Making Sense - Sam Harris - #11 — Shouldering the Burden of History

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:39.040 today i'll be speaking with a man whose work i greatly admire dan carlin the host of the hardcore

00:00:51.580 history and common sense podcasts and dan and i will be releasing this conversation

00:00:56.520 jointly on both of our podcasts we're calling this a cross cast which is analogous to a cross

00:01:02.260 post one sometimes sees on blogs that publish the same content simultaneously it turns out we have

00:01:07.900 many listeners in common and many of you have been urging us to have a conversation together i think

00:01:13.440 anticipating considerable disagreement on issues like the war on terror and state security and foreign

00:01:19.500 policy and i don't know that we collided as much as anyone might have expected but we had a good

00:01:25.920 energetic conversation which i greatly enjoyed and i hope you will too so in a moment i give you dan carlin

00:01:32.820 hey dan how you doing i'm good how are you i'm great i'm great well listen as uh my fans know

00:01:46.140 i have been frequently referring to you as the greatest history professor on earth at the moment

00:01:51.780 and i know this uh may uh cause you to blush but um listen i'm just a huge fan of your hardcore history

00:01:58.460 podcast and have been recommending it to anyone with ears at this point that is very dirty pool to start

00:02:03.680 off a discussion with a compliment like that because now what am i supposed to say sam though you said

00:02:07.640 you said some of the nicest things and i really appreciate them thank you so much and listen isn't it

00:02:12.140 amazing that we're doing we're having these kinds of public discussions in the realm of you know the

00:02:17.020 virtual realm here where everyone gets to watch i mean the modern technology has taken us back almost

00:02:22.160 to an athens type situation where we can have these sorts of public conversations and we don't require

00:02:26.860 some tv network to figure out if they can sell airtime or whatever for something like that it's a pretty

00:02:32.020 interesting new world yeah yeah and i i do not say this to preempt any of the hard-hitting criticism

00:02:38.200 which always comes yeah for me that's what i'm going to do exactly yeah but um actually this is a

00:02:43.640 question i wanted to ask you though you you refer to yourself as a fan of history and you you are at

00:02:50.860 pains to distinguish yourself from a professional historian or the or the the legions thereof who

00:02:56.460 may in fact uh be watching your show or listening to it and uh scrutinizing it for errors do you get

00:03:04.420 pushback from academics what's that experience like for you well i have to be honest uh i think my own

00:03:12.280 opinion here but i think everybody's been remarkably generous and and nice to me um on everything

00:03:17.620 because i had envisioned a completely different kind of program when we started it i wasn't going

00:03:23.080 to talk about any sort of narrative history at all i was just going to talk about isn't this weird and

00:03:27.440 isn't this funny and the sort of stuff history majors used to talk about on their lunch break

00:03:31.400 and as the show evolved the audience wanted more of the background and so it sort of it went into

00:03:37.300 territory i wasn't perhaps i had never given a lot of thought to you know do i want to go challenge

00:03:42.200 historians or something like that and this is why we use so many um quotes and and and whatnot during

00:03:48.580 the program because you know i think coming from the position that you know you're not an expert you're

00:03:53.700 not pretending to be an expert so when you make some sort of statement we feel like you want i think

00:03:58.960 i think we call them audio footnotes you feel like you want to have someone there to say listen it's not

00:04:03.720 me saying this here's a couple of historical points of view you're still picking and choosing so

00:04:07.500 it's not totally fair but at the same time i think i build that into the way we do things i think if i

00:04:12.320 was a professional historian with all the credentials and published all this i would approach the program

00:04:16.780 differently because i'm not i make sure that every time we say something we try to have somebody who

00:04:21.120 is credible and who is trustworthy or it or at least who who who we should listen to a little bit

00:04:26.800 more than the podcast host back up what i'm saying so it's it's become a key way that the show has

00:04:32.040 evolved to take advantage of the fact that i'm not a professional historian yeah yeah well i wonder how

00:04:38.680 deep that caveat actually cuts however because i you know in my career i have weighed in on a variety

00:04:48.660 of questions that fall outside the official area of my academic expertise and occasionally i get pushback

00:04:55.760 on on this very point that you know you don't have a credential which would cause someone to be

00:05:02.400 confident about your opinions in this area let's say you know on the topic of religion for instance

00:05:07.100 but many of these areas simply require that one read the books and be attentive to one's sources and

00:05:17.200 have conversations with with experts and at a certain point you're paying you're playing the same

00:05:23.620 language game the experts are and you know it's a certainly appropriate to have humility and be

00:05:31.520 attentive to the the frontiers of one's ignorance but uh you know in science this really breaks down

00:05:38.640 quite starkly because i'm i'm surrounded by scientists who simply do not have the academic

00:05:44.900 bona fides you would expect and yet they are contributing in various areas of science uh at the

00:05:50.600 at the highest level there are physicists who don't have phds in physics there are computer

00:05:55.000 scientists who don't have even college degrees i'm in i'm in dialogue with a with an expert on

00:06:01.860 artificial intelligence now who never went to high school right so it's at a certain point it's

00:06:06.180 it's a matter of how you can function in a given domain not a matter of what your cv looks like

00:06:12.540 and uh scientists uh as long as you're you're making sense accept this uh far more readily in

00:06:20.440 my experience than people in the humanities and i'm just wondering just how you view it because

00:06:24.560 from unless you're making mistakes and not correcting them i don't see how you're not functioning as an

00:06:32.280 expert on those topics you you touch um and i mean maybe there's a distinction between you know if you

00:06:38.380 want to be an expert on world war ii or at least the nazi side of it you really need to deal with

00:06:43.300 primary sources in german and that's that's some uh wrinkle there but i'm just wondering how you see

00:06:49.660 that i think it sort of depends on the specialty we're talking about so i mean for example take a

00:06:54.220 surgeon who who operates on people's brains i think we can both agree that you know you're not going to

00:06:59.800 want your amateur brain surgeon coming in and saying listen this is i read this expert and this is how

00:07:04.380 he he suggests we do it so that there's a specific specialty there i think bringing up the humanities

00:07:09.680 though is a wonderful point because the humanities by its very nature i mean look at look at the

00:07:13.900 subjects that make up the humanities law religion language arts think music i mean these are all

00:07:20.040 things with much more leeway i would say in terms of of even the creative than you get in something like

00:07:26.520 brain surgery for example and and so i think i think the way to put it would be that you know you were

00:07:31.880 just suggesting that people outside the expertise have something perhaps that they can bring to the

00:07:36.740 table in a lot of these cases i think it three-dimensionalizes things a little bit to have

00:07:42.020 somebody from another discipline apply you know the mode of thinking common in their discipline to an

