Quote of the Day (Michael Walzer, on Toleration and Difference)

“Toleration makes difference possible; difference makes toleration necessary.”— Michael Walzer, On Toleration (1997)

In memoriam: the Orlando shooting victims. Never has toleration been more necessary, in the American double experiment in pluralism and democracy, than now, when a sexual minority is massacred for being different and an entire religious minority falls under suspicion for the crimes of a small subset.

Quote of the Day (Gabby Giffords, on the Orlando Shooting and the ‘New Normal’)

“Some will say that our nation must accept this as the new normal. Some will say that there is nothing we can do to make our country safer from gun violence. It’s not true. We cannot let armed ambushes become the new normal in our country. We have to do better than this. And we can. We have to do more to ensure hatred doesn’t find its evil voice in the crack of a gunshot. We are heartbroken that this attack allegedly targeted our country’s LGBTQ community as they celebrated Pride Month.”— Gabrielle Giffords (pictured) and husband Mark Kelly, on the Orlando mass shooting, quoted in “Statement by Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly on the Tragic Mass Shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida,” http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org, June 12, 2016