The Atlantic Report: Bill Maher's Dangerous Critique of Islam

I've got to hand it to the loudmouth atheist representatives like Sam Harris and Bill Maher:  at least they have a vision of what they think is best. They have principles, which make them worthy adversaries.

This is not true for the likes of Peter Beinart, who scolds the pair in "Bill Maher's Dangerous Critique of Islam." (The article is mainstream exposure of the New Atheism fractures Radish discussed here.)

The leading lights of New Atheism like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens argue for a civilization based on science and reason. Religion--any religion--obscures Truth. Let's take what we know to be provably true and proceed logically, they say.

This is an argument that Catholics in particular can handle. We believe that there are limits to what science and human reason can tell us. We don't discount them and we don't say they have nothing to teach us, only that they reveal small-t truths that will prove to be in harmony with big-T Truth. So, please--feel free to follow the avenues of materialism. When you reach the dead ends, look up.

On first blush, New Atheism seemed to be congruent with progressivism. New Atheists railed most against their nearest foe, Christianity, just as progressives like to do.

As it turns out, New Atheism and progressivism were doomed to conflict because, unlike Dawkins and the rest, progressivism doesn't have a vision.

Let's pause to define terms. Those outside of the right find the term "progressivism" strange. Progressives would like to believe that it encompasses "everyone we don't agree with," but that's not accurate.

What it describes is the basic assumption that liberals, leftists, socialists, communists and true-believer Democrats share: that the past, in itself and in how it has shaped our present, is hopelessly wrong.

The engine driving it is informal critical theory. Critical theory, while fundamentally Marxist, does not worry itself with a larger vision, as do New Atheists. Instead, it expects that poking holes into the status quo will eventually cause it to sink. Then, the good ship Communism will appear on the horizon. (The ideas of Adorno, Marcuse, et al, are more complex than this description, I should mention.)

It's helpful to reduce critical theory to a personality. That personality would be an individual who complains about everything--the temperature of the room, the arrangement of the furniture, the choices for lunch--even after concessions are made. Finally, exhausted and exasperated, one says, "Okay, you decide," which is what the individual wanted all along (although that won't stop the complaints).

This is progressivism, a constant complaint that things aren't good enough without offering a practical alternative. (It's here that Critical Theory as it was created differs from critical theory as it's practiced--the formal discipline required solutions.)

But most importantly, progressivism is hostile to its own circumstances. It stands outside of its own civilization and pronounces it not good enough without caring about how it got that way and for what reasons.

What this means is that progressives, be they modern liberals, leftists or social justice warriors, consistently take an outsider perspective on their own societies. Walker Percy would describe this as a transcendent perspective. Though a part of Western Civilization, they stand outside of it in judgment.

So do New Atheists and Christians and Illuminati conspiracy theorists. The difference is that they stand outside of civilization without a fixed point of perspective. They define themselves by being against Western Civilization, as it was and as it is, and in favor of [TO BE DETERMINED].

This leads to the erroneous belief that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." So, when New Atheists criticize Christianity, progressives applaud. When they say, "The same applies to Islam, only even more so," progressives blanch. If New Atheists are not siding with the out-group, they might as well be siding with the in-group.

Last week, Harris and Maher had a dispute with known genius Ben Affleck regarding their positions on Islam (Buzzfeed title: "Ben Affleck Calls Bill Maher’s Views On Islam 'Gross' And 'Racist'"). Affleck protested Maher's quote of Harris calling Islam, "the motherlode of bad ideas." Beinart quotes Maher's response:

“We’re liberals!” Maher declared about himself and Harris. “We’re liberals … we’re trying to stand up for the principles of liberalism! And so, y’know, I think we’re just saying we need to identify illiberalism wherever we find it in the world, and not forgive it because it comes from [a group that] people perceive as a minority.”

Maher and Harris, in this case, represent the "principles of liberalism," namely, the idea that society must start with an affirmation of complete freedom for individuals, with restrictions coming only from proven harms. Nothing is forbidden, unless is demonstrably dangeous. They believe Islam, especially as preached by ISIS and other violent Muslims, stands for the affirmation of complete restriction, except as allowed by religion. Everything is forbidden, unless given an official blessing.

Affleck, on the other hand, stands for the principle of not being gross or racist.

New Atheists are trying to "rescue" Western Civilization from religion and believe that the entire world would be better off without it. They have no reason whatsoever to tolerate Islam, or Hinduism, or Zoroastrianism. They think it's all bad, but Islam's global profile seems to be worse than the rest, what with all the human shields and suicide bombers and beheadings.