00:07:47.880 unusual realm in other words in order to get a 360 degree view of things sometimes take a historical

00:07:54.040 event you might want to have the second world war examined by somebody who's an expert in military

00:07:59.240 affairs obviously or somebody who's an expert in international relations is going to write a book

00:08:03.920 with a different point of view one of the best books i ever read on the second world war was done

00:08:07.580 by an economist who looked at it from a completely different point of view and so in that sense i think

00:08:12.660 you can three-dimensionalize reality and that's what you're looking at when you look at history you're

00:08:16.580 looking at a moment in reality and there are multiple a rush among sort of a variety of ways to look at

00:08:22.520 things what i maybe bring to the table is i'm looking at this from outside the specialty you know

00:08:29.080 when you deal with a lot of historians today you are dealing with scientists in a certain realm i mean

00:08:33.760 these are people that aren't going to talk about things that they can't quantify any good scientist is

00:08:38.280 going to want to be able to back up what they say in a peer-reviewed journal that's how a lot of

00:08:42.140 historians are today but the specialty of of what they study takes away that ability to look at things

00:08:48.200 from a farther away lens right so in in 50 years ago you would have had all these historians who

00:08:52.980 would have been just fine looking at events as though they were you know in a satellite and give

00:08:57.200 you these big pronouncements most historians today wouldn't be comfortable with that the problem is

00:09:01.600 is historians aren't dealing with brain surgery they're dealing with human beings and and that by

00:09:06.500 its very nature is hard to quantify and hard to get your mind around so i guess it gives me a lot

00:09:11.280 more leeway than a brain surgeon i just and they've been very kind with me all these professionals i don't

00:09:16.400 think they sometimes like the way i will um dramatize events but i but i look at this as

00:09:22.720 like what what alfred hitchcock famously said about what drama is drama is just reality with

00:09:27.720 the boring bits taken out right and that's kind of how i look at the history show i'm giving you the

00:09:32.060 story that an author would give you or a writer would give you or a historian 50 years ago might give

00:09:36.520 you yeah yeah well what you're doing is fantastic and that'll be my last uh dollop of praise before we

00:09:42.220 get into areas of controversy it's got to stop now that's right uh so um i've been hearing uh echoes

00:09:48.540 and rumors from among our mutual fans that you and i should have a conversation about uh the sorts of

00:09:55.680 things you treat on your your common sense podcast which i have listened to frankly uh less i've only

00:10:01.020 heard a few episodes of it but i get a sense that people are expecting us to not fully align on

00:10:07.420 questions of foreign policy and just war and terror the war on terror and the role of islam in inspiring

00:10:15.400 um uh the terror side of that war uh etc and um so i you know i i don't know how much you know of

00:10:23.560 my positions on this but i suggest we just sort of meander into this this these areas and see what

00:10:29.540 happens well sure and maybe we could start with you know uh how do you keep getting these people

00:10:35.700 angry with you i mean i when sam harris if you google sam harris there's going to be all these

00:10:40.780 wonderful moments like the the ben affleck moment and all these other things you know i always you

00:10:46.260 know i feel like i've got pretty thin skin when it comes to things like twitter and all those other

00:10:50.260 things how do you deal with these situations and then how do you go back and do them again i mean

00:10:56.420 it seems like right you're you're the position you put yourself in is to enjoy that because you're

00:11:00.580 going to just do it again on the next show yes well i guess there's a freudian diagnosis for this

00:11:05.060 i'm not going there i'm just suggesting you might consider it yeah um well you know i realized

00:11:11.740 at some point that it doesn't bother me to be hated for positions i actually hold if someone

00:11:18.740 understands what i think and they think it's reprehensible and they want nothing more to do

00:11:23.700 with me as a result that i'm fine with the thing that that gets under my skin and which unfortunately i

00:11:29.740 have to deal with more than anything else is a frank misunderstanding of what my position is or

00:11:36.640 a just a malicious distortion of it so as to uh spread a misunderstanding of it and and i deal with

00:11:43.160 that more and more now and and and unfortunately there's there is no way to deal with it elegantly

00:11:49.620 comprehensively and and effectively you just you can't keep writing letters to the editor for the

00:11:55.940 you can't just you can't follow your critics around cleaning up the the mess they're making

00:12:01.020 and it is it is much easier to make a mess than to clean it up so i guess wherever you go

00:12:07.000 and you see my views discussed you you see just total distortions of them and that's that that does

00:12:13.960 wear on me and i you know i've as a result attempted to pick my battles and um i avoid

00:12:20.320 certain controversies now frankly because i i just um i anticipate the the cost both in terms of time

00:12:27.740 and and um annoyance and then just decide it's not worth it and i actually just gave up a book contract

00:12:34.140 that you know was the best book contract i i ever had and maybe will will ever have but i decided the

00:12:41.800 topic was so uh was just going to put me in a in an all front you know 360 degree uh mode of of

00:12:49.700 fighting critics whose uh first impulse is to more or less ignore all of the nuance in my argument so i

00:12:58.320 i i have um i'm i'm i'm being more selective about uh the kinds of battles i pick now although i'm liable

00:13:06.000 to sort of stumble into any area of controversy in the middle of a conversation like this and and uh reap

00:13:10.660 the whirlwind but it's it is it's annoying but i i think some of what this conversation would be if

00:13:16.300 we touch those topics is me distinguishing what i actually mean from what many of these people like

00:13:23.460 ben affleck think i mean well and it's funny too for those who maybe don't understand and i've only

00:13:27.880 had the tiniest tiniest sampling of what you must go through sam but people will point me sometimes to

00:13:33.100 say a reddit page or a bulletin board somewhere where they the the headline topic will be dan carlin

00:13:39.400 said blank is he right and you'll read what it says you said and you never said it but there'll be

00:13:44.580 hundreds of responses of people debating what an idiot you are for saying that even though you and you

00:13:49.760 don't even know how to begin to correct that element and you just think you know if this continues

00:13:54.180 to proliferate over time the internet will be full of stuff that i never said can't defend and that

00:13:59.140 people slam me for so i can only imagine how you get it and you're dealing with topics that require

00:14:04.380 huge amounts of nuance and and lots of um clarifying statements and lots of disclaimers and all that

00:14:10.400 other stuff and if you just take a piece out of that to sample in a blog it's really hard to give

00:14:14.940 the overall impression you're trying to convey on any of these subjects we all have that problem

00:14:18.560 yeah i and also what i'm dealing with is i'm coming up against certain taboos which

00:14:26.160 are just um kind of amplify misunderstanding so the taboo around criticizing religion as opposed to

00:14:33.860 other sets of of ideas uh that is is something that that people are are really uh biased against

