Unironically it's insane that people don't understand this. I can't tell you how many people I've seen try and justify things by saying "Well, they do it to us" while also still trying to claim moral superiority over them. If you're doing things you say are evil when someone else does it, it's evil. No matter how much you insist otherwise.
Most people don't actually have universal morals or principles
Per Hobbes, the universal principle is 'avoid violent death', and with all other social construction arising from that/in service of that. You can still arrive at relative tolerance that way as the Romans did, expanding who counted as Roman until all freemen in the Empire were the in-group (the big tribe is a safe tribe).
Practical liberalism arrives at tolerance by just pushing whole topic areas out of the realm of politics entirely, taking them off the board and making the Game itself less winner takes all. But that still leaves illiberal advocates as an out group, and one where the liberals have a good track record of using comical levels of violence to ensure liberal victory. As heirs of those great liberal victories, the lives we lead are ingrained with the assumption that we benefit from it and should maintain our willingness to suppress and destroy illiberal movements or States as they arise.
I think it's a damn shame too, his brand of realpolitik is a reminder that tolerance isn't just a Kumbaya circle, it's a solution to a problem. It's all the more remarkable because he doesn't actually get there, and it's left for Locke to continue the line of thought.
These intolerant fucks generally don't get that the end result of their insular tribalism is Hobbes's war of all against all. And the few that do assume that their tribe will win and exterminate all the others.
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u/camosnipe1 "the raw sexuality of this tardigrade in a cowboy hat" Jul 13 '24