Both tolerance and intolerance claim the power to crush dissent and heresy. Intolerance wields that power, tolerance does not. But claiming to have this power, even if the powerful hand is stayed, is problematic. Thomas Paine explained this in The Rights of Man: Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the Pope, armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and
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