00:14:41.600 tolerating they think there's something indecent just as a matter of principle in criticizing people's

00:14:48.680 deeply held religious convictions whereas you there is nothing wrong with criticizing their their false

00:14:54.020 ideas about history or biology or anything else and um there's also the a lot of white guilt and

00:15:00.980 and understandable guilt over the history of slavery and colonialism and and the the just the the sheer

00:15:07.560 uh wealth imbalance between the the west or the developed nations and the the developing ones and so

00:15:15.500 a criticism of islam in particular gets mapped onto those concerns about uh inequalities in our world and

00:15:23.340 and and you get a um you get a lot of confusion it's interesting to look at cases that pass through

00:15:30.900 this filter more or less undistorted so for instance for me the case of north korea is you get you get

00:15:38.920 pretty perfect convergence from people in the west you know liberal or conservative on the wrongness the

00:15:47.260 ethical wrongness of the regime in north korea and i think more or less everyone would acknowledge that if

00:15:52.980 there was something we could do to liberate the north korean people without too much bloodshed we should

00:15:59.980 do it it's it's kind of like it's a really it's a hostage crisis we have we have a couple of maniacs

00:16:04.800 or generations now of maniacs with bouffant hair holding millions of people hostage starving some

00:16:11.780 significant percentage of them and brainwashing them with an ideology that is um it just clearly uh

00:16:19.980 totally out of register with with any real understanding of what's going on in the world

00:16:24.700 these people think they're a master race they say they're essentially a cargo cult armed with nuclear

00:16:30.520 weapons and um i think it's a uh so if you if you talk to liberals and conservatives about this

00:16:37.440 that the the real problem is just a practical one there is no way to resolve this hostage crisis

00:16:43.500 without massive loss of life they have nuclear weapons that's one problem but even short of that

00:16:49.560 they have so much artillery aimed at soul that there's no way to do it without massive without a horrendous

00:16:55.860 war so but if we could wave a magic wand and change the situation and and disabuse these people of their

00:17:04.200 their mythology and their their their intellectual isolation and and cancel that regime everyone acknowledges that

00:17:13.020 would would be would be a good thing and yet if you try to move that to a a similar consideration of

00:17:19.980 of islamic theocratic regimes jihadist regimes regimes or islamist regimes uh things begin to break down

00:17:28.460 under the influence of political correctness and so i i just put that to you as a potential starting

00:17:33.260 point and and uh await your words well let me suggest a difference um take the north koreans for example

00:17:40.300 and we talk about brainwashing i think your analysis was right on but here's the thing if all of a

00:17:45.660 sudden they allowed an actual free election in north korea be interesting to see the results it'd be

00:17:52.300 interesting to see if the brainwashing took hold to such a degree that people there voted to continue

00:17:57.180 the regime or if all of a sudden you know like uh like the emperor having no clothes we would see that

00:18:02.540 all these people are actually more savvy and are able to resist the brainwashing more than we think

00:18:07.500 and vote to do away with the regime that'd be interesting to have and the reason i ask that is

00:18:11.420 because when i think about these islamic um the the extreme regime so for example the sorts of state

00:18:17.340 that an isis isil is trying to put together for example or even let's just say one that that's been

00:18:22.700 a more um functional uh and and valued member of the world community let's say saudi arabia if all of

00:18:29.260 a sudden you had free and fair elections in saudi arabia that included all adults able to vote be very

00:18:34.940 interesting to see what the results were and so when you when you talk about the ability of whether

00:18:40.540 it's liberals or let's call them paleo conservatives or anyone else to look at a situation and agree

00:18:45.180 that a north korea is a tragedy and wouldn't it be nice if those people are freed and doesn't this also

00:18:49.100 apply to these um islamic regimes i'm not sure i remember getting an email from a woman and she lived

00:18:56.540 here in the west but she was islamic and i had made some comments about women in burkas

00:19:01.100 and and the rights of women in some of these countries and and i had used that as as a

00:19:04.700 particular you know touchstone and she wrote me back and she said listen no offense but this is

00:19:10.300 what you don't understand not growing up in this society she says i want this i want this burka and

00:19:16.140 she called it something else there's another word for it she says and and i was raised in a society

00:19:20.460 where we began as little girls to look at this and couldn't wait until we got to the age and she said

00:19:24.780 now my views may not be representative and certainly different regions and different areas have

00:19:29.660 different feelings about this but from the traditional you know little town i came from

00:19:33.820 i didn't see this as an imposition on my freedom to me it was a rite of passage and it was it's a

00:19:38.700 cultural change for me to see it as some sort of inhibition because here in the west i think she should

00:19:43.740 have the right to wear a miniskirt which is not something that might have occurred to her um and so

00:19:48.060 in other words if you could go to these areas that that the isis folks are beginning to take over or

00:19:53.020 lose as the case may be and ask what the people there want it'd be very interesting whether or

00:19:58.380 not they want to be liberated and you know you can have two kinds of liberation you can have the pie

00:20:03.500 in the sky one where we say we're going to liberate you and in 50 years you're going to be like germany

00:20:07.260 is today or we can liberate you and you sunni folks will be living under a bunch of shiites

00:20:12.540 who take advantage of you all the time i mean it's not a perfect world where we can offer these people

00:20:17.260 a panacea either so they're often making the same sorts of choices in their heads that we're making at

00:20:22.140 the ballot box which is are we going to get a lot of difference if i vote for this democrat or this

00:20:25.260 republican nothing seems to change so you start to vote for lessers of two evils i think those

00:20:29.580 people would react in a similar way um so i guess what i'm saying is there might be a difference

00:20:33.900 between a country where it really does look like all these people are captives like north korea

00:20:38.940 and another country like saudi arabia where you're just not sure if you actually polled people in a

00:20:43.340 free poll if they would say they wanted to continue to live like that or not there may be a cultural

00:20:47.740 difference it's hard for us to notice yeah well i think this this goes to the foundational issue of

00:20:52.860 whether anyone can want the wrong things and whether there's a place to stand where you can

00:20:59.340 say that they in fact they do want the wrong things they have been brainwashed as i said in the case of

00:21:04.300 north korea or uh some some concatenation of causes has led them to has trimmed down their worldview in

00:21:14.940 such a way that that doors to human flourishing are closed to them or closing to them and someone outside

00:21:21.500 that culture someone who has not been brainwashed by it could open those doors so for instance you

00:21:26.700 know literacy for women i think that is an intrinsic good and it really doesn't matter how many women

00:21:34.460 you can get to tell you from behind their burqa that they don't want to read they don't know what

00:21:40.140 they're missing it's possible not to know what you're missing and and i think once you strip away

