Once more, alas, I find myself unable to follow the best Liberal thought. What the World’s contention amounts to, at bottom, is simply the doctrine that a man engaged in combat with superstition should be very polite to superstition. This, I fear, is nonsense. The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. . . . They are free to shoot back. But they can’t disarm their enemy.
H.L. Mencken
This famous passage from Mencken’s commentary during the Scopes trial explains why I can’t wholeheartedly endorse the present mewling about the importance of civility and dialing-back the volume. Surely, we would all be in a better place today if decent, educated adults had put the neo-Nazis, the nationalists, the anti-science evangelicals, the whole pestiferous mass of backward-looking anti-reason nuisances firmly to the side. You cannot reason with these people, because they don’t acknowledge the sovereignty of reason; they must be defeated and made to unconditionally surrender.