I seem to be linking to Bill Vallicella a lot lately, but that’s just because he says a lot of sensible things, and says them well. In a fine, short post from a couple of days ago, he asks: Why Not Stick To Philosophy?
Why indeed? Having worked hard enough for long enough to have earned a little breathing room, why shouldn’t those of us with a taste for quiet contemplation and the means to do so spend our latter years tending our gardens in peace?
Because it’s selfish, that’s why. We must do what we can to defend for posterity the freedoms that gave us such blessings in the first place, as others have before us. If “what we can” is to articulate with clarity the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the ideologies arrayed so ominously against us, then that is our duty.
Bill’s point: silence is acquiescence; silence of the wise is treason.