00:21:46.460 political correctness you have to agree that being born a woman in afghanistan anytime in the last 30

00:21:54.700 years was to be unlucky as to was to be an unlucky woman by and large now it's not to say that you

00:22:00.060 couldn't find one happy woman there who if if given a chance to sample all of the human experiences on

00:22:06.220 offer would for whatever reason realize that she is happiest in a burqa not reading that's possible but

00:22:13.500 uh that's that's not how uh most of the women there came to live the lives they're living these

00:22:19.820 lives have been imposed on them and for for the most part when you when you listen to the expressions

00:22:25.180 of relief and humility and clarity that that you get around this notion of of of wearing the veil in

00:22:33.580 the muslim world i don't hear too much around wearing a burqa but wearing lesser veils like the hijab

00:22:39.020 you are hearing that as a response to the thuggish misogyny of the men in those cultures women are

00:22:46.940 treated like whores and considered to be whores if they're not appropriately veiled they are you know

00:22:51.900 groped and you know in most of these societies beaten for not being appropriately veiled it's just

00:22:57.340 when you have that that kind of stigma around the empowerment of women or just that the sheer

00:23:03.020 just the the mere sexuality of women and when you have every man's notion of his own honor predicated

00:23:11.020 on the chastity of the women in his life well then there's yeah it's two sides of a coin and no doubt

00:23:16.620 many women feel relieved to be appropriately veiled in those cultures and i'm also not holding up the

00:23:21.820 miniskirt as the ultimate example of psychological health with respect to variables like youth and beauty

00:23:28.700 and and female sexuality etc there's there may be interesting things to talk about there but i don't

00:23:34.780 think there really is much daylight between these theocratic societies within the muslim world i'm

00:23:41.980 not saying all of the muslim world fits this description but when you're talking about the

00:23:45.100 taliban or isis or any of those contexts and something like north korea which we recognize

00:23:51.740 rather readily to be a condition of brainwashing in a political cult as opposed to a religious one

00:23:58.060 but what do you and see this is where i always have have my issues with that if somebody were

00:24:02.060 going out there and making and when i say somebody i mean somebody in our government if somebody in

00:24:06.620 our government were standing up and saying listen part of what we're doing in this world is making

00:24:11.100 a world safe for women um to walk the streets and to vote in their societies and to drive and to enjoy

00:24:17.020 everything you know it's a human rights question right um and i agree with everything you said about

00:24:21.260 that but the problem then becomes one of selectivity somehow we care about these things as a

00:24:27.260 country with a foreign policy where we happen to have reasons to care right afghanistan might be

00:24:31.980 important or iraq might be important but in a country like saudi arabia which isn't just doing

00:24:36.620 these things but which in an educational sense is a bit of a fountainhead for these ideas and the most

00:24:41.660 extreme of the extreme ideas but they get a pass well but that so that that is we should plant a flag

00:24:47.420 there because that i think we will both agree is uh really a perverse result of our dependence on

00:24:55.980 their oil and if if we could pull that uh off the table then i think things look very different they

00:25:02.060 get a pass because we need them to be our friends uh or have needed them to be our friends almost at any

00:25:08.700 moral cost but then let's talk about that because it's it's it's it's better than putting a flag there

00:25:14.140 i would make the case that so much of the problems that we are having as a result of shall we call it

00:25:20.460 um um the the the the radicalization of a region has to do with the fact that we're over there and they

00:25:29.180 don't like it and the reason that we're over there in large part has to do with the resources oil is

00:25:34.940 obviously you know petro petrochemicals of any kind uh obviously the main reason but there are others

00:25:40.540 but we're over there and you know i was i was thinking the other day about how we would react

00:25:47.020 and you know sam you've heard my shows this is how i think but but i always try to think to myself

00:25:51.900 you know how would we react in a comparable situation and it's funny i was reading not that

00:25:58.140 long ago a book on the iranian revolution of 1978 79 and they were talking about how the shah's

00:26:05.340 secret police in iran were so good at monitoring any gathering of people that might be seditious

00:26:11.420 that might want to overthrow the government in any sort of capacity to replace it with any sort

00:26:15.740 of government and the one place the shah had a hard time was when these people would meet in mosques

00:26:21.180 and meet over religious purposes because that it was difficult for the shah's government to you know

00:26:26.140 crack down on religious people without looking bad to their own population they had their own reasons

00:26:30.140 for not doing it but it created a safe zone that involved religion in a way that 30 or 40 or 50

00:26:36.860 years previously back in the era where you had guys like nasser trying to push a you know by middle

00:26:42.540 eastern standards secular sort of nationalism where where those people were sort of forced into the arms

00:26:48.140 of making you know in the same way we might have a red dawn scenario in this country if we had a bunch

00:26:52.940 of islamic people stationing their tanks on our territory because something you know under our ground

00:26:59.020 was a national security interest to them i have a feeling we would be doing things i mean we might

00:27:04.620 not be slitting throats isis style but i bet we'd have some guys in big trucks with gun racks in the

00:27:10.220 back that were fond of planting explosives sometimes i mean i don't think we would react all that

00:27:15.500 differently i think the fact that there's a religious overtone to this makes us feel like we would react

00:27:22.060 differently where if you took the religious overtone out and just put us in the same situation

00:27:26.300 i bet we're not all that much nicer than some of these people we see fighting what they see as

00:27:31.900 outside colonialists or people foisting their culture or stealing their resources or what have

00:27:37.180 you do you think we'd be all that different if the shoe were on the other foot well i think the

00:27:41.180 analogy breaks down a little bit because it's not we're not stealing their resources and we're not

00:27:45.580 stealing oil from saudi arabia we are just uh protective of it because we need it now i think we that's a

00:27:53.340 problem we absolutely must solve and we should be running a manhattan project to solve it and and

00:27:59.580 the technology is very much within reach we could all be driving electric cars we could all be on

00:28:04.700 solar we could we could we could have true resource security and that would be an extraordinarily good

00:28:11.580 thing to do the analogy breaks down for me because what one we're not mere invaders of these countries

00:28:19.100 now you know i didn't support the war in iraq i think it was a a terrible idea especially a terrible

00:28:24.700 idea in retrospect although i think the argument could have been made for it more or less along

00:28:31.980 the lines i just gave for the north korean case you had a a virtually psychopathic dictator and a

00:28:39.020 hostage crisis and it would have been a good thing if the civilized world could have found a way to

00:28:43.980 intervene and liberate the iraqi people except for the fact that the level of of religious sectarianism

00:28:50.140 in that society caused it to explode into civil war and so and and i don't hold us responsible

