Nussbaum & Thorpe: The "Error has no rights" Error persists

A good read.

Here's a bit:

[T] idea that “error has no rights" . . . has often (and, John Courtney Murray contends, wrongly) been labeled a medieval teaching of the Catholic Church. Whatever its source, the maxim has substantial appeal: Why should a state tolerate error? If civil unity matters, why risk infection from wrongheaded ideas? Many of the darkest moments in church–state relations drew strength from this view — from Calvin’s burning of Michael Servetus to the Inquisition, the beheadings of Bishop John Fisher and Thomas More, and the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Legal rights should protect the good — we repeatedly hear. They ought not be asserted in the defense of evil. Fortunately, both church and state in the West generally reject that totalitarian idea.