January 6, 2010
An Interview with Christopher Hitchens, Part I
I had lunch with journalist and author Christopher Hitchens in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, this week and interviewed him over glasses of Johnny Walker Black Label downtown.
The man should need no introduction, but I'll give him one anyway. He's the author or editor of more than twenty books, a journalist, a literary critic, a world traveler, a teacher, and a polemicist who migrated rightward from the radical left and no longer fits in anyone's convenient box. Last year Forbes magazine cited him as one of the 25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media, but at the same time he's a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford. In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential intellectuals in the world.
He's a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate, and the Atlantic, and his most recent book, God Is Not Great
Hitchens is certainly famous, and is recognized on the street a lot more often than I am. A tall and slightly disheveled man in his fifties rudely interrupted our conversation outside the bar at one point and said "I can't remember your name, but I recognize you from YouTube."
"You should read more," Hitchens said. He didn't remind the man of his name.
Not two minutes later, an attractive young woman walked up to him, squeezed his arm gently, and said "I love you."
"How often does this happen?" I said.
"This," he said and smiled at the pretty young woman, "doesn't happen nearly enough. But that," he said and gestured to the man who recognized him from YouTube and would not go away, "happens too often."
MJT: Ireland has a new anti-blasphemy law.
Hitchens: Yes.
MJT: At the same time, Kurt Westergaard was just attacked in Denmark by a Somali nutcase with an axe for offending Muslims with his Mohammad bomb head cartoon. How is it that supposedly liberal Europeans have come to agree with Islamist fascists that people like Westergaard ought to be punished, even if they think he should be punished less severely?
Hitchens: Let's do a brief thought experiment. I tell you the following: On New Year's Eve, a man in his mid-seventies is having his granddaughter over for a sleep-over, his five-year old granddaughter. He is attacked in his own home by an axe-wielding maniac with homicidal intent. Your mammalian reaction, your reaction as a primate, is one of revulsion. I'm trusting you on this. [Laughs.]
MJT: Oh, yes. You are correct.
Hitchens: Then you pick up yesterday's Guardian, one of the most liberal newspapers in the Western world, and there's a long article that says, ah, that picture, that moral picture, that instinct to protect the old and the young doesn't apply in this case. The man asked for it. He drew a cartoon that upset some people. We aren't at all entitled to use our moral instincts in the correct way.
This is a sort of cultural and moral suicide, in my opinion. It's not exactly comparable to the reaction of the church in Ireland which wants to make it illegal to criticize any religion, which in Ireland doesn't really mean much more than one. Many Irish people I know are already publicly planning to break this law.
There you see, I have to say, a different phenomenon, maybe a different version of the same one, a claim of the right to protection against offense from a church that just lost at least two senior bishops who had to resign not because they had not thoroughly enough made themselves aware of the child abuse—why do we call it abuse? The rape and torture of children—where it seems from the Irish government's report that only a minority of children were not made victims of this hideous iniquitous predation.
The same absurdity is present in both cases. These two religions make very large claims for themselves, that "without us you cannot get to heaven, and without us you will go to hell." They claim the right to high, middle, and low justice over everything from public affairs to private morals. They make these immense claims for themselves and further say they should be immune from criticism. It's not enough to be an absolutist party, but you're not allowed to disagree. This is totalitarianism.
MJT: Here's what I find most astonishing about this. I can understand why certain elements in the Catholic church would want to impose something like this out of self-interest. But why in the hell would a European leftist want something like this imposed to protect somebody else's religion?
Hitchens: I'm fairly sure the Irish left, such as it is, doesn't support this.
MJT: The current president of Ireland said Muslims have the right to be offended by Westergaard's cartoons. I suppose that's true as far as it goes, that everybody has the right to be offended by anything, but why…
Hitchens: Ah yes. This is not new. I've written about this many times. It's reverse ecumenicism. It first became obvious to me when the fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989. The reaction of the official newspaper of the Vatican was that the problem wasn't that the foreign leader of a theocratic dictatorship offered money, in public, in his own name, to suborn the murder of the writer of a book of fiction in another country, who wasn't an Iranian citizen. The problem was not that.
You and I may have thought, bloody hell, this is a new kind of threat. But it's an old level of threat. Blasphemy is the problem. That was also the view of the archbishop of Canterbury. The general reaction of the religious establishments to that and to the Danish case—and, by the way, of our secular State Department in the Danish case—was to say the problem was Danish offensiveness. A cartoon in a provincial town in a small Scandinavian democracy obviously should be censored by the government lest it ignite—or as Yale University Press put it, instigate—violence.
Instigation of violence can only mean one thing. I know the English language better than I know anything else.
MJT: Instigate means it's on purpose.
Hitchens: These people are saying the grandfather and granddaughter were the authors of their own attempted assassinations. These are some of the same people who say that if I don't believe in God I can't know what morality is. They've just dissolved morality completely into relativism by saying actually, occasionally, carving up grandfathers and granddaughters with an axe on New Year's Eve can be okay if it's done to protect the reputation of a seventh century Arabian man who heard voices.
MJT: It's hard to psychoanalyze other people, but I sometimes suspect that blaming Salman Rushdie and Kurt Westergaard, as many writers have, for bringing down the wrath of these maniacs from Somalia and Iran, may be a way of convincing themselves they'll be safe as long as they don't cross the same line. Any writer or graphic artist must, at least for a second, think oh fuck, they could come for me if I don't watch out. They can say to themselves they'll be fine if they don't cross that line.
Hitchens: But the line will never stop shifting.
MJT: Of course.
Hitchens: These religious grievances aren't all equivalent. If you'd asked me in the 1930s which religious group was the most dangerous, I'm sure I would have said the Catholic church because of its open allegiance then with…
MJT: …with Franco.
Hitchens: And Mussolini and the Ustashe. You know the story. With what you might as well call fascism.
