Liberal Values

This post by Adam Bosworth is interesting in that I agree with it profoundly, yet believe that the argument he makes is wrong-headed.
I am opposed to unreason and fundamentalism, but not for the reasons he cites.

It is time to speak up. It is time to say that facts are what matter, not faith, that human progress is accomplished through unfettered use of reason and inquiry and tolerance and discussion and debate, not through intolerant and irrational acts of terror or edicts. For all of our children and for the future, speak up against this wave of intolerance and irrationalism washing over the world.

Facts and reason contain no values. They are part of a methodology. What we have here is a war of values, nor methodologies. I believe that the opponents of what I might term "enlightenment values" also use reason and facts. Their values are very different though.

The problem with choosing reason and facts as the grounds on which to fight is twofold. First, they are bloodless, one should fight for what you believe, not for a methodology. Second, its condescending to assume that those with whom you disagree lack reason and an appreciation of facts. Its absolutist in a different way and makes true engagment difficult as the debate must be about values, and these are not stated in Bosworth's case.

In fact the whole article is intolerant of others' beliefs. Its ironic that at one point he says:

I was a history major in college and have loved and read history ever
since. I studied, in particular, the progressive era in history, an era
when the industrial revolution evolved from the grim satanic mills of
England into the modern industrial world.

The phrase "dark satanic mills" comes from William Blake. There's some debate about what Blake's mills were but one meaning is likely that Newton's "reason" had reduced us to cogs in a machine, which makes Bosworth's quotation somewhat ironic.