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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014 - Less Wrong
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Tentatively: that tolerance and intolerance of strangers should be a matter of law rather than local impulse.
What do you mean?
Strangers may not have been the best choice of word, but what I meant is that how people who were in more or less outgroups were treated wasn't so much a matter of public policy. They might be accepted. They might be murdered sporadically. There was no affirmative action, no Jim Crow laws. There were pogroms, but no holocaust.
So, basically, that people-not-from-my-tribe should not be "outlaws" (in the original sense of "outside of the law")? Essentially, you are talking about the idea of law which covers everyone regardless of who/what they are?
Not just that-- instead of just having relations between people shake out under a neutral law, it's assumed that the government can achieve something better than neutrality.
In the general case, what is "better than neutrality"?
I don't know whether there is anything better than neutrality, but a great many people seem to think there is.
The ideal existed since antiquity, but — as today — wasn't consistently practiced.
"Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt." — Exodus 22:21
"The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." — Leviticus 19:34
"And I charged your judges at that time, 'Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly, whether the case is between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner residing among you.'" — Deuteronomy 1:16
(All quotations NIV.)
The classical world also had related norms of xenia and hospitium.