There is now no question that if someone I know is under guard for writing something or saying something or drawing something—and I now know a lot of people who have to live their lives surrounded by bodyguards—it's because they've offended what most ignorant people call Islam.
Five kids from a suburb near me in Washington were just arrested because they want to go "fight for Islam" in Afghanistan. Why doesn't that mean they go fight for the Northern Alliance? Or for the rights of the Hazara people? Or for the emancipation of Muslim women? Or for any other number of Islamic causes? To them it can only mean the Taliban.
If we grant that these people are right or that they have a point, we grant that the Taliban does represent Islam. If we grant that the completely contrived protest against Danish cartoons by a few mullahs represents Islamic emotion, how much more contemptuous of Islamic people could we be?
MJT: The Taliban has a six percent approval rating in Afghanistan.
Hitchens: Some British Muslims tried to join Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Mr. Zarqawi's old gang. These are people who blow up mosques.
MJT: Yes.
Hitchens: It's the cultural cringe of the West.
You've been around enough to know that someone who showed the symptoms of Major Hasan in the army of Algeria, or Syria, or Tunisia, or Turkey, would have been in jail long before he could have gunned down his fellow soldiers. These countries know very well from bitter experience that you can't allow zealotry in the army.
We say no, rather than offend Muslims we will allow zealotry in our army. There are those who say people can be made to wear garments that in some Muslim countries are illegal to wear—such as the burkha—because they represent subjection. Some of us think that surely all Muslims do this, but no. What some call our racism or cultural ignorance is, in fact, present in the Western attempt to embrace them.
MJT: You know Mullah Krekar, this fanatic in Norway from Iraqi Kurdistan?
Hitchens: I do know Mullah Krekar.
MJT: The Kurds in Iraq say if he goes home, they'll kill him.
Hitchens: Oh, no question.
MJT: But in Norway he gets state welfare benefits.
Hitchens: Do know anyone in Iraqi Kurdistan who actually prays five times a day?
MJT: No.
Hitchens: And you're not going to, either. They have just as much a claim to being Muslims, Sunni Muslims, as anybody else, yet no jihadist from Birmingham went to help the Kurds when they were being genocided—or Anfalled—by Saddam's atheist state.
The answer to your question is self-hatred, this belief that only true Muslims would want to fight against us.
Did they go to fight in Bosnia?
MJT: Actually a few of them did, some of the so-called Afghan Arabs eventually went to Bosnia.
Hitchens: People like us went to fight in Bosnia.
Did they help in the recovery of Kuwait? No.
Did they help the Northern Alliance resist the Taliban? No.
It has to be, always, the most embittered, the most fanatical, the most absolutist, and the most totalitarian. This is a real poisonous phenomenon, and we refuse to give it its real name because of a combination of ignorance and what I would call multicultural masochism.
If Major Hasan were in the Turkish army, he would not have been offered a promotion after he lectured his fellow medical officers about how "we love death more than they love life." I don't think in Turkey he would have made it.
MJT: Nope. In Turkey he would not have made it.
Hitchens: But he made it in Texas. And nobody wanted to report him because it could have gotten them a black mark on their own dossier for possibly being an intolerant person. This is madness.
The Christian churches have been terrible about this, as have many liberal Jews, by saying we must extend a hand. No, we must not. We must withdraw the hand.
MJT: And yet the other side, the radical Islamist side, hysterically calls us all Crusaders and Zionists.
Hitchens: Here's a way of throwing an Oregon progressive into a state of confusion: ask him or her if they've read the latest Al Qaeda pronouncements on the Hindu question. Or, shall we put it another way, a billion infidels, brown-skinned, third world, living in a secular democracy, and all of them deemed by fatwa as fit only for slaughter.
Who's the racist here? Me for pointing that out?
Remember, this Al Qaeda crap comes not out of Palestine. We've got three big Asian democracies, one Christian—the Philippines—one largely Sufi Indonesia, and one Hindu—India. The attempts of Al Qaeda in each case is to create a separate state, to wrench one out of the territories of these three, which would lead to more chaos and war and misery than you can imagine. The reason I'm an optimist is because if we can manage to create alliances with these three large prosperous multicultural democracies, and say that we understand the attempt by radical Islam—again, I correct myself. I should say reactionary Islam.
I don't like the word radical being used here. I do it myself sometimes, but I'm always trying to stop myself. We say "the radical imam." No, he's not radical. He's the most reactionary bleeder in the region.
MJT: Yes.
Hitchens: By every definition he's extreme, fanatic, fascist.
Underneath this indulgence, Michael, this lenience we inflict on ourselves and others, is a vague feeling among millions in the West that Islam is somehow the religion of millions of the oppressed third world, of the brown-skinned, and of the black-skinned in Somalia and Nigeria. What I call the cultural cringe is involved. It's subliminal, but it's played on by terms like Islamophobia coined by the propaganda of the other side. It's designed to make you feel bad even if you don't like it. It's thought crime. The attempt is to make Islamophobia something you'll be as reluctant to be accused of as being a racist.
Actually, from some people I don't even care if I'm being called a racist. Their standards have become so low that it doesn't hurt like it should.
MJT: Right.
Hitchens: And, by the way, that's a disaster. Racism should be a severe accusation. It should be something you are afraid of.
MJT: It was when I was a child.
Hitchens: Islamophobia is vague and linguistically clumsy. A phobia is an irrational fear. My fear of Islamic terrorism is not irrational. It's quite well-founded.
MJT: It is.
Hitchens: I don't want to be sitting on a plane in Detroit and wondering if some craphound is going to blow me up.
MJT: I spent a week with you last year in Lebanon and you weren't afraid of the Muslims all around us, nor was I.
Hitchens: No.
MJT: Our hotel was on the Muslim side of Beirut.
