Helena Rosenblatt

You can believe in God and be a good person without going to church.

I'm so glad you brought that up because it's a really important central aspect of liberalism is this kind of optimism.

If you accept this toleration, progress will be the result.

People will improve.

Society will improve.

We'll all improve.

We need this sort of battle of ideas to refine ourselves and our way of thinking, and there'll be a better outcome in the future, yes.

So marketplaces of ideas without state interference, without church interference, allow these ideas to compete with each other, including religious ideas, and this will be kind of a purification process.

Yeah, they were very optimistic about the future.

Today, that seems so naive, this belief, you know, in the arc of history, the march of history they talked about the whole time.

I mean, they weren't naive and they weren't silly.

I know one of the guys who's sort of a hero in my book is Benjamin Constant.

And he said, we need pleasing illusions.

We need pleasing illusions to make us better.

I don't know if they ever solved that problem.

They were very... I don't think they have.

No, I mean, one has to if you really try to understand the world from their perspective.

You know, it was really hard to be a liberal most of the time.

There were such formidable obstacles, such strong enemies, and such intolerance of their views.

It really...