The wisdom of Karl Popper......

[marmar]

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ....... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law.....


Love that quote. :applause:

[Odin2005]

1. He's my favorite political theorist and philosopher of science

If he were here today he would be eviscerating the Neo-Cons. The Neo-Cons are exactly the type of Fascist ideology he crushes in the first part of his most famous book The Open Society and Its Enemies.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. And yet, he was one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite philosophers

and he was alive all the time she was Prime Minister; he never attacked her. See eg http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E0D9113BF93BA2575AC0A962958260 , or http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20070208.shtml

Popper was anti-totalitarian; but the neo-cons claim they are too. They think that western liberal democracy is the ideal way to run all societies. The quote in the OP sounds remarkably like the neo-cons' justification for invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Odin2005]

5. The Right likes to try to claim him simply because he critiqued Marxism.

They forget that he was no enemy of the welfare state.

[Baikonour]

3. Indeed, an often brilliant man.

[EFerrari]

4. Intolerance is not an equal alternate opinion. It's an attack on free society.