Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Global Rage

"... The currency of the term tolerance has recently become badly debased. When it used to mean the respecting of real, hard differences, it has come to mean instead a dogmatic abdication of truth-claims and a moralistic adherence to moral relativism - departure from either of which is stigmatized as intolerance."  -- Meic Pearse, Why The Rest Hates The West

"Openness - and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings - is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all."  -- Allen Bloom, The Closing of an American Mind



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