There's nothing wrong with tolerance.
Tolerance:
–noun
1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.
2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own.
3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.
What's there not to like about that? I tolerate lots of things: TV, shopping malls, Wal-Mart, nosey folks, "new country", Seattle in November. You don't have to love everything or everyone. How boring would that be?
People get worked up when it comes to politics. But some people have more at stake than others when it comes to politics, so I think it's understandable when they get a little hyperbole-prone.
Let's face it: There are real issues (the war, civil rights, the debt, taxes) and there are made-up issues that are used to play on people's emotions and fear of change (the "war on Christmas", flag burning, the "gay agenda") And there real issues that are precluded from rational discussion because they get reduced to simple-minded sound bytes: (Gay rights, the role of religion in society, reproductive rights and responsibilities, the appropriate response to terrorism )
Until we learn to tell the wheat from the chaff, we are stuck with this inflamatory confrontational style. In that case, tolerance is our best hope.