Reply #37: Last time somebody brought this up, I thought I didn't agree with him.

[Evoman]

Now I do. I agree with Sam Harris. I've even made a post about it in the burka thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2489835&mesg_id=2496889

Basically, I think the best thing, and maybe the worst thing, about liberals right now is their fear of being ethnocentric. Its one of the things that makes liberals so tolerant and accepting of a wide range of people. It also, however, prevents us from criticizing toxic culture and dangerous religious trends.

I don't think Harris was being smarmy at all...I think a lot of people on DU are too sensitive about real, sound criticism of liberalism BECAUSE of that nasty, Rove/Limbaugh type of attacks. The difference, Fambo, is that Sam Harris IS a liberal.

Heres how I read it:

First of all,

"Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years ? especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility"

If this doesn't clear things up, I don't know what does. He is clearly a progressive.

"Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb ? and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism."

This actually gives me nightmares. I've met "true believers", both muslem and christian. And I have no doubt that many of them would kill of the planet without a second thought. I also agree that the problem we have with Muslems is not a matter of poverty or economic despair (I've travelled in South America, and have see both....and although there are definitely guerrila groups and such, they are mostly political and want control of their own countries....they aren't mad at the western world because of some imagined covenant with the Jews). Interviews with failed suicide bombers have found that some of them kill simply because they want to be martyred....and go to paradise. If that ain't crazy....

"At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities."

I agree with this completely...it distresses me that so many people believe these theories.

"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization."

ACTUALLY FASCISTS....it seems to distress Harris that the only people who seem to identify the problems caused by religous extremisms are fascists (the kicker though, is that they do this mostly because they are rascicts, not because they are afraid of religion, per se). The very last statement tells me something as well...its tells met that, unlike Rush or Rove, Harris is distressed that liberals don't see the problems with religious extremism and even religious moderates. While Rove wants to trumpet the liberals failings, Harris wants us to wake up. Wether you agree with him or not is irrelevant...he his clearly not anything like Rove.

Look. I don't completely agree with Harris. First of all, I don't want wars...its almost as impossible to have a war with religous people as it is with "terror". But I do think that we do need some sort of policy that keeps nukes away from these religious extremists. I'm at a loss in how to actually deal with the problem...to deal with people who start things on fire or kill people over cartoons. To deal with people who will blow themselves up to fuck 75 virgins.

And it is a problem. And if you don't see the problem, I can't help you. Some posts on DU provides some very good example of this "head in the sand" behaviour.