On toleration

Michael Walzer examines five "regimes of toleration" - from multinational empires to immigrant societies - and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, as well as the varying forms of toleration and exclusion each fosters. Walzer shows how power, class, and gender interact with religion, race, and ethnicity in the different regimes and discusses how toleration works - and how it should work - in multicultural societies like the United States. Walzer offers an eloquent defense of toleration, group differences, and pluralism, moving quickly from theory to practical issues,…