00:28:56.620 nor do i think anyone should hold us responsible for the millennia-long internecine hostility between

00:29:03.340 shia and sunni that's entirely a religious confection but surely sam it it was a known quantity that needed

00:29:09.340 to be taken into account it's why there were people at the highest level saying don't do this this is a

00:29:14.300 fractured society that's being held together by a vicious strong man and if you take the vicious

00:29:18.860 strong man out who the heck's going to hold it together it's yugoslavia without tito all of a

00:29:22.700 sudden yeah well but it just it points to the differences that that that religion introduces into

00:29:28.700 these uh these sorts of events but wait wouldn't ethnic wouldn't ethnic tensions play the same sort of

00:29:34.620 role in some of these other societies i mean religion it's not a unique situation it's a

00:29:38.860 variable that could be replaced by other variables in other places i mean the nazis

00:29:43.740 were there was a religious component to it but it wasn't primarily religious but there was an

00:29:47.820 ideological concept that played the same variant role in their situation i think you could find

00:29:52.860 hundreds of those an ethnocentrism a racism a superiority complex ancient ethnic hatreds any of

00:29:58.940 those things plays that same variant role well well it's it's not the same there there there are other

00:30:03.900 forms of us them thinking no doubt and you just you just ran through the the list uh so racism and

00:30:09.660 xenophobia and and any kind of in-group out-group tribalism is gets people to go to war with each

00:30:17.660 other periodically but the the notion of paradise i think changes the equation significantly and it which

00:30:27.660 is to say true belief in paradise and as uh and in martyrdom as a way to arrive there in fact is the

00:30:35.740 most reliable way to arrive there and the christian tradition really has never even had that the way

00:30:42.620 it exists within islam and um so that the the psychological phenomenon that i'm most focused on and

00:30:49.740 most worried about frankly is the fact that you can be someone without any political grievances you've

00:30:57.020 never been mistreated by anyone you're just a guy who grew up in the suburbs of you know marin

00:31:02.140 county or uh maryland or or any of these places where we've seen people uh so-called self-radicalize

00:31:10.860 where they they then an internet meme gets into their head they may have been born muslim or not

00:31:15.980 but at a certain point they decide well islam is really worth looking into and they read the books

00:31:21.660 and they go down the rabbit hole and they decide yeah you know jihad is incumbent upon every muslim

00:31:27.340 male there's nothing more beautiful or important to give your life over to and paradise really exists

00:31:34.860 it really is waiting for me i'm going to get there i'm going to get the virgins all of this stuff is

00:31:39.740 believed by the kinds of people who are being recruited to isis and they're going over there in a spirit of

00:31:46.140 jubilation these are these are not the isis is not acting like a bug light for the psychopaths of the

00:31:52.460 world or the or the depressed people of the world who just want to die in the desert these are people

00:31:57.420 who are highly motivated they feel a great sense of meaning and we might you we might say that well

00:32:05.180 this is not such a big phenomenon we're just talking about some tens of thousands of people at this

00:32:09.900 point coming from other societies to join the islamic state but that phenomenon is a window onto

00:32:16.700 the psychology of what is happening in these societies among the indigenous people who are

00:32:22.380 committed to these ideas these are there's a deep kind of transcendental meaning taken on board when you

00:32:30.460 actually believe these things and it explains why you can get mothers to just celebrate the suicidal

00:32:36.700 atrocities committed by their sons and why people can i mean a very chilling uh conversation i just read

00:32:45.020 and and excerpted in the next book i'm i'm publishing in in the fall was between uh this former muslim a

00:32:52.220 muslim now atheist uh ali rizvi and a supporter of the taliban after the uh the school bombing in in

00:33:01.180 in peshawar in pakistan in in uh last fall where 150 students were massacred by members of the pakistani

00:33:09.660 taliban and a supporter online was expressing his support and and ali got into a bit of a debate with him and he

00:33:20.060 just he just pulled back the veil on this sort of thinking he said listen you are you're a materialist you don't

00:33:26.780 believe in paradise therefore you think that these kids were just annihilated they weren't we know

00:33:32.300 them to be in paradise because they've not taken on the sinfulness of their apostate parents and we

00:33:37.900 did them a favor there's no problem killing these kids and but the problem i'm dealing with in talking

00:33:44.220 to people like you know many of the people who are probably among your listenership is that secular

00:33:50.300 liberal westerners burn a lot of fuel trying to convince themselves that anyone actually believes

00:33:58.060 this stuff the moment you take on board the the proposition that millions and millions of people

00:34:04.220 actually believe in paradise and they think there's no problem with death when all these jihadists who

00:34:09.340 say we love death more than the infidel loves life are actually giving us an honest statement of

00:34:14.620 psychological fact the moment you take that on board you have to admit the game has changed now

00:34:20.460 it's not totally changed it's not like it it shares nothing in common with the other sorts of tribalism

00:34:26.460 you mentioned and it's not that politics never plays a role here and it's not that we don't do stupid

00:34:31.020 things like ignore the sectarianism between shia and sunni but the the thing i'm focused on which

00:34:37.900 has me worried is the fact that you can get educated westerners even to believe this stuff

00:34:45.100 and to be motivated to act on the basis of these ideas but sam here's the thing you you you you suggest

00:34:51.580 in the tone of of of the argument that this is unusual or that this is singular or that this is

00:34:57.500 different it's a variant of of human behavior we've seen over and over again especially in what

00:35:03.900 you know i was having a a talk with a southerner not that long ago who was talking to me about the

00:35:07.900 civil war and talking about the american south before the civil war is what he called an honor

00:35:12.540 culture and these honor cultures are common throughout history i mean you take you know the

00:35:17.260 the arguments that you were saying about paradise and the willingness to die and embrace death and

00:35:21.180 enjoy death and make it beautiful and something to be be sought is exactly the way my stepfather in

00:35:27.180 absolutely horrifically scared terms by the way talked about how they felt about fighting the

00:35:32.780 japanese in the second world war right and it was almost it wasn't quite secular because there's

00:35:37.580 a religious overtone to the whole thing at the same time the feeling of of of one of the most

00:35:43.740 important things being to scratch off the imperial chrysanthemum on your rifle so that it was marred

00:35:50.140 before you died and didn't fall into the hands i mean all these things you just your mind reels but

00:35:55.180 what it seems to show is it's a window to a certain human experience which is recurring and not that

00:36:00.700 uncommon the idea the spartans had that the people who were born in that society were born to die

00:36:06.060 for the state that's what they were they go have more sons so that the state will be glorified when

00:36:11.660 they die for i mean it's just this this i mean what's the old line that one spartan had when his

00:36:15.580 wife was going to see him off to a certain death and she said you know kind of what do you want me to

