Daniel Johnson: Why the World Needs a Younger Winston.
“There is no hope without fear,” wrote Spinoza in his Ethics, “and no fear without hope.” Today, the West is haunted by fear. It was Spinoza, together with Locke, who won the battle for religious toleration as the foundation of a political settlement that made possible the Anglophone Enlightenment. That battle for toleration needs to be won again today, on both sides of the Atlantic, because we live again in an age of intolerance: not only the intolerance of radical Islam, but also the intolerance of a radical secularism that takes its cue from Voltaire’s motto: “Ecrasez l’infâme!”
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