The progressive response, as evidenced by Beinart's article, is more critical theory.

Beinart uses the "slippery slope" argument with the "not all [BLANK] are like that" argument. The example he uses, bewilderingly, is left-wing anti-communism.

You see, since the advent of critical theory, it's now okay to denounce Stalin. He was anti-Semitic, for one. For another, Soviet Russia's domination of Eastern Europe smacks of imperialism. Oh, and he was also responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

But for many years, one's opinion on Stalin was a litmus test for thinkers on the left. Beinart parallels Maher's perspective with that of anti-communist progressive Arthur Schlesinger:

In the 1930s and 1940s, some liberals grew so focused on the struggles against fascism and racism—struggles in which communists proved staunch allies—that they refused to acknowledge Joseph Stalin’s crimes. Today, some liberals are so focused on the struggle against American militarism and Islamophobia that they can’t muster much outrage against ISIS. According to Schlesinger, occupying the Vital Center means opposing totalitarianism wherever you find it, regardless of whether it claims the mantle of progressivism, as the Soviet Union did during his time, or anti-imperialism, as jihadists do now.

One can already see the wiggle room that Beinart has created:  communists "proved staunch allies" in the "struggles against fascism and racism." The crimes, then, were Stalin's, not communism's.

At their best, the liberals of the early Cold War trained their fire on Stalin, a particular ruler in a particular country at a particular moment in time. When they began making sweeping generalizations about communism per se—forgetting that communist regimes and movements varied depending on their time and place—they got in trouble.

In other words, the communism of Mao was not the same as the communism of Pol Pot. Sure, both called themselves communists, and both were responsible for massacres but let's not blame the theory. Those guys were just jerks.

Beinart cites only two negative consequences of taking communism for Stalinism:  the war in Vietnam and the outlawing of the Communist Party USA.

The latter is the most inconsequential. Beinart describes it as "using America’s crusade against Soviet repression to massively repress free speech here at home."

Massively? Wikipedia says,

However, the act was largely ineffectual thanks in part to its ambiguous language. In the 1961 case, Communist Party v. Catherwood, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the act did not bar the party from participating in New York's unemployment insurance system. No administration has tried to enforce it since.

So, obviously Maher must be silenced, lest he get an ineffective anti-Islam law passed.

Beinart's reference to Vietnam, on the other hand, at least has some attachment to practical reality. A resistance to global communism was the theme of our involvement in Vietnam, but other factors prolonged and worsened it. JFK and LBJ may have involved us there to avoid appearing "soft on communism," but concerns about American prestige and the conflict's worth as a political tool made it worse.

Nonetheless, is Beinart's argument that Maher and Harris' antipathy towards Islam may involve us in a pointless, protracted war? That ship has sailed, I'm afraid--and the theme then was to liberate Muslims from tyranny, not punish them for their beliefs.

Which begs the question that always comes up when reading an Atlantic article:  What is the writer's point?

Restraining the evil that lurks within our own culture requires facing our own history of, and ongoing capacity for, terrible crimes. It requires trying to see largely Christian America the way we are seen by the Muslims whose cities we have bombed. By contrast, declaring that the essential barbarism in today’s world lies elsewhere—not even just in a foreign regime or movement but in an entire religion—lets us off easy.

Ah, yes, the age-old question:  Who are the real barbarians? The ones who run through months of warnings and equivocation before attacking targets with as few civilians as possible, or the ones who drag journalists and aid workers into the desert and saw off their heads? A real puzzler, that one.

Since Beinart finds having a position less useful than pointing fingers, I'll supply mine:  Most of these countries that are Muslim-majority seem like rotten places to live. Islam does not seem to have lifted them to a more civilized--a more peaceful, less tribal, more community-oriented--level. Is that Islam's fault or Western meddling? Who cares? Islam, as it is generally practiced around the world, does not seem to be in harmony with Western values (as much as are left). The violence committed in the name of Islam these last few decades is repugnant.

That said, I don't see that it's possible to "save" them from themselves. Forcibly converting them to Christianity or atheism or democracy or somehow bombing them into friendliness is a fool's errand. It's best to just stay clear of the Muslim world and, when that is impossible, to come to the table carefully but honestly.

There is no point in denouncing Islam. In fact, to hear an atheist's argument against any specific religion is to waste one's time. Everything after, "There's no God," is just hot air.