Washington rejected toleration as condescension toward inherent rights

Evidence

Just three hundred years ago the English philosopher John Locke published his Letter concerning Toleration in which he observed that “neither pagan, nor Mohammedan, nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” George Washington, in a letter to a Jewish community leader in Newport, Rhode Island, dismissed the idea of toleration as essentially intolerant, as if “it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 332

Categorization

• CANDY: Washington’s dismissal of ‘toleration’ as itself intolerant is a sharp, quotable one-liner for a dinner conversation.
• SEED: Angle: the history of ‘toleration’ as a condescending concept versus equal rights — tracing Washington’s critique through later minority-rights thinkers.