00:36:18.780 do and he said marry someone else and have a lot of sons i mean the whole society is predicated on an

00:36:24.060 honor system which says you die for the state or you die for the underlying cause that that justifies

00:36:29.980 the state whether that's the emperor and his infallibility and his his god-like uh nature or

00:36:35.900 whether it's somebody actually telling you what god wants and what awaits you on the other side it

00:36:41.420 seems to me that that we're taking something that is not singular and not that unusual when you look at

00:36:45.820 the entire breadth and reach of history and making it sound that way well i would agree it's on a

00:36:51.980 continuum there's no question that people and it's not always religious but you know the the

00:36:56.940 continuum is not there there's a religious continuum but that that's part of a larger

00:37:00.780 continuum agreed agreed ideas motivating people to uh give their lives over to a greater cause don't you

00:37:07.660 agree that that will always exist you get rid of this particular ideology that's motivating these

00:37:12.380 suicide bombers there will be something else well no i i think i think we genuinely make progress in

00:37:18.220 this area i think that for instance christianity apart from a few pockets of fundamentalism in the west

00:37:24.540 and a few um aberrations that we're we're in the process of overcoming i think christianity has

00:37:31.660 moderated itself significantly as a result of its collisions with modernity with science and secular

00:37:38.220 politics and notions of human rights and just the fact that in the developed world most christians most of

00:37:44.540 the time have more that they want out of life than is suggested between the covers of the bible

00:37:52.620 so uh you know they they ignore the bad parts in the old testament they they ignore the bad parts in

00:37:58.540 the new testament they try to to focus on jesus and half his moods the truth is most people no matter

00:38:05.020 how christian they are don't spend a lot of time reading the bible in its entirety and uh they are very

00:38:12.780 different but for the most part than christians in the 14th century and so you know your your um

00:38:19.340 i believe your podcast on this topic was called prophets of doom when you listen to when you to to

00:38:25.340 what it was like in that community and how credulous these people were and how expectant of

00:38:33.100 the end of history in their lifetime those people are in a minority a tiny minority within the christian

00:38:39.420 tradition even i would argue among fundamentalists in the united states you can get fundamentalists to

00:38:45.660 talk about the rapture and their expectations of it in their lifetime but in terms of what is the

00:38:51.820 beliefs that are operative that for them day to day those have been have been knocked back considerably

00:38:58.220 since the 14th century and i i what i would argue is that while it's not a total difference of kind

00:39:05.020 what we're confronting in the muslim world now is a little bit like a tear in the fabric of time and

00:39:10.860 we have the the christians of the 14th century pouring into our world armed with modern weapons

00:39:17.660 and again this doesn't cover all 1.6 billion muslims but it covers a disconcerting number of people

00:39:25.500 throughout the world in muslim communities east and west who are motivated animated by

00:39:31.820 a very literal and comprehensive reading of these texts the quran the hadith and there are a few

00:39:39.180 differences between islam and christianity that make it even more incorrigible than christianity was

00:39:46.380 the quran does not have a line like we have in matthew render unto caesar those things that are caesar's

00:39:53.900 and unto god those things that are god's and that line does a lot of work for christians who just want to

00:39:59.420 get out of the the the state business uh and and that's a problem and so we we have to find a way

00:40:05.180 forward within the muslim world for genuine reform and there are people working to do that and i'm

00:40:12.060 trying to to help these people do that i've i've collaborated on a book with one of them majid nawaz

00:40:18.860 uh there are people who are doing really heroic work and really risky work i mean that's the other

00:40:23.420 thing that is quite disanalogous at this moment in history to stand up as a muslim and say any of

00:40:30.620 the things that i have just said very likely will get you killed you know in a hundred different

00:40:36.700 countries at the moment and that's a it's a problem that we as a global civil society have to find some

00:40:42.940 way to overcome couldn't you make the case sam that what i mean for example i mean you mentioned

00:40:48.620 something very similar to this you go back and you read the old testament of the bible as the christians

00:40:52.380 call it there'll be stuff in there where it says that you should stone women who are not virgins on

00:40:58.460 their wedding night and if you did that today in the name of judaism more than 99 of jews would think

00:41:05.420 that was crazy and and and the reason is is why you ask why because once upon a time it not only was

00:41:11.100 crazy but but the book authorized it in a way that maybe some of the people in an isis or some radical

00:41:17.020 islamic group would say their text legitimized but here's the thing but but but before you go too far

00:41:22.380 down there just don't forget your thought but in defense of all the truly crazy jews who still exist

00:41:28.140 there are those who will tell you that no no it still holds we just don't have a sanhedrin we don't

00:41:33.580 have a a consecrated religious body uh to enforce it okay i got you i got yeah okay there are people

00:41:39.820 who will actually just say that all of that's just been put on pause but if you saw it on youtube

00:41:46.140 yeah if you saw it on youtube i don't know how many people are going to stand up and say you know

00:41:49.740 finally somebody's you know living up to the to the religion yeah i guess my point is is that and

00:41:54.380 you mentioned it what what we're seeing here is the vast majority of islam i know islamic folks i'm

00:41:59.340 sure you do too they don't they don't seem anything like the people that we have a problem with

00:42:04.300 i have one who can quote the bible like a televangelist he quotes the quran in multiple

00:42:09.500 languages and every time i'll ask him i'll say so i hear a lot about this aspect of the quran tell

00:42:15.020 me what you think and he'll explain the different ways they can be interpreted and the different

00:42:19.020 islamic thinkers over time and the way they've approached these things the people that we're

00:42:22.940 having problems with by and large are a minority and they're people who listen to you the problem

00:42:28.300 that that islam has in a sense that the ottoman empire played a partial role in

00:42:34.220 before its disintegration was some sort of ability to proclaim what is heretical and what isn't a

00:42:41.820 part of the religion in other words let's pretend you had this caliph that people like isis always

00:42:46.700 say they want right somebody who could play i'm sorry for the analogy it's imperfect but a muslim pope

00:42:52.700 let's just say not going to be able to deal with shiite and sunni things right away but but someone

00:42:57.740 who could essentially say because you'll often hear there'll be some terror attack and you'll get a

00:43:01.340 couple of uh of western muslim leaders who will say this does not represent true islam but true

00:43:06.780 islam right now is a difficult thing it's a little like that guy who burns qurans in the u.s south

00:43:11.980 and says that you know he's a preacher he has just as much to make these decisions as anyone else

00:43:15.900 if you have a caliph who is a religious leader who can say listen i can't stop them from doing that but

00:43:21.180 let me just tell you you do that and that 72 virgin claim is not going to come true and who are you going

