Per the second point, I have a thought experiment I like to present people. Let's say you were a judge at a murder trial. The evidence has been presented, and it's up to you to make a final decision, but you remain unsure. After taking stock of every scrap of evidence presented, you think there's a 60% chance that the defendent committed the crime. The punishment for murder is 10 years of jail time. After some thought, you decide to give him 6 years, to match the level of evidence.
Is that just?
What you are proposing is normalizing intolerance. Systemitizing it, so that it has the appearance of fairness and justice while altering the culture and expectations around it. And as Popper (and Plato before him) argued, such a distinction requires a despot to determine who is unacceptably "intolerant" and who is merely intolerant of the intolerant. That philosophical position is incompatible with liberal democracy - that's what makes the "paradox of tolerance" a paradox!
Your thought experiment does not correspond to what I am talking about. Your thought experiment correspond to the following situation: "someone is intolerant and are doing intolerant actions, but you don't these actions. Maybe these actions are intolerant to level 10, maybe they are intolerant to level 2".
In what I'm talking about, you assess the situation and come to the conclusion "Mr A has done an intolerant action of level 2, so, we react by using anti-intolerance of level 2. Mrs B has done an intolerant action of level 10, so, we react by using anti-intolerance of level 10."
The "all or nothing" is not working well, I have a thought experiment. Let's say you were a judge at a trial. The evidence has been presented, and it's up to you to make a final decision. The trial contains a lot of proofs and shows that the defendant stolen something. But you can only condemn the defendant for murder. If it's not murder, you need to let him free, and, if he want, he can steal again. If he steal, he may be arrested again, judged again, and released again without sentence, because it's not murder.
> And as Popper (and Plato before him) argued, such a distinction requires a despot to determine who is unacceptably "intolerant" and who is merely intolerant of the intolerant
That's social study 101, and if you don't realise that this challenge appears in EVERYTHING related to social, then I doubt you can provide anything constructive. Who decide that murder is bad? Who decide that underage alcohol drinking is bad? Who decide that putting employees in situation where they have to choose between bad salaries and not having anything at all is bad? ... There will always be a "despot" who judge what is good or bad. The trick is that this despot should be an active and continuous discussion between citizens not based on emotions, but based on what is fair.
I don't think that's a comparable scenario. In the scenario that you present the question is whether someone actually did what they are accused of. In the parent's scenario the question is how they should be punished for what they did.
A better comparison would be a defendant who was found guilty but there were mitigating circumstances and a low probability of reoffending. In that case I would definitely support a reduced sentence.
Similarly, the parent would presumably advocate overlooking intolerance when there are mitigating circumstances or if the intolerance is unlikely to have a serious effect. It's the difference between your uncle telling an off color joke at Thanksgiving and the chief of police villainizing black people in a press conference.
Is that just?
What you are proposing is normalizing intolerance. Systemitizing it, so that it has the appearance of fairness and justice while altering the culture and expectations around it. And as Popper (and Plato before him) argued, such a distinction requires a despot to determine who is unacceptably "intolerant" and who is merely intolerant of the intolerant. That philosophical position is incompatible with liberal democracy - that's what makes the "paradox of tolerance" a paradox!