“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville
“I will not lie, nor cheat, nor steal, nor tolerate those who do.”
USAF Honor Code - 1962
One of the first things I had to learn when I joined the US Air Force Officer Training School was its “honor code”. Even then, I was struck by the words “nor tolerate those who do.” It was not enough for me to tell the truth, be honest, and keep my hands off of other’s property. I had to be “intolerant” of other’s behavior as well. In the politically correct world of the new millenium, the word intolerant has a hard edge to it. In those days, I could literally get “booted out” of the Air Force because I was too “tolerant”.
Honor Codes and Codes of Conduct arose out of experience. They were things that worked… to everyone’s benefit… both the individual and the organization.
One of my key points in our new Parent-To-Parent Lessons Learned series is summed up in the words, “To Tolerate is To Teach.”
What the Air Force knew was that toleration had its limits. Lying, cheating, and stealing were out of bounds… were “intolerable” behaviors. They knew that tolerating those behaviors would teach them… and that would spell the death of the organization… the failure of their mission.
Tolerating wrong behaviors will also spell the death of your family and, eventually, our civilization. I believe, in my heart, that tolerance of evil… children as sex objects… drugging… drinking… bullying… treating death as a “fun” is an intolerable behavior.
To tolerate a behavior is to teach that very behavior.
Think about it!
Bill Oliver