Please study the photographs in the previous post. They depict adherents of the 'religion of peace' making such statements as: Behead those who insult Islam; Freedom go to hell; Be prepared for the real holocaust.
There is a sort of 'culture war' going on between liberals and conservatives in the West. But this minor culture war, as heated as it has become recently, is as nothing compared to the major war between the West, with its Enlightenment values, and militant Islam. To put it roughly, we in the West are all or most of us liberals, classical liberals. The touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration, as I recall the famous CCNY philosopher Morris R. Cohen writing somewhere. Along the same lines, savor this admirable passage from Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher (Modern Library, 1999, p. 183):
Freedom is the heart of liberalism, as the word itself implies; and if you really do viscerally believe in freedom you accept that others have a right to do a great many things of which you disapprove, including the holding of a wide range of opinions with which you diagree. In a word, pluralism -- a belief in the acceptance of the coexistence of the incompatible -- is the essence of liberalism.
This seems right. The essence of classical liberalism is pluralism, and a pluralist is one who permits, which is not to say that he celebrates, the existence and expression of incompatible opinions. It borders on silliness to 'celebrate the diversity of opinions' in the 'marketplace of ideas' -- what's to celebrate in discord and contention? -- but we must tolerate this diversity. A diversity of opinions cannot be a good thing in itself, but it can be instrumentally good in that, in the abrasion of claim and counterclaim, better justified views may come to the fore. But that will tend to reduce the diversity. To make a fetish of diversity as such is a fallacy of contemporary liberals.
Why must we be tolerant, and thus liberal in a respectable sense of this term? (The term is now one of opprobrium, but for this contemporary liberals have only themselves and their extremism to blame.) The main reason is because no one knows the answers to the ultimate substantive questions. I am using 'know' in a strict sense that entails certainty. No one can legitimately claim to have certain knowledge about the existence or nonexistence of God, the soul, the freedom of the will. No one can legitimately claim to know what the good life for human beings is. And so on.
When Edith Stein, post-Husserl, pre-Auschwitz, was spending her days as a Carmelite nun praying and meditating and writing her impressive Finite and Eternal Being, was she living the good life, or was she living in illusion, wasting her time on empty fantasies? You may think you know the answer to this question, but I say you do not know the answer. Of course, I believe she was living the very highest life it is possible for a human to live, and I can support this belief with an array of arguments. And, having thought about the matter long and hard, I don't expect to be budged from this belief. But I am not about to drive anyone into a monastery or nunnery or blow up the Playboy Mansion.
Of course, I don't claim to know with certainty that nothing can be known with certainty about the ultimate questions; that is an open question and a matter for inquiry. My point is merely that we must be tolerant because we cannot be certain.
To round out these ruminations I must point out that toleration has its limits. Should the UK tolerate the Islamo-fanatics depicted in the pictures lately uploaded? No, they should expel the evildoers. Someone who calls for the beheading of those who criticize a religion cannot be tolerated. That is not to say that they should be beheaded, but that they should be removed from the midst of civilized people. Expel them, and do not allow their ilk in. Is that not just common sense? Incitement to violence cannot be tolerated.
One cannot tolerate people who refuse to accept the principle of toleration. The trouble with decadent Europe, I am afraid, is that they do not understand this. They do not see that toleration has limits. They believe in little or nothing, and in the face of fanatically true believers, they will have a hard time of it.
You may think I'm being harsh in saying that the forces of the Enlightenment have chosen to side with the terrorists, but the United States is clearly the strongest and most consistent force in the world for classical liberalism, yet can you name for me any enemy of the United States that these people have not apologized for, built up, and/or sided with in major disputes? Can you think of any strong ally of the United States that these people have not attacked and disdained? Any major debates in which they do not take the side that is most harmful to the United States or most likely to reduce the power and influence of the United States? Similarly, Christianity is the single most influential cultural force for classical liberalism, and can you name any major policy conflict in which these people have sided with the Christians? Any social issues for which these forces to not prefer the side that weakens Christianity?
I've been making a mental list, and I can think of dozens of examples of opposition to the forces of liberalism and very few in alliance (I'm talking about their actions and what they fight for, not what they say they want). I think it's pretty clear that the most dangerous enemy that true liberalism faces today is not the terrorists but the Enlightenment. We could have destroyed the terrorists if they were not being protected and encouraged by the forces of the Enlightenment.
These posts were largely a reaction to the Muhammad cartoon flap.
Kevin
Thanks, Dave. Partial response in a new post.
You seem to be using 'Enlightenment' in an idiosyncratic way.
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.