"We should cherish the naysayers. The more mud they fling, the better. Anti-capitalists, postmodern relativists, and Putin apologists are canaries in the free speech coal mine—we should start worrying if they suddenly fall silent. Still, although self-criticism is important if we want to learn from our mistakes, ritual self-flagellation is not just unproductive but actively harmful, especially when it involves glorifying alternatives that would make all of us much worse off. A healthy body needs a robust immune system to protect it from infections, but if that immune system is overzealous, it will wreak the body’s destruction. Enemies of liberal democracy like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Khamenei must be rubbing their hands with glee as they watch us disarm ourselves without a fight. They don’t even have to denounce our free societies—we’ve already indicted ourselves."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maarten_Boudry
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Maarten Boudry
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Maarten Boudry →
Related Quotes
"An illusion will only make you happy if you’re fully under its spell, and blissfully unaware of it."
"According to scholars like Ara Norenzayan and Joe Henrich, belief in moralizing Big Gods has fostered pro-sociality a…"
"Moreover, in evolutionary accounts of religion there’s always a flipside to pro-sociality: being friendly to “us” als…"
"Is such a life of voluntary delusion really what you should want? Even if you don’t have any objections against untru…"
"Rousseau’s first Discourse is one of the earliest instances of something that would come to accompany modernity where…"
"Although over the past decades leftists have been more creative in inventing ever more novel ways of denouncing Weste…"
"There is also a rich tradition of right-wing thinkers in the West cozying up to foreign dictators, theocrats, and mil…"
"Personally, I think the Western penchant for vilifying our own civilisation has a more straightforward explanation: o…"
"Nowhere else in the world, and at no other previous time in history, have people ever had so much freedom to bite the…"
"Openly expressing your aversion to Marxism from behind the Iron Curtain would have meant social opprobrium at best—bu…"