Commentary: Yes, You Do Have to Tolerate the Intolerant

August 08, 2024 1 min read

Yascha Mounk
Yascha Mounk Substack

Excerpt: Plenty of arguments against free speech lack any credible pretense of sophistication. They simply jump from the undoubted fact that many people say dumb or disgusting things on the internet to the understandable, if wrong-headed, wish that anybody who says such things should be made to shut up. But those who argue for restrictions on free speech with an ounce of sophistication have increasingly begun to invoke an idea by a philosopher whose work they otherwise studiously ignore: Karl Popper and his “paradox of tolerance.”

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