The authorities’ attack on religious schools is an affront to a tolerant society.
The PM, like so many others, doesn't get how important tolerance is.
In a free society, everyone, even those we consider repugnant, must have the liberty to express themselves and their ideas.
The subordination of the freedom of expression to the objective of protecting people from frank speech speaks to an ethos that has a uniquely low opinion of the capacity of people to think for themselves.
ESSAY: Today’s campaigning against circumcision is so dogmatic and intolerant it makes the old religions look enlightened in comparison.
Now and again it is important to remind ourselves it is not the business of government to protect people from themselves.
Activists, professors, theologians – everyone is now promoting the depraved idea that human gluttony is plunging the planet into catastrophe.
Concepts such as bigoted homophobia or the rhetoric of spiritual corruption serve highly moralised narratives aimed at shutting down discussion rather than encouraging it.
The Dutch translation of a lecture given by Frank Furedi in Leuven, March 2012.
ESSAY: France’s criminalisation of Armenian genocide denial is only the latest outburst of twenty-first-century state intolerance.