Intolerance of intolerance

Jonah Goldberg gently chides Britney Spears in his latest op-ed column for a narrowness of perspective that led the singer, while receiving GLAAD's Vanguard Award, to insinuate that American culture was uniquely intolerant of difference. The one line he quotes is " I feel like our society has always put such an emphasis on being normal, and to be different is unusual or seen as strange." Nothing there implies that the U.S. is unique in this regard, but as a Republican and the author of Liberal Fascism Goldberg is used to drawing sweeping conclusions about non-conservatives. He clearly infers that Spears is furthering the supposed leftist narrative of America (or white America) as the most bigoted culture on earth, but whether he's right or not to jump to that conclusion, he is right to remind his readers that racism, homophobia and other forms of intolerance flourish the world over. He can even cite statistics showing, based on a survey that asked if respondents were willing to welcome neighbors of other races, that the U.S. is only the 47th most racist nation on the planet. But he seems at a genuine loss when it comes to explaining why so many Americans might see their country as uniquely intolerant of at least some forms of difference, if all he can blame that on is tunnel vision. He should realize that the U.S. will always be subject to rising expectations of more freedom in all areas of life, since Americans largely see their country as uniquely dedicated to freedom. Modern hedonist culture elevates those expectations still higher, and while any society is bound to disappoint such expectations, few of them will seem as hypocritical for doing so as ours does. Goldberg thinks that the U.S. hasn't been very hostile to "being different" for at least the last half-century, if it had ever been, but that dismissal misses the enduring complaint against a bourgeois "or else" culture that thwarts people's desire to live their own way without consequences and thus violates their expectation, however unrealistic, of unlimited (albeit victimless) personal freedom. Hedonist anger at this apparent betrayal won't be calmed by telling Americans to be grateful for what they've got because  other countries are worse. Goldberg wants Americans to stop portraying our sociocultural problems as "so much worse than they really are," but so long as we see them as so much worse compared to what we should be as the land of liberty, he should expect Americans to keep on exercising their most convenient freedom, the right to complain.