Last year, the University of Chicago Press
reissued Jonathan Rauch’s classic 1993 defense of free speech,
Kindly Inquisitors, with a new afterword by the author and
an introduction by George Will. In October, the Reason Foundation
hosted an event featuring Rauch on the book’s genesis and lasting
influence:
Nick Gillespie sat down with Rauch a couple weeks later to
discuss why his book is still relevant today:
Here’s the original text from that video, which was released on
November 8, 2013:
The great advantage of a society that embraces robust and
often-angry debate, “is not that it does not make mistakes,” says
Jonathan Rauch, “it’s that it catches mistakes very, very quickly.”
For Rauch, such dialogue is at the heart of what he calls the
“liberal science” of producing and refining knowledge.A National Magazine Award-winning journalist and author, Rauch’s
path-breaking study of political correctness, Kindly
Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, has
just been released in a 20th-anniversary edition by the Cato Institute. The new version includes an
introduction by George Will and a powerful afterword by Rauch about
how calls for censorship and regulation of speech have changed over
the past two decades.Nick Gillespie sat down with Rauch to discuss why free speech
cannot and should not be abridged, even when it causes pain and
discomfort. Rauch talks about how the weak defense of Salman
Rushdie after receiving Islamic death threats radicalized his views
and the inspiration he draws from figures such as Frank Kameny, a
pioneering gay rights activist who never called for the censoring
of hate speech.About 6:30 minutes.
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