts through a complex legal system that I made up. Sadly I am powerless to do anything about the spikes or how slippery the bowl is, so you can guess how that works out.
To all the people that talk about a “social contract” I say “put that in your pipe and smoke it”!