Put simply, for too long we have been unwilling to distinguish right from wrong.
“Live and let live” has too often become “do what you please”.
Bad choices have too often been defended as just different lifestyles.
To be confident in saying something is wrong is not a sign of weakness, it’s a strength.
But we can’t fight something with nothing....
As President Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope:
“…in reaction to religious overreach we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our politics with larger meaning.”
Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism.
A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone.
It stands neutral between different values.
But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them.
We need to stand up for these values.
To have the confidence to say to people – this is what defines us as a society…
…and that to belong here is to believe in these things.
David Cameron
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