The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

“Conservatives and Moral Relativism”–Mark Bauerlein Interviews Hadley Arkes for First Things Podcast

Prof. Arkes recently sat down with Mark Bauerlein of First Things to discuss some concerns about recent conservative approaches to the issue of speech. In reacting to intolerance on college campuses, Prof. Arkes argues that conservatives, including in some opinions of the Supreme Court, have veered into moral relativism, defending any kind of speech as legitimate in an effort to preserve discourse. He discusses the moral premises that underlie speech and if this understanding of speech by some conservatives has an internal coherence. The podcast can be played via SoundCloud below:

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Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge.
— James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1790