The Right to Be Wrong

by Hasson, Kevin Seamus

• ISBN13: 9781594030833
• ISBN10: 1594030839
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-15
• Publisher: Encounter Books

Summary

We call it the "culture war". It's a running feud over religious diversity that is liable to erupt at any time, in the midst of everything from judicial confirmations to school board meetings. One side demands that only their true religion be allowed in public; the other insists that no religions ever belong there. As the two sides slug it out, the stakes are rising. An ever-growing assortment of faiths insist on an ever-wider variety of truths. How can we possibly all live together and keep both the peace and our integrity (not to mention our sanity)? How can we end the war without surrendering our principles? This book explains how. It skewers both extremes, which it dubs the "Pilgrims" and the "Park Rangers". Pilgrims get their name from the Plymouth Colony folk who banned Christmas just weeks after celebrating their first Thanksgiving. Pilgrims want to outlaw diversity by declaring their religion the official one. The truth, they say, licenses them to restrict others' freedom. The opposite extreme deals with diversity by trying to drive it underground, eliminating religious expression from public life altogether. The "Park Rangers" are named after the bureaucrats in a too-good-to-be-true story about New Agers, a public park and a certain sacred parking barrier. They say freedom requires them to banish other people's truths. "The Right to be Wrong" offers a solution that avoids both pitfalls. It draws its lessons from a series of stories -- some old, others recent, some funny, others not. They tell of heroes and scoundrels, of riots, rabbis and reverends, Founders and flakes, from the colonial period to the present. The book concludes that freedom for all of us is guaranteed by the truth about each of us: Our common humanity entitles us to freedom -- within broad limits -- to follow what we believe to be true as our consciences say we must, even if our consciences are mistaken. Thus, we can respect others' freedom when we're sure they are wrong. In truth, they have the right to be wrong.

Author Biography

Kevin Seamus Hasson is the founder and chairman of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonpartisan, interfaith, public-interest law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Part One: Learning the Hard Way
Of Pilgrims and Park Rangers	1	(8)
The extremists among us
Pluralism, Conscience and Community	9	(12)
Reflections on the Pilgrims' lack of progress
Religion in Public Culture	21	(8)
Reflections on Christmas in Plymouth Colony
What about Proselytizing?	29	(16)
Reflections on the Puritans' paranoia about dissent
Heavens No, We Won't Go	45	(12)
Reflections on how the Quakers invented conscientious objection
Why Tolerance Is Intolerable	57	(14)
Reflections on the failure of the refuge colonies
Part Two: Groping for a Right
From Tolerance to Natural Rights	71	(12)
Reflections on the battle for disestablishment in Virginia
Inalienable Rights, Slightly Alienated	83	(12)
Reflections on Thomas Jefferson in public and in private
The Early First Amendment: A Disappointing Compromise	95	(10)
Reflections on Madison's greatest failure
In the States, the Aftermath of Compromise	105	(10)
Reflections on legalized persecution under the early First Amendment
Part Three: Authentic Freedom
Where Does Religious Liberty Come From?	115	(10)
Reflections on who we are to deserve freedom
Personal, not Private	125	(6)
Reflections on why believers do it in public
The First Amendment at Midlife	131	(14)
Reflections on the incorporation doctrine---and how two wrongs make a right of uncertain scope
The Right to Be Wrong	145	(4)
Ending the culture war
Notes	149	(22)
Index	171