Here is Washington University student Natalie’s account of my talk there Tuesday night.
[…] Mr. Spencer began his speech by saying that despite the ideological differences we may have with people, we do have a shared interest in defending rights. But of course, how to define these rights, and how to define justice, is a point of conflict in itself. We may have an idea of what rights are, but this is by no means universally shared. In fact, there are people who say that justice is the denial of rights to certain people, namely women and those who do not share religious beliefs that are deemed proper.
There exists a choice to the Western world: our version of justice versus theirs. Simple as this may seem, it is actually misunderstood because no one seems to agree what the conflict that is currently going on is all about. We had the term “war on terror” during the Bush presidency. Now, Obama has deemed it necessary to call it something totally different. No matter what name we have given to this conflict so far, we have ultimately been misleading in what we’ve called it. […]
There is much more. Read it all. Natalie, thank you for your kind and meticulous account! It was great to meet you and the other members of your group, and I thank you for your clear-sightedness and courage.