Hitchens: I went to a Hezbollah rally unmolested. I was treated, in fact, with courtesy. You and I were given a bad time by a fascist group…
MJT: …of Greek Orthodox…
Hitchens: …of Orthodox Christians. But I don't think we should try to relativize this too much. If you're going to be killed by a religious fanatic, at least for the rest of our lives, it will be by a Muslim. I asked for it with the Orthodox. I went out of my way to upset them.
MJT: You did. [Laughs.]
Hitchens: You don't have to do that with the Muslims. You can do it without knowing it with the Muslims.
A devoted English school teacher went to teach primary school kids in Sudan, in Khartoum, and the class adopted a bear as a mascot. They asked what they should call it, and the teacher said let's call it Mohammad, it's the most popular name. She was very nearly sentenced to death. Streets full of insane people. She was arrested. The British government had to negotiate for her life. She could not possibly have known that she had to be that careful.
If you can give the name Mohammad to a shitting, screaming, nuisance of a kid—which somebody does 5,000 times a day—then I think you should be able to give it to the class's favorite teddy bear.
The essence of totalitarianism is that it's systematic, thorough, and absolute, but it's also unpredictable and capricious. It keeps everyone off balance. Editors think "let's not run this piece," but they're making a big mistake. They'll come to find an offense that was something they hadn't guessed. They will. That's what happened in Denmark.
MJT: That whole business was largely manufactured. Those cartoons came out months before all the rioting. Rioting in Beirut happened right after rioting in Damascus, and some of the same people were bussed in at each riot.
Hitchens: On the same busses.
MJT: On the same busses. And who do you supposed paid the drivers?
Hitchens: The Muslim world had bigger things on its mind than the small town press in Denmark.
MJT: Of course.
Hitchens: But a very sinister thing happened that I want to draw your attention to, as well. During the Rushdie affair, the embassies of several Muslim countries began to come to the British foreign office and say, about Rushdie, "isn't there something you can do to stop this guy?" The embassy of Qatar was one, and the embassy of Saudi Arabia was another. As if the embassies in London were there to represent a religion rather than a state or a people. That was an early warning.
Egypt may be a Muslim-majority country, but the Egyptian ambassador represents, has to represent, at least ten million Coptic Christians.
MJT: Theoretically.
Hitchens: And many unbelievers.
Then these embassies ganged up on the prime minister of Denmark and said "we insist that you get into the habit of censoring your own country's newspapers like we do." This was the same delegation. It's very dangerous.
And our own State Department said the Danes should apologize. The State Department did not say "We take a solidarity position with a small democratic Scandinavian country that's a fellow member of NATO, a long-standing ally, whose troops are helping the Muslims of Afghanistan emancipate themselves from the Taliban." That's the kind of thing the State Department is supposed to say, pronouncements on that kind of thing. Instead, it pronounced on what it's not supposed to pronounce on, another country's cartoons. Karen Hughes, I think, was responsible for that. This was the Bush Administration saying this. This was a full-scale capitulation. It has to be stopped.
If you haven't already, you can purchase God Is Not Great
Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss Iran, the uprising against its government, its terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, its nuclear weapons program, and how the United States and Israel should respond.
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".... they could come for me if I don't watch out. They can say to themselves they'll be fine if they don't cross that line.
Hitchens: But the line will never stop shifting."
The Islamists' tactic seems to be inch-by-inch infiltration along with the use selective lying justified by their faith,....
( cf: Raymond Ibrahim, How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War
Islamic deception works in favor of jihad, in the Midde East Quarterly)
.... and they really do keep shifting the lines to suit their new demands.
This tactic reminds me of the years when I lived in East and S.E. Asia and the locals loved to use the word "cooperation" with the clear meaning that we do all of the "cooperating" in dealing with their requirements which are adjusted after each incremental gain.
....on top of that, the severe unrecognized risk to America is that our liberals refuse to accept that we are at war with religious zealots, and they are so slow to recommend harsh, appropriate retaliatory action. They're (American liberals) are so passive, or 'reactionary', no pun intended.
I wish I'd been at that your table that day, and not only for the Black Label. Treat us to more of your conversations.
I know Mr. Hitchens knows this, but the American armed forces are dominated by religious zealots of the evangelical Christian stripe. His point would be stronger if he acknowledged this and made the point that these militant Christian zealots should be relieved of duty, just as Major Hasan should have been.
To the meat of the interview itself: Interesting that Coptic Christians in Egypt are mentioned given today's news of riots involving the same. ("CAIRO (AP) -- Thousands clashed with police during a funeral procession Thursday for six of seven people killed in an attack on churchgoers leaving a midnight Mass for Coptic Christians, security officials said").
Interesting also the points about Maj Hassan never being tolerated in other countries. But I need to ask: Is there nothing good to be said about a country that can be tolerant to such an extreme that it displeases Mr Hitchens (for justifiable reasons, to be sure), and yet still be so highly successful?
One thing I loved to say to friends during the 2000s was that America can fight two wars, suffer a stock-market crash, suffer a housing crash, give all its debt to China, all its outsourcing to India and all its farm labor to undocumented workers, [add your own additional criteria here,] and yet still beat the pants off of -- or at least keep excellent time with -- every other major economy in the world. It is quite remarkable in my opinion to say that Europe's economy is doing as well as America's, when one considers that this comes after a few decades where America was under some of the greatest financial, social and military strains of any nation on earth.
Why not say something similar in this "cultural suicide" situation? Why not say that America can "tolerate" the Maj Hassans of the world, and yet still be the brightest light of the world? I exaggerate for effect -- and in fact I would agree that the Maj Hassans of the world do not actually deserve as much tolerance as may have been given him, according to the reports of the strange behaviors he has exhibited in the past few years -- but I think my larger point survives.
I think America likes to succeed the hard way. And in the end, the hard way might just be the most robust way.
as the pompous ass says with a camera over his shoulder in a public setting....
I love hitch and the way he is battling the church. But spare me you faux detest of being a commodity in the sound byte world of the internet.
my guess is the chick that said she loved you saw you on TMZ
Really? Maybe a few here or there, but a significant number of people who think like this?
I have a hard time believing that. Sounds a little too much like the neocon giving-aid-and-comfort-to-the-terrorists boilerplate.
You can think there's a strain of racism in popular American attitudes toward Muslims (which there obviously is) and still think that bin Laden deserves death (he most certainly does). There's no cognitive dissonance here at all.
Hitchens just goes for the absolutist angle here, and I don't think that's realistic.
Yes, it is insane that anyone tried to kill a Danish cartoonist. The whole thing is sickening. But while it is well-known that certain powerful Muslims whipped this up into a major issue, the Danish milieu of the cartoon flap is underreported. The cartoons, published in a right-wing paper, were intended to be provocative and they certainly reflected a strain of nativist (and yes, racist) intolerance in Denmark against immigration.
That said, no one should have to go into hiding for that. But no one should feel compelled to applaud bigotry as a wonderful Western value, either.
Much like in the Oregonian progressive example above, it is possible to hold these two ideas simultaneously in one's mind. Islamo-reactionary-douchebags: bad. Nativist Danish bigots: nothing really worth celebrating.
I have a great respect for Hitchens' acumen and intellect, but I must say I am suspicious of anyone who glosses over so much on the way to making his point. Sometimes complicated things are complicated.
Apropos of touring Beiteddine Palace and Islamic apostasy:
Thanks much for calling out Le Gallienne's translation Omar Khayyám.
If you're not already familiar with these, there's also al-Ma`arri's lines:
The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.
(quoted in quoted in Amin Maalouf's highly recommended Crusades Through Arab Eyes.
And Atatürk's:
I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
(quoted in Andrew Mango's also highly recommended biography.)
While you were at Beiteddine (modeled after the Tuscan palaces of Cosimo II de' Medici), I hope that you picked up some of the history of Fakhr al-Din II who was exiled to Florence just before Galileo—also sponsored by Cosimo II—published the heliocentric theory and was tried as a heretic.
It would have been an interesting time to be put up at a Medicean palace.
According to the Medici Archive Project, Emir Fakhr al-Din is said to have converted to Christianity during his stay with the Medicis(!) Intriguing, but I haven't heard this claim corroborated anywhere else.
Next time you're in Istanbul, look for the tower on the Marmara between Atatürk Int'l Airport and the ancient city in which the Ottomans held Fakhr al-Din captive after they defeated and captured him.
And next time you're in Beirut, please don't deface any war memorials, especially ones commemorating resistance against the Israeli invasion.
For Hitchens doesn't answer the question - who decides what's good or bad? With no objective standard, it's all just a matter of preferences. Yet he knows some things are clearly bad.
Without God, atheists, no matter how decent, can only claim kinship with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who killed over 100 million in the modern era alone, in the name of Darwinist ideas. Yes, surprise, check it out - Hitler despised the Church and was planning to destroy it. Many Christians and clergy were jailed or killed. Christian activity was systematically outlawed. (Sound familiar?) From the highest apparatchiks to the lowliest jailers, they understood that their license for inhumanity was their atheism.
The silver lining? They were living out their beliefs.
I'm not saying that atheists are bad people. Many or most may be better than many theists. I'm saying that they have no real reason to be good. And I'm thankful that most of them don't live this out. And I'm saying that if they do decide to be bad, a la a couple of our recent serial killers, it makes perfect sense, since there's no logical reason to be good, except fear of getting caught.
Whereas historically Darwinism has led to the justification of slavery (which Darwin abhorred) and mistreatment of "lower races" such as the Australian aborigines - some of whom were hunted and killed for display and research as "specimens" - recent books and movies present a fantasy where Darwinism breeds brotherhood ("Darwinism means we are all brothers").
Here's a thought. Ridiculing the moral rules of a group because of their failure to abide by them MAY BE akin to insisting on playing in traffic because, after all, the person warning you is a drunkard. I urge you to consider whether the traffic is real or imaginary. If you KNOW that certain actions are wrong, ask yourself if that opinion is merely personal or should be absolute. If absolute, how can that be? Explore.
Lots of people see that. Progressives, too. The point Hitchens was trying to make, I think, and tries to make with the Danish cartoon case, is that there is ONE way to look at the problem of Islamist violence (i.e. they're crazy and we're super-great) and anyone who takes a more complex view of the geopolitical situation is an apologist for terrorists (we can call this the Cheney position). I don't believe that there are really that many people who think that jihad is just what we have coming to us for being such dicks (or so free, or whatever). Some, yes, but not many. It's certainly not a dominant strain.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I'm being dumb. I think Hitchens is asking us to be dumb—or at least dumber than we need to be.
Anyone making this argument admits both that without threats from some sky fairy, they would engage in "even the most terrible behavior - rape, murder, etc.", and that they haven't bothered to grapple with the problems of "The Moral Arguments for Deity" before. You're presenting this argument as if no one ever thought of it before.
Well, thanks for the warning about your pyschopathy—I'll try to steer clear of your like, Grimmy, just in case you lose your fear of punishment.
As for "no good without god", cut to abbreviated Bertrand Russell:
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God … One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed. … If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them.
This is akin to the "who made God" problem.
Please come back and tell us if you're really good only because Jesus says he will torture you forever if you're bad, or if you solve the problem of how God decides what good and bad are.
Christopher Hitchens makes a lot of great points about these matters. But I wish he would stop proseletyzing for atheism. Such a learned man should know that his metaphysical world view is at least as insupportable as the religions he is always trying to discredit. He probably does know that all religion cannot be reduced to mythical belief systems that are unsupportable according to the laws of rationale proof. But I suspect he merely dismisses all higher form of religious or mystical expoereince and revelation as simple hooey, as in his description of Mohammed as a Seventh Century man "who heard voices." This sort of dismissal is every bit as ignorant, arrogant and blindly chauvinistic as the most "reactionary" mullah or priest's insistence that only the marpticular mythic contructive to which he adheres can be recognized as having any validity. It's a very intellectually dishonest position, and it ignores centuries of profound spiritual experience and revelation and centuries, in the West alone, of profound inquiry of which Mr. Hirchens seems unaware or unwilling to recognize.
It really reduces my respect for him, I am sorry to say. And he seems every bit as filled with angry self righteousness about it as any proseletyzer in the religions he so emotionally despises.
Still, an interesting interview. Thanks for posting it.
The constitutional prohibition against blasphemy has been around since the constitution was framed and passed by referendum in 1937. The constitution also included recognition of various faiths - including most importantly- the Jewish faith. How many countries moved to protect Jews in 1937 ? And how important must it have seemed to introduce a law against blasphemy at that time ?
Since that part of the constitution cannot be changed without a referendum, the irish minister has merely moved to provide an act which removes harsh penalties and which will not catch art or culture in its net.
It's not perfect, but it avoids a divisive referendum and has nothing at all to do with islamism.
Well, Pete, I would assume that would be true of the "truthers." Also, people who are left-of-center seem to have very different reactions to things that I find outrageous. For example, the butchering of leftists by the new theocratic regime in Iran in the early 1980s, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the murder of Theo van Gogh, and the repeated reports of rapes of native Scandinavian women by Muslim immigrants.
I'm left-of-center myself, and I have no idea why others who are left-of-center aren't outraged by all of these events. Nor does Hitchens. When MJT asks him, he just responds that it's cultural and moral suicide, but that doesn't explain it.
I have no recollection of what went on in the early 80s Iran, although I do know that a by then rather nutty Michael Foucault supported (or seemed to support?) the revolution. Apart from that, there weren't a huge number of liberals looking with pleasure at what was happening in Iran.
I do remember the Rushdie fatwa and can say that it was much more common than not in the left to find support for Rushdie. Remember, a lot of the people thinking Rushdie did something wrong were *conservative* religious types in the west who have a problem with blasphemy.
In other words, things are more complex then you let on. You can paint the "left" with a broad brush if you wish, but it doesn't make what you're saying any more true.
you write "MJT: The Taliban has a six percent approval rating in Afghanistan." Do your have a source for that? Thanks.
Here is one source. You can find others if you Google around. I no loger recall where to find the primary source, but I looked at it six or so months ago.
The question was what they thought of al-Qaida, and if someone thinks it wasn't al-Qaida but that it was we ourselves who did it, then it's likely they think of al-Qaida as benign. At any rate, their ire will be turned on Bush rather than al-Qaida.
As for what other liberals and leftists think, all I can say is that the only ones I can read these days are people like Hitchens and Nick Cohen, and they are very much in the minority. If there are others you know of, please let me know.
For example, Garry Wills was complaining the other day about how he felt betrayed by Pres. Obama for sending more troops into Afghanistan. Lots of people in the comments section agreed, and some indicated that they thought the war on terror was a joke (meaning, I presume, that it was designed merely to help the armaments industry).
Another example was the review of Christopher Caldwell's book in the New York Review of Books. The reviewer didn't even mention the murder of van Gogh.
So, like I said, let me know who else I can read. I'm not interested in anyone who thinks it's all our fault or who thinks van Gogh's murder is just an isolated incident.
I think Hitch would agree.
"and if someone thinks it wasn't al-Qaida but that it was we ourselves who did it, then it's likely they think of al-Qaida as benign."
That makes no logical sense. Some may fit that description, but not anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Is that really who you want to have your argument with?
That's my main beef with Hitchens, with the Muslim stuff or with the atheism stuff (a subject on which I broadly agree with him): he picks the most indefensible positions to argue against, but never the most common.
MJT: No.
Judge Rizgar interrupted our interview with him to pray at his house. His good friend the businessman did not. I believe that Judge Rizgar is both devout and open minded, though. The point still holds, but you know one good man who prays five times a day in Iraqi Kurdistan.
I genuinely do not believe he did that to make an impression on us. I'm not saying that Judge Rizgar has no pretensions, I am saying that prayer is not one. (It could be said that Judge Rizgar needs no pretensions, he's got his ticket punched in full for showing his face while he was Saddam's judge.)
Very interesting...
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe
'All men created equal' (by God);
'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness';
A limited gov't, to protect Life, Liberty, and Property;
Capitalism and Free Market trading.
Underneath these ideals was Christianity, especially Protestant thought of Man, the individual, being created in God's Image.
Without belief in some God, there is no reason to limit gov't; and it is unlimited gov't that is totalitarian. Always in a collective, anti-individual rights way.
The biggest problem with atheism is this: most people will NOT be non-believers. If they don't believe in some real religion, they will believe in some psuedo religion, like secular humanism or envrionmentalism (anti-human) -- or in Gov't.
The last 100 years has seen far more civilians murdered by atheist movements, than by Christian movements.
I fear that radical Islam will use nukes and be worse than the (Hitch supported) commies of last century.
Great interview. Thanks.
Uh, what? I have a wife and family. I have parents and friends and a community that I care about. I love my country and am deeply vested in its success. These are the reasons that I behave morally, not because I'm afraid I'll get caught. What you've described is psychopathic behavior, not the normal mode of thinking of godless people.
Frankly, your way of thinking is seriously disturbing. If, hypothetically speaking, I could prove there is no god (yeah, yeah, can't prove a negative, but go with the hypo here), does that mean you'd start going out and raping and killing people? Would you cheat on your wife and stealing from your employer? Would you suddenly turn a 180 and do everything you previously believed to be wrong? I'm guessing you wouldn't. Millions and millions of atheists do the same. Society would fall apart if everyone acted like a cretin, and everything that you and I care about would go to ruin. We act morally, ethically, and honorably because it makes rational sense.
Bollocks. You've just undermined all the reasoned analysis of the founding fathers and Thomas Paine. None of them said we should limit government because god ordains it; they believed in limited gov't because to do otherwise was ruinous to the people and the nation. Really, there's LOGIC and REASON and EXPERIENCE that drives the American political philosophy, not religious fiat.
And if/when they shoot up a hall full of defenseless people they surely will be, but I hope the Army is keeping their eye on EVERYONE who behaves weirdly, and stops them BEFORE they can commit a massacre.
Which is why Nidal was thrown out on his ear when he started spouting Islamic supremacist jargon! Except, he wasn't...
It is a lot easier to endure the indignities, inconveniences and insanity of the US military when you have faith in a higher power. It is more comfortable to be around people who are enduring these unpleasant experiences when they have faith in something beyond themselves.
Listening to whinging atheists talk about the injustice and inhumanity of the current situation is dull beyond comprehension, even worse than listening to mediocre pastors drone. It is more fun to be around folks promising a better world to come than listening to twits natter on about all the things lacking in the present discomfort.
This is the reason evangelical Christians do much better in the military than college dropouts with pretensions of philosophical understanding. It's not that the Christians have diabolical conspiratorial powers, it's that you have to tell them to shut up a lot less than you do the atheists.
Beyond the insult to atheists "...can only claim kinship with Hitler...", the "logical reason to be good" is because a conscience, fostered by my parents' lives and the moral examples of personally influential others anchors my sense of ethics.
"Without belief in some God, there is no reason to limit gov't".
Nonsense, Tom; by overfeeding the giant, sucking dependency that government inherently is, we rob the private sector, the engine of a healthy economy. Government can't ever sell enough widgets to become profitable and self-sustaining; it must take to give---anything; we should be careful about how much we feed it.
On the subject of conservatives and atheism, Heather MacDonald, at the Manhattan Institute and elsewhere, is a good read:
"Conservatism doesn't need God"
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm#opeds
First, I had suggested that Garry Wills was a person who did not think that al-Qaida consisted of, as you put it, “bad dudes with odious goals.” Your response was this:
“Yes, Gary Wills, the well-known liberal.”
This isn’t a complete sentence (and it misspells his first name), so it is hard to know if you are acknowledging my point or casting doubt on his liberal credentials or something else entirely. Try to make yourself clear next time.
Next, you claim that a statement of mine “made no logical sense.” Would that be deductive or inductive logic you are talking about? Those of us who (like me) have actually taught logic tend to make statements like that only in connection with deductive logic, and in my statement I used the word “likely,” which was a signal that I was using inductive and not deductive reasoning. Generally, we allow inductive reasoning more leeway than we do deductive reasoning, so to say that an instance of inductive reasoning makes no logical sense is a very harsh indictment and would be used for something like “it’s sunny today, so the moon must be made of green cheese.” My assertion was nowhere near being that badly reasoned. But anyway, you gave no particular reason for me to believe your claim. You simply asserted it. To unpack my reasoning (which I thought was unnecessary), I believe that anyone who thinks that our own government was so odious as to have orchestrated 9/11 is also likely to be among the simple-minded sort who think in terms of polar opposites. Since they see our government as evil, they are likely to see our enemies as good people who are merely misunderstood, oppressed, etc.
If you want to back up your claim with something beyond a mere assertion, go right ahead.
Finally, you accuse Hitchens of picking “the most indefensible positions to argue against, but never the most common.” Again, you haven’t proved this. You’ve merely asserted it. As best as I can tell, you are making a sweeping generalization from a single instance: yourself. And when I gave counterexamples, you just ignored them.
Grade: D
Actually, I think that the Gulf princes were representing their own unpredictable and capricious totalitarian will, using their petrodollar influence to bully the British government and the rest of the world. In the long run, it worked, beyond their wildest dreams.
Islamist totalitarian states use religious belief to inspire people, just as communist states used Marxism to inspire unity, and just as fascist states use nationalism to unite people.
But if you look at the goals of these brutes, it's all pretty standard. They want people to bend to their will, they want money and lebensraum, they want respect they haven't earned and they enjoy killing lots of people in random ways. The first step in fighting these totalitarians is to stop kowtowing to them. We've defeated totalitarians who were stronger and better organized than our current enemy. They have no real military power - all they have is smoke and mirrors.
Their tactic of hiding behind the skirts of religion is just more smoke and mirrors. They're not as exotic as they try to appear to be.
Also, evolutionary biology books were banned in Hitler's Reich. Stalin had Lysenko Lamarkism and banned any other form of biology, including the idea of evolution through natural selection.
There is no such science as "Darwinism", that is a straw man moniker used by creationists who believe that the stated or assumed beliefs of Darwin were more important the science of evolutionary biology that he pioneered. "Social Darwinism" is just a newer version of the concept that might makes right and is as old as humanity.
Damn...broke my own rule again: NEVER waste energy debating with belief.
Euro left bends over to accommodate the worst elements of Islam. Down deep the left's attitude toward Islam is one of condescension - they treat muslims like bad parents treat spoiled children - let them have their way and maybe they'll stop crying and stop bothering us. It's this unconscious attitude of seeing muslims as developing children that makes them minimize the threat as well. White Christians, on the other hand, are supposed to "know better" and not get offended at slights because they are white after all. The left's attitude reveals a fairly racist view of the world when you dig down.
I have to say, in regard to Hasan, of course he wouldn't have been permitted to spew half the crap he was spewing in the Turkish military. The Turks are much less concerned with appearing "tolerant" to the rest of the world than we are. It's almost as if the United States - by virtue of being a world leader - is more constrained than anyone else.
I equate this to the same type of fishbowl mentality that anyone in a position of power and authority has. A President of the United States will be summarily excoriated for "ridiculing" Special Olympics on Jay Leno. He lives in a fishbowl. Everything he says is examined, picked apart and criticized. You or I could have pointed to Hasan's radicalism and said some very unflattering things (hell, I do on my blog on a regular basis). Not so for the leader of the nation.
Other nations can be as intolerant as they want with Muslims in their military. Heck, take a look at how many Muslims serve in the German military! You won't find any. And you certainly won't find any Chaplains who are Imams, like we do here.
We're too constrained by trying to appear everyone's friend to actually address the facts bluntly.
It passed without incident until someone with a grievance decided to make an issue out of it.
so i can claim complete ignorance of kant and take this representation at face value. but would stsmith dismiss all theological claims on the basis of this kant dude?
it just sounds to me that stsmith has decided that everything theological is not logical. but perhaps that's a requirement of believing in kant.
Define "everything theological." If you mean the belief in a supernatural entity that sits up in the sky without a shred of scientific proof and a fundamental reliance on faith, then yes, it's illogical.
And unlike "God" we actually have objective proof that Kant did, indeed, exist, so believing in Kant is kind of a moot point.
No and no. My post is the opposite of an appeal to authority. It's a request for a logical answer to a simple question, regardless of authority. If all good comes from God, then how does God decide what good and bad are?
If you say that God defines good and bad arbitrarily, then God could just as well declare that rape and murder are good (as He does in Numbers 31:17-18, "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." and elsewhere). Perhaps, like Kurt Westergaard's attacker, you would commit murder because God says that this is good in Sura 4:91 or Numbers 31:17-18.
If you say that good and bad exist independently of God, then God has no say in what is good or bad. One consequence of this belief is that you would not commit rape or murder even if God tells you to do so in, say, Sura 4:91 or Numbers 31:17-18.
Still waiting for an answer: how does God decide what good and bad are?
My answer—the obvious one—is that we decide what good and bad are based on our genetics and learned experience, and that god has nothing to do with it.
That's why we all owe Hitch a thank you for calling out Richard Le Gallienne's translation of Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát. Khayyám gives the best and ageless response to the stupid and common supposition that atheists don't know their holy books, while in fact we "know them best":
The Koran! well, come put me to the test—
Lovely old book in hideous error drest—
Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
The unbeliever knows his Koran best.
And do you think that unto such as you,
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,
God gave the Secret, and denied it me?—
Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.
We should instead concentrate on killing all portions of our current deadly enemy. It seems that extreme and radical emphases of parts of Islamism are the basis of our current war, so our effort should be the actual fighting, not wondering about how many imams and mullahs can hop about on the head of a pin.
Personally, I think that the pointed end of a very large pin should be aimed up the rear ends of those same hypocritical imams and mullahs.
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/search/label/Islamists
I just shelled out big bucks for Rubin's 2 volume "A Guide to Islamist Organizations." How weird is it that I'm really looking forward to reading it? Then perhaps I'll tuck it in my backpack and head out into the field with binoculars, life-list, and a light lunch - devilled ham sandwich, I think, and a nice jug of cold Israeli Chardonnay.
The importance of this interview to me personally, in terms of Hitchens, is that it keeps him focused to the most important issue. IMHO he spends too much time on this religion thing--I understand where it comes from--but the "reactionary islam" issue is the main event.
We need to build a broad coalition against the common enemy and convince those who would wrestle with each other that an alliance of as many as possible with a common interest better ensures our survival.
"Five kids from a suburb near me in Washington were just arrested because they want to go "fight for Islam" in Afghanistan. Why doesn't that mean they go fight for the Northern Alliance? Or for the rights of the Hazara people? Or for the emancipation of Muslim women? Or for any other number of Islamic causes? To them it can only mean the Taliban.
If we grant that these people are right or that they have a point, we grant that the Taliban does represent Islam. If we grant that the completely contrived protest against Danish cartoons by a few mullahs represents Islamic emotion, how much more contemptuous of Islamic people could we be?"
For those 5 American students arrested in Pakistan, it (fighting for islam) means the Taliban because they correctly understand that the Taliban hew more closely to the sacred texts of islam and the example and words of its founding prophet than do those in the Northern Alliance (or its successors in the Afghan gov't). The emancipation (as no doubt understood by Hitchens) of muslim women is not an "Islamic cause". Far from it. Very far from it. Rights of Hazara? What "rights"? Hitchens is projecting his western understandings upon an islamic mindset (the 5 students) and an islamic society (Afghanland). The Hazara are shia. As such they are impious, from the point of view of orthodox pious sunnis. The Danish cartoon protests as merely the "contrived" actions of a few mullahs? No. The protests against the Danish cartoons were, and are still (think axewielding attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter last week), worldwide among muslims. It took a while for the word to spread, but that word was received easily and happily, worldwide.
Further, and on the contrary, it seems to me more contemptuous for non-muslims to reject out-of-hand, as not real, these pious beliefs of muslims based upon their texts. As if we, or Hitchens, know islam better than they. As if so many clearly pious muslims misunderstand their own faith's imperatives. They don't misunderstand their islam. Unfortunately, many non-muslims are unable to accept the essentially totalitarian nature of islam.
It is not some small group of machinators, for their own gain and power, hijacking parts of islam and forcing these "islamist" ideas on the "masses".
The distinction between islam and islamism is another western fantasy projected upon the world of islam by people without the imagination to look at islam from the point of view of muslims.
You are right. That is obvious. Although, I humbly submit that your sense of right and wrong was determined by what would cause mommy to paddle your ass, rather than genetics and learned experience. I'm not real clear on why you felt the need to start beating the drum on this? Once people are grown their morality tends to come from a combination of empathy for others and a desire to avoid feelings of remorse. In other words, a desire to be spiritually healthy. Rather than spiritually diseased, like a Taliban is. And now we've come full circle...
Out of my experience, so, as always, I'll learn from others' perspectives here. It prompts this side thought though. In a more benign context, I'm reminded of conversations I've had, always with American Roman Catholics, who refuse to acknowledge the Vatican as a theocracy, with certain rules set by God, not some morphed form of a democratically representative republic.
