As Libertaria of this parish already noted, Civitas has published a pamphlet by Anthony Browne entitled The Retreat of Reason. (Note: that is a link to the complete text in pdf format.)
I find this work immensely valuable, and highly recommend that any readers out there read the whole thing. As a taster, the following chunk quoting from Salman Rushdie and John Stuart Mill is notable:
Commenting on the Blair government’s attempt to win Muslim votes by criminalising incitement to religious hatred, which Muslim leaders hope will criminalise criticism of Islam, Salman Rushdie wrote:
To me it is merely further evidence that in Britain, just as in the United States, we may need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again. That battle, you may remember, was about the church’s desire to place limits on thought. Diderot’s novel La Religieuse, with its portrayal of nuns and their behavior, was deliberately blasphemous: It challenged religious authority, with its indexes and inquisitions, on what was possible to say. Most of our contemporary ideas about freedom of speech and imagination come from the Enlightenment. But although we may have thought the battle long since won, if we aren’t careful, it is about to be ‘un-won’.
So far has the concept of freedom of speech been forgotten, that the words of John Stuart Mill from a hundred and fifty years ago have a sobering effect on the modern mind:
The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.
Salman Rushdie poses the battle as being between pro- and anti-Enlightenment forces. Browne himself poses the battle as being between "politically correct" and "factually correct". So, should I refer to myself as "pro-enlightenment" or "factually correct"?
