Real Freethinkers Don't Try to Close Down Debate

Every movement has a discourse that is shaped by people who are passionate, committed, and forceful. Some feel so certain in their rightness that they try to control the discourse and purge those deemed insufficiently true to the movement's cause. A political example of this would be today's U.S. Republican Party, which, as David Frum recently observed, has become "increasingly isolated and estranged from modern America." It is now so far-right that some leading Republicans say that even conservative icons like Ronald Reagan would have a hard time winning the GOP nomination today. After President Obama's reelection in Novemeber, Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote: