"To be sure, I will confess that when I see racist assholes like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor spouting their ignorant beliefs about blacks and Jews in half-empty hotel conference rooms or to a rag-tag mob of tiki torch-carrying thugs in a public park, the urge to "punch a Nazi" wells up inside, as it did for the man who sucker punched Spencer during a television interview near President Trump's inauguration in January 2017. But we must resist the primal urge that bubbles up in our primate brains to fight hate with hate, and instead to follow the sage advice of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he reproved in 1958:12 Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love"-- Provided by publisher.
The devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake, because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence "unpleasant" ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? Shermer's collection of essays and articles takes the devil by the horns by tackling five key themes: free thought and free speech, politics and society, scientific humanism, religion, and the ideas of controversial intellectuals. -- adapted from jacket
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