00:43:25.820 to believe that that weirdo with his track record or me right that that's missing in the system and

00:43:31.340 this is why you know if you look at the problems that we're having with islam the vast majority of

00:43:35.580 islamic folks are embarrassed and horrified by the whole thing and are getting blowback in their own

00:43:41.020 personal lives people who wouldn't hurt anything pay the price for people who would and so and so you

00:43:46.940 turn around and say what can we do if you want to win this war if you look at this as a war on islamic

00:43:52.620 extremism then to me and you know this is what i studied in school i studied trying to try to come

00:43:57.420 up with victories right military victories it's a hearts and minds conflict oh yeah you've got you've

00:44:02.860 got the the people that are going to win this war for us are muslim and so and so anything we do that

00:44:08.540 alienates the people we need to win is counterproductive in the end well i totally agree that this is a

00:44:13.740 a war of ideas that has to be waged by muslims with other muslims i mean they're the only people who

00:44:19.820 are credible to those other people yeah and and it's a war of ideas and it is a civil war and we

00:44:26.140 have to figure out how to help the true secularists and reformer and reformers in the muslim world

00:44:33.420 to to win and but the the one thing i take issue with in what you just said is that it's a tiny

00:44:39.100 minority who support these ideas or this behavior that in fact is not true it depends what you're

00:44:44.940 talking about but pick a number pick a number so you because there has been a lot of polling on

00:44:49.500 this and frankly the only way we ever can gauge public opinion you can't get engage it by by just

00:44:56.460 meeting as many people as you can meet you have to do it with opinion throw out but throw out a

00:45:01.980 number let's play with whatever number well so but so one distinction i would make and this is a

00:45:06.380 distinction that was impressed upon me by my friend majid nawaz with whom i collaborate on this book

00:45:11.580 uh and majid was a former islamist he was a former radical who was trying to engineer coups in places

00:45:19.100 like pakistan uh he wasn't a a technically a jihadist he wasn't perpetrating terrorism but he spent five

00:45:25.340 years in prison for his activities in in egypt and he knows why radicals do what they do and he's in

00:45:33.020 dialogue with jihadists and he now runs a counter extremism think tank the quilliam foundation in the uk

00:45:38.940 trying to come up with a with a counter narrative for devout muslims to disentangle islam from the

00:45:47.500 kinds of theology that that you see uh justifying uh the behavior of uh the islamic state and and other

00:45:55.260 quote radical or extremist groups the problem however is that if you if you run an opinion poll

00:46:01.340 in the uk asking you know what do you think should happen to the danish cartoonists after the cartoon

00:46:07.580 controversy or do you think the the the 7-7 bombers uh were justified in their actions you get shocking

00:46:15.660 levels of support for that i mean something like 70 percent of british muslims think that the danish

00:46:21.340 cartoonists should all have been imprisoned and i don't i don't know what percentage of those think

00:46:25.660 they should have been killed but 70 percent don't understand the the imperative that free speech win

00:46:33.340 in this case and that those are british born muslims uh now so you can only imagine what it is in tehran or

00:46:40.220 in mecca so the the distinction that that majid impressed upon me is that between islamists and

00:46:49.660 conservatives and and this is this has been has always confused me and this is it's now clear and

00:46:55.420 this is actually the distinction i was trying to make on on that show with with ben affleck and uh you

00:47:00.700 could see the results there islamists are people who are trying to impose islam on society politically

00:47:08.300 they want they want a a state religion wherever they happen to have a state or whether or wherever

00:47:13.660 they live they want society to be obliged to live under sharia law and jihadists are the subset of

00:47:20.860 islamists who are willing to do this through violence immediately that the broader set of islamists

00:47:26.060 just want to do this through some political process but that the goal is sharia law for everyone

00:47:31.900 and whether you're a muslim or not you have to live under an ascendant and triumphal muslim state and

00:47:40.060 this is this is a global aspiration now most muslims are not islamists and i i think the percentage is

00:47:46.460 somewhere around 15 or 20 percent worldwide are islamists and there are differences among islamists but

00:47:52.940 what islamists agree that islam has to become the global religion and there's no way to separate

00:47:59.740 politics from religion the rest of the muslim world now we're talking about something like 80 percent

00:48:06.700 they're not islamists they don't want their religion imposed from the state but a majority of that 80

00:48:13.020 is absolutely conservative in their views religiously so they have views about the veiling of women and the

00:48:21.020 honor implications of female sexuality and the appropriateness or or the acceptability of

00:48:28.220 homosexuality and free speech etc cartoons about the prophet they have very conservative views which

00:48:35.340 in any given moment may seem to align them with islamists and jihadists and and you know the people

00:48:41.660 who burn embassies in response to cartoons but when you ask them about how they feel about the islamic

00:48:48.220 state or about al-qaeda they will tell you everything you would be consoled to hear of course they hate

00:48:53.580 al-qaeda of course they think al-qaeda has hijacked their peaceful religion and they want nothing to do

00:48:58.700 with it but when you drill down on their specific moral attitudes they are extremely conservative and

00:49:05.580 i would argue that and and as with majid that we have we have to apply pressure to both of these

00:49:11.980 communities to embrace a global pluralistic liberal secular mode of tolerance that is only subscribed

00:49:21.740 to at this point by a minority within the muslim world not a majority it's not the the numbers are

00:49:28.220 not consoling and it is as you say not something that a a white infidel like me is going to impress

00:49:36.620 upon uh 1.6 billion people this is this has to happen within the muslim world by muslims uh here's

00:49:43.260 the thing see i think i think there's a a single and and i've seen this and i'm gonna i'm gonna take

00:49:48.540 it in another direction in a second to try to show how i think this is a recurring thing thing and we've

00:49:53.100 just plugged islam in for something else but i mean let let's let's take islam out of this and let's go

00:49:58.940 to a bunch of americans down in the bible belt and say do you think the newspaper in your community

00:50:05.740 should show that piece of artwork that shows a christ in in a in a beaker of urine right uh um

00:50:13.500 what what do you think and should that be legal and what their reaction would be to that or if

00:50:17.340 you went to a bunch of people who were veterans of the united states military who served on let's

00:50:22.220 say d-day and said should people be allowed to urinate on the flag and then show other people that

00:50:27.100 are wear t-shirts that show horrible manglings of the u.s flag and should that be legal the difference

00:50:32.460 is that while they may think that's horrible and worthy of a punch in the nose they're not

00:50:37.260 going to go blow up a shopping center because they're offended so i think the offensive side

00:50:41.820 of this is a very human way to behave yes and i think you would get similar sorts of reactions if

00:50:46.300 you frame the question a certain way from all kinds of groups of human beings being offended to

