Tolerance & Virtues: How They Go Hand in Hand

     Today I took a visit to the State Fair of Texas with my family to see exhibits, eat enough fried food to kill a man, and to just have fun.  As most people know, these kind of mass, public events are usually magnets to every ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle there is.  You know how there are always those couple of dudes in any mall you visit that your first instinct is to just avoid?  Well multiply those dudes by about one hundred, and you have the State Fair.  Whenever I visit these kind of places, I have to mentally let my guard down so as to not awkwardly stare at someone who is different than me for too long.  While walking towards the Texas History exhibit, me and my dad noticed a boy and a girl over in a corner that were about my age.  Keep in mind, these two were completely public, and had no seclusion at all.  The boy was pointing a camera at the girl's, ehm, "belt area", while the girl attempted to slyly pull the front part of her pants down, clearly trying to show something.  Don't fall out of your seat though...she wasn't showing him her "private parts", but was trying to show him a tattoo or something she had on the very low portion of her stomach.  Me and my dad starred at them in shock, and even made eye contact with them.  When we were out of hearing distance, my dad said, "They're lucky...I was this close to going over and saying something." I replied saying, "No dad don't say anything to them, please." He then said, "The fact that no one has said anything to them is why they can do that.  People are too tolerant now-a-days."
"People are too tolerant now-a-days." ......this really stuck with me.  Even though I have been told countless lessons on tolerance, I had still fallen prey to it!  My father was exactly right, we as a human race are too tolerant.  We put feelings in front of virtues and honor, saying things like "Well I don't want to hurt their feeling, do I?" instead of "That isn't right, I need to stand up to him/her"  This kind of thinking is one of the many reasons why many in my generation do not even have a sense of what good virtues are or what honor even is.  What are your thoughts?  Do you feel that tolerance and virtues go together?

Quote of the day:
"It is easy to be tolerant of the principles of other people if you have none of your own." -Herbert Samuel