Western political correctness tries to equalize multiculturalism with liberalism. Oxford Academic cites one of many scholarly articles that support the underlying premise that one cannot be liberal without being simultaneously multicultural.

Yet, it is worth checking dictionaries from time to time.

While contemporary Cambridge dictionary states for “liberal”:

respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behavior:

and all others go in the same direction; quite a different story happens if you search for the meaning of “liberal” over time. Apart from the connotation of being generous, which persisted from the 14th century on, initial liberal points were quite different up to the 18th century. Primary meanings of liberal were:

free from restraint in speech or action

coming from Latin liberalis (noble, gracious, munificent, generous) of or befitting a free person; from liber (free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious).

The original meaning of liberal

While it is true that most of the concepts of liberalism emerged from liberation from religious restraints in the Renaissance, it is more than necessary to understand liberalism as opposing all threats to an individual’s freedom.

So, to be liberal means (if we follow our origins) putting individual freedom before any other freedom. Any statism or ideology that promotes collective rights as above or more important than individual rights directly contradicts liberalism. 

Contemporary blunder with tolerance

If we return to the contemporary Cambridge notion of “liberal,” it is intuitively clear that it denotes tolerance much more than freedom. It does not refer to someone free but someone who respects (tolerates) different views of others. Others, the community, and the collective play a decisive role. The subject in question here is not free but subjected to tolerance of others and the collective.

Is it at all possible to be liberal and tolerant simultaneously? As we shall see, the answer is not an easy one. 

What does it mean to be tolerant? Cambridge Dictionary points in the right direction:

Willing to accept behavior and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them:

The problem with this definition lies in the equalization of “tolerate” with “accept.” We can again find some help in etymology. Initially, to be tolerant meant “to allow without interference” and “to be able to (bear) something without being affected.”

Real, physical tolerance

One should focus on “without being affected.” Why so? Let us check the meaning of tolerance in engineering and machinery (Wikipedia):

1. In engineering and safety, a physical distance or space (tolerance), as in a truck (lorry), train or boat under abridge as well as a train in a tunnel (see structure gauge and loading gauge).
2. In mechanical engineering the space between a bolt and a nut or a hole, etc..

Tolerance means distance! It is true that typically, science and technology search for the smallest possible gap, but even the smallest gap represents a distance. To be tolerant means to keep a distance from another object so that that object does not interfere with you if I skip directly to the correct meaning of tolerance in human dimensions, social studies, and the memetic environment.

Thus, the final goal of tolerance (if liberal) is to lower it. We can work as a society if the distance between objects/subjects is the lowest possible, which still allows differentiation among entities.

Distance safeguards individuality and freedom

As we can see, such a meaning of tolerance perfectly fits to already explained the ancient definition of “liberal.” Individual freedom can only be safeguarded if proper tolerance, a distance to other equally free individuals, is in place. Only then such an individual at a safe distance can exhibit his or her unique identity, meaning her or his freedom. And only as such (free individual) can anyone “accept” all other free individuals. Such acceptance does not mean “to merge” or to take in as the “melting pot” metaphor suggests. And such tolerance as liberty is in direct opposition to the latest global political correctness: multiculturalism.

Melting, pelting, schmelting

Multiculturalism presupposes melting different cultures into one big global pot. Such a melting pot can only be achieved by removing distance/tolerance. Until tolerance still holds, there is no multi, but a plethora of individual freedoms and individual identities. Only when tolerance is removed and distances disappear can we have a multicultural society. So, a multicultural society can, by definition, not be tolerant and thus also not liberal.

Such a conclusion is not only a surprising result regarding prevailing ideologies that pretend to be both multicultural and liberal but also regarding dictionaries, which one takes as well thought by definition. That is why contemporary liberal politicians are far from being liberal. They might be progressive, even enlightened, but in their wrong conception of tolerance, they are not liberal. It is then not a far-fetched conclusion that those same “liberals,” progressive intellectuals, wrote dictionaries that repeat the mentioned cardinal fallacy. Dictionaries serve the same ideology as all prophets of “one world ideology” and are thus far from being neutral tools to master language.

To conclude: a true liberal cannot be progressive (multicultural) but conservative only, as already in The Grand Unifying Theory of Existence, (GUTE).