00:50:51.260 the point of wanting to punch somebody pretty standard human reaction the difference as you would

00:50:55.420 have pointed out is the desire to kill somebody over it as a way to intimidate them into behaving

00:51:00.620 a way you want them to behave and i would add at us for further along that continuum the difference

00:51:07.180 once you believe that you will go to paradise for doing so or once you believe that your children

00:51:14.220 behind whose bodies you're hiding as a human shield uh will go to paradise if they're killed

00:51:20.220 while you're behaving that way but let me and again i i feel compelled to take um a non-religious

00:51:25.740 example to point out that i just want i'm agreeing with your your your the continuum your the structure

00:51:31.420 you're sketching out i think this kind of offense is a very human and universal yeah and let's let's

00:51:36.860 talk about a heroic death right a heroic because for example um you look and you study the the side of

00:51:43.500 the anarchist movement from 110 115 years ago which by the way every time i mention all the peaceful

00:51:50.060 anarchists out there say please distinguish my views from the ones you're talking about but about 120

00:51:55.420 years ago uh it was it was in vogue let's put it that way for people who thought that that political

00:52:01.740 change was so necessary it was worth killing people over to do something that involved what was known at

00:52:06.780 the time as the propaganda of the deed and the idea behind this was as if you let's say assassinate and

00:52:13.820 there were a bunch of foreign leaders well foreign from an american viewpoint assassinated there were even

00:52:18.140 american attempts at assassination in order to kill a leading figure in order to get the publicity

00:52:25.260 that comes with that and then encourages others to kill important political figures that are part of

00:52:30.140 the establishment the propaganda of the deeds whole idea was that you would be giving up the rest of

00:52:36.700 your life whether it meant you got hung for capital murder or spent the rest of your days in prison or

00:52:41.260 whatever as a hero to the movement it's like the old you know non-religious soviet union the hero of

00:52:47.100 the soviet union right the the kid who turns his parents in so they can be executed at the camp because

00:52:52.460 they were counter-revolutionaries and then the little kid gets a statue devoted to him i mean

00:52:56.780 these these are not unusual kinds of things and they don't have to be and they don't have to be

00:53:01.500 religiously driven to happen so when we talk about people that are offended and then lash out um i i think

00:53:08.460 i think something like that is where the rubber meets the road in terms of when you say in a free

00:53:12.460 society you know how do we make it not okay i mean let me give you an example once upon a time

00:53:18.300 if you killed your wife when you found her in bed with another man there are courts that might have

00:53:23.100 let you offer that and juries that might let you offer a lot less likely today because things have

00:53:27.660 changed but there's a lot of people out there you could interview who would say listen i'm just

00:53:30.700 telling you man if you find your spouse out with somebody else and somebody gets shot but you know

00:53:35.500 not that not that hard to understand so i mean i think you may you may have made a case when you

00:53:39.740 talked about the time fabric ripped open and we're seeing a bunch of people with a mentality that used to

00:53:45.260 be more widespread or that runs counter to modern liberal secular sensibilities at the same time

00:53:51.820 it's like saying that a bunch of people have a world view that's dangerous and wrong and the way

00:53:56.220 we're going to to solve that is by bombing and and do and doing things that end up providing propaganda

00:54:03.660 to the people you're trying to beat that they can then use against the people we're trying to convert

00:54:08.300 or at least keep on our side to say see these people talk a good game but they kill women and children

00:54:13.500 too and you can talk about things like intention all the time but if it's your kid that gets caught

00:54:19.660 in the crossfire when we're trying to get a bad guy in pakistan there's nothing i'm going to say to

00:54:24.220 you that's going to calm you down and make you rational and not make you think i'm going to go

00:54:27.580 get the bastards who did that to my kid so you're creating the next round you know you know what i was

00:54:32.380 going to go if you remember my train i thought what i was going to go with this is say you know in a funny

00:54:35.740 way as a kid and and i know you're about my age too we grew up at the at the at the the last half of the

00:54:41.100 cold war the the so-called red scare which was so i mean for those of us who lived through it and

00:54:46.540 were at least on my political viewpoint it would drive you crazy how we were obsessed with this

00:54:51.900 communist threat and just sure it was just out and then once the the spell was broken you look back

00:54:57.020 and you go god it's amazing we got so wound up over that and then sort of almost in a historical

00:55:01.260 sense right afterwards we now get this islamic thing which has almost been plugged in for what used

00:55:05.740 to be a sort of a godless atheist ideological you know enemy to a extra god believing you know non-secular

00:55:14.220 enemy i mean in a funny way i feel like it's deja vu all over again and i just have islamic terrorists

00:55:20.380 plugged in for for former soviet you know spreaders of world revolution but but the justification that

00:55:26.860 our government uses to impede on those very sexual secular values that you were just defending

00:55:33.180 is the same it's a wonderful hammer with which to hit our constitution with just like the soviet

00:55:37.900 union one was before it well it it did get plugged in but we should recall that it plugged itself in

00:55:43.900 it we had september 11th which was a a moment where history intruded into our lives i really you know i don't

00:55:50.860 know how you felt but i really felt that was the first moment where it was absolutely clear to me that i

00:55:57.500 i was living in history of the sort that i had read about in history books where we see that things

00:56:02.700 can go totally into the ditch at a mo in a moment's notice that are forces aimed at your life that you

00:56:10.860 were not aware of uh and all of a sudden uh there really is a a burden in the current generation

00:56:18.700 to get the the maintenance of civilization right but i agree with you there there are many similarities

00:56:24.140 there and i you know i think we should be dropping bombs very selectively i think the problem of

00:56:29.580 collateral damage is a huge one i don't think we should overestimate the number of people who become

00:56:35.340 radicalized as a result of our collateral damage but i think i think it is a genuine phenomenon but

00:56:41.020 what's more of concern to me is that that certain ideas if merely accepted create a condition

00:56:50.300 for a total repudiation of the kinds of values we need the better part of humanity to embrace at this

00:56:58.620 point which is a commitment to free speech and equality among the sexes and a tolerance for

00:57:04.860 diversity we we need these things globally we can't just live on islands of tolerance where we then are

00:57:12.220 forced to interact with and suffer our poorest borders with genuinely intolerant medieval commitments

00:57:20.380 so we need to spread this worldwide and and it's a it's a big problem i want to i feel like we have

00:57:25.660 dealt with islam as much as we we need to at the moment i want to actually make a lateral move to a

00:57:30.620 similar topic and ask you what you think about these recent this recent controversy around the confederate

00:57:37.180 flag and whether it can be displayed on the state house in south carolina if you'd like to

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - June 27, 2015

#11 — Shouldering the Burden of History

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