Interesting interview, but I had a question about your assertion that Indonesia is "largely Sufi." It says close to those on Wikipedia, but with no citation, which I find suspect. My impression was that Islam in Indonesia was largely dominated by mainstream (i.e., non-Wahabbist) Sunni, but I have to admit that my reading on the topic has not been terribly recent. I was wondering if you could direct me to a reliable source that discusses the issue.
The Vatican isn't whipping people who disagree with it nor executing people who leave the Catholic faith.
It's a 'theocracy' of choice.
Big difference.
Hitchens says that "I'm fairly sure the Irish left, such as it is, doesn't support this."
As an Irish man I would like to make it clear that this law is not supported by the man on the street, nor by any opposition parties. Whether perceived to be centre-left, centre-right or the fringe left wing parties.
Not right now.
But it used to, didn't it?
Are there any Cthars left, for instance?
And what did the Hussites have to do to be left alone?
And deliberately killed, and tried to kill "protestant" or pro-protestant Heads of state:
Henri III (France), Henri IV (France), Willem the Silent (Nethrlands) Elizabeth I (England) .....
This is bollocks. The believers have offered zilch proof of existence of this fairy in the sky God. That is all Hitch is saying. Now if you go and build some new rationalized mythic constructs to get in the backdoor, well, you still need to provide proof - which you don't and can't.
You see, Hitch and the atheists do not have to provide any proof, because they make NO CLAIMs. But you do - so show it, and if you don't you will be laughed at as being one hellofan idiot.
So Hitch is absolutely right to make fun of the pedophile mass murdering prophet Mohammed, as being a psychopath.
For you to equate "mythic constructivism" (which is really language games) with scientific proof and method, is so chauvinistic and arrogant and reactionary and all the other names you call these open minded folks.
Also instructions on Quotes and other html constructs.
Karim
But I suspect he [Hitch] merely dismisses all higher form of religious or mystical expoereince and revelation as simple hooey, as in his description of Mohammed as a Seventh Century man "who heard voices." This sort of dismissal is every bit as ignorant, arrogant and blindly chauvinistic as the most "reactionary" mullah or priest's insistence...
I disagree. For him to express his atheism isn't doing anyone any harm and isn't likely to in a western country. I think its grossly unfair to put him in the same category as a loudmouth religious leader in a theocratic country who says what he says knowing full well that people may be killed as a result of his words.
Manda,
This is bollocks. The believers have offered zilch proof of existence of this fairy in the sky God.
That's why it is called "faith". If you would rather live and die never knowing or even thinking you know the answers to any of the big spiritual questions, that's totally up to you.
That is all Hitch is saying.
Hitch is an alcoholic. And one I respect greatly, which is pretty unusual. But, alcoholism is a spiritual malady. That means, that he isn't going to ever be able to stop drinking until he heals whatever it is that is wrong with him, spiritually. I mean no offense to Hitchens, but an alcoholic is probably about the very last person that anyone should be listening to when it comes to the spiritual side of human existence.
It's how I discovered him.
You lost me here. If I blindedly accept some ideology and develop faith in it - then how does that bring me knowledge? Faith is contradictory to knowledge, and then you say "you will get to know answers to the big spiritual questions?. How funny. Faith means believing in stuff without knowing.
In fact your "big questions" are really subjective navel gazing and emotional feelings of exahltation or some silly thing like that.
If you want to find out the real answer to your little questions of emotional subjectivism, then study brain science, because neuroscientists have already explained where your feeling of "spiritualism" comes form. In fact there are drugs that make you feel even more spiritual. Your consciousness is governed by your brain activity. Just because you think you have rationalized some feelings, does not make them true or objective, does it?
So much for your "big questions" which turn out to fit right there in the navel.
If you Christians want us to recognize that your religion is the defender of individual liberty, stop trying to restrict personal freedom of action where such action causes no harm to other. Also, stop with this bogosity about libery not meaning license. This is just Orwellian double-talk and you all know it.
Liberty is having freedom of action and freedom from any kind of coercion. It is about living as a autonomous moral agent, with complete freedom of association. Any other definition of liberty is bogus non-sense.
As a non-believer, I can appreciate your frustration with this form of theocracy. However, the only Christian theology I'm familiar with, Roman Catholicism, doesn't claim to defend individuals' liberty in a general sense; it defends theological dogma, core aspects of which it views as received from God. It's best to distinguish theocracies and their rulings from secular forms of human social organization. And then believe or not.
1) Individuals are moral autonomous agents. Morally is nothing more than contractual relationships between such autonomous agents.
2) Individual have the right to morphological freedom. That is, we have the right to develop whatever biotechnologies necessary to cure aging and to increase our IQs, or to modify our bodies to live in environments that are current inhospitable (i.e. underwater, outer space, other planets).
3) There is no "master plan" or "god's plan". Individuals have the right to live for whatever personal dreams and goals they set before themselves and choose to pursue. The notion of any kind of "master plan" is just fascist barbarism, plain and simple.
Until Christianity recognizes and embraces these three points, it cannot be regarded as the defender of individual liberty and anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or deluded.
I will never, ever have anything to do with any meme or world-view that refuses to recognize these three points. Furthermore, I consider it highly offensive for someone to suggest that any such meme or world-view, or agent thereof (e.g. "god") has any jurisdiction, whatsoever, over my life and my right to live it.
1) Individuals are moral autonomous agents. Morally is nothing more than contractual relationships between such autonomous agents.
To arrive at this moral one-on-one contractual relationship, I assume you need to negotiate said relationship with the other party. If not, then you either have to abide by some moral precept, secular or god-forbid, theological. In the case of the liberal-secular, such value system is arrived at through democratic means.
But under the libertarian value system - when it comes to negotiate - obviously the more power you have, the better the terms of the negotiation for yourself (and possibly worse for the other party.)
Therefore, we conclude that under your value system, you need to amass and utilize guns, knives, bombs, traps, and other methods of violence and intimidation, in order to be successful in your negotiation and to arrive at a moral value that is best suited to you !!!
