State tolerance is important, but the real game changer is having a tolerant populace
The State–Populace Tolerance Matrix helps us think clearly about what sustains or destroys freedom. It maps societies along two axes: how tolerant the State is, and how tolerant the people are. The horizontal axis runs from tolerant governments on the left to intolerant ones on the right. The vertical axis runs from tolerant cultures on top to intolerant cultures below. Every nation occupies some point on this grid, depending on how much intolerance comes from above and how much from below.
GOOD: The top-left corner represents True Freedom: a tolerant State and a tolerant people. This is freedom in both law and spirit. The State lets you live your life, and your neighbors let you speak your mind. Disagreement is not treated as danger, and offense is something to be tolerated rather than punished.
BAD: Slide rightward, and you reach Defiant Freedom. Here the State becomes repressive, but the people remain open-minded. Citizens learn to maneuver around an overbearing government — dodging restrictions, thumbing their noses, keeping freedom alive through humor and defiance. It’s an uneasy balance, but it works. A tolerant populace can restrain an intolerant government.
NIGHTMARE: Drop downward instead, and the picture darkens quickly. The State may still be tolerant, but the people become intolerant. This is Totalitarianism in its modern, decentralized form. There’s no dictator here, no secret police — just the culture itself enforcing orthodoxy. Mobs demand compliance, social media acts as surveillance, and snitches and cancellers replace law enforcement. People are fired, ostracized, or shamed not by the State but by their friends and colleagues. The additional danger is that once the populace begins policing thought, the State soon follows. Bottom-left societies tend to drift rightward, as governments start codifying the mobs’ moral demands.
INFERNO: In the bottom-right corner, intolerance fuses from both directions. This is Cultocracy — when bottom-up outrage merges with top-down power. The mob and the State become one organism, enforcing righteousness together. It is the worst of all worlds: a society unified not by freedom but by fear and conformity.
The crucial insight of this matrix is that left-to-right movement — a State growing more intolerant — is a problem, but a limited one. Authoritarian governments can be resisted. But bottom-up movement — a populace becoming intolerant — is catastrophic. When intolerance comes from above, you can rebel against it. When it comes from below, it consumes every corner of life.
A free society isn’t secured just by a constitution. It’s secured by the character of its people — by a shared willingness to let others speak, to tolerate offense, and to resist the urge to purge. Lose that, and even the most tolerant State will eventually follow the mob.