Respectfully submitted.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)

In his "Tolerance, If Not Respect" (March 13), Theodore Dalrymple writes: "I learned early in life that tolerance and respect are quite different things. One does not have to respect a man's opinions to respect his fight to have them: Indeed, tolerance would not be necessary if one respected everybody's views. It hardly takes tolerance to tolerate what one respects."

I submit that the claim that one ought to "respect a man's right to have an opinion" is rather nebulous, and that Mr. Dalrymple's argument would be stronger if the distinction between respect and tolerance had been made more precisely. Declaring respect for a man's fight to his own opinion is like declaring respect for another's fight to wear shoes of a different size, or affirming the right of a man to prefer jam over Devonshire cream on his biscuits. These should not really be matters of respect; it is merely a fact that people will have different opinions. Likewise, differences of religious conviction ...