We live in a time when any notion that truth exists or that it should be pursued is identified with fanaticism. The skeptic will fanatically pursue his own skepticism, while those who pursue the truth he will call “fanatics.” And while the principle of contradiction remains the fundamental philosophical tool, we find that it means little to those who do not mind giving their souls to contradiction in order that they do not have to acknowledge error and change their ways.
This this is hyperbole? Think again.
Read this from Barack Obama's much heralded Audacity of Hope:
Implicit . . . in the [American Founders'] very idea of ordered liberty was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.
Of course, "locking" future generations into trying live up to the "tyrannical consistency" of the principles of the Declaration of Independence is a very terrible thing indeed.
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