Making Sense - Sam Harris - #21 — On the Maintenance of Civilization

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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00:00:39.120 in this episode i'll be speaking with douglas murray douglas is a best-selling author and award-winning

00:00:52.180 journalist in the uk he's the associate editor of the spectator magazine and also associate director

00:00:57.820 of the henry jackson society which is a think tank in london and he writes regularly for the spectator

00:01:03.140 standpoint the daily telegraph the daily mail the wall street journal in europe and he appears

00:01:08.960 regularly on the bbc and other media outlets and he has spoken in the british and dutch and danish and

00:01:15.000 european parliaments and at the white house douglas is as you will hear a very incisive critic of

00:01:22.940 political correctness and someone who is unusually engaged and extraordinarily articulate on the problem

00:01:31.180 of islamism and our habit of capitulating to it so it's a great pleasure to talk to douglas i should

00:01:39.540 say to give you some context that we spoke about a week ago right after the attacks in paris and

00:01:47.000 we speak about the syrian refugees in europe and things have moved on a little bit in the u.s in the

00:01:53.600 last five days or so so that there's been an active debate on syrian refugees coming to the u.s

00:02:00.620 i should point out that that douglas and i were speaking about the european context which is different

00:02:06.040 from the u.s from a security point of view that as you'll hear the vetting process for refugees in

00:02:13.260 europe is nearly non-existent in the u.s that does not seem to be the case and and this is an important

00:02:20.220 difference as you'll hear i think our ability to vet these people which is to say understand who is

00:02:26.460 coming into the country and what their ideological commitments are is the most important thing to

00:02:33.540 consider since douglas and i spoke there have been many strange and silly declarations both on the

00:02:40.060 right and the left relating to this crisis and what's especially depressing is that that the

00:02:45.180 demagoguery has been coming from both sides so we've had donald trump and ben carson and ted cruz

00:02:51.420 say things like you know i think trump said there should be a registry for all muslims and we should

00:02:56.960 start closing mosques we shouldn't let any of the syrian refugees in cruz said we should let in only

00:03:03.000 christians it's into the vacuum left by liberals that reasonable security concerns find this kind of

00:03:13.200 expression because the reasonable concerns are being denied at every turn for instance the president has

00:03:19.520 said that no refugees have ever become terrorists but that's simply untrue there are somali refugees

00:03:27.240 living in minnesota who have gone to fight and wage jihad for al-shabab so it is just factually false

00:03:37.080 morally blind and politically stupid to treat this as a non-issue and every time the president opens his

00:03:45.160 mouth on this topic without describing the problem accurately avoiding at all costs the noun islam

00:03:53.320 never uttering the words islamic terrorism or political islam or islamism or even jihadism the

00:04:01.440 feeling of being lied to just becomes more and more galling the republicans are absolutely right to be

00:04:07.840 outraged by this and they're also completely crazy so this is a terrible situation to be in politically

00:04:14.180 president obama has offered pure sanctimony on this topic he talks about american values and you know we're

00:04:21.520 one of the main reasons for a 16 to 100 people are emotionally threatened by attempting to be able to take

00:04:25.680 the solution islamic ánicalosition for more people to they have to continue to claim because the

00:04:26.900 community islamic economy islamic institutions the United Kingdom and the majority as can it be You know

00:04:28.320 the situation if you want to like the coastline to the coastline to fire more than

00:04:35.320 if it is just the gateway Jesus was Habibus in tribunal islamic you know we were different than those

00:04:36.360 dos Masinos sp��겠습니다 but it's really why no reply to James man who wasmente

00:04:41.880 Even in a time at the time he said that now family important is that they mentioned it and we should make any

00:04:44.480 for Christians over Muslims in this process? Of course not. What percentage of Christians will

00:04:50.960 be jihadists or want to live under Sharia law? Zero. And this is a massive, in fact, it is the

00:04:58.120 only concern when talking about security. If we know that some percentage of Muslims will be

00:05:05.300 jihadists, inevitably, if we know we cannot be perfect in our filtering, if we know that a larger

00:05:11.800 percentage will, if not be jihadists, will be committed to resisting assimilation into our

00:05:17.760 society, then to know that a given refugee or family of refugees is Christian is a wealth of

00:05:24.100 information and quite positive information in this context. So it is not mere bigotry or mere

00:05:31.460 xenophobia to express that preference. I hope you understand I'm expressing no sympathy at all

00:05:38.760 with Ted Cruz's politics or with Ted Cruz, but it is totally unhelpful to treat him, though he

00:05:46.060 actually is a religious maniac, like a bigot on this point. This is a quite reasonable concern to

00:05:53.920 voice. And the fact that we have a president who will not even name the problem is giving the right

00:05:59.860 enormous energy that we really don't want them to have here. So while we don't talk about the U.S.

00:06:06.460 context directly with respect to the refugee crisis, you'll hear Douglas and I try to articulate

00:06:13.020 a middle position here, which is understanding the real world facts related to the migrant crisis,

00:06:20.380 acknowledging that the immediate problem of global jihad is not a matter of migration. It's a matter of

00:06:26.260 already radicalized citizens in all of these societies. In any case, Douglas is one of the best

00:06:33.260 people on this topic. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. And now I give

00:06:38.480 you Douglas Murray. Douglas, welcome to the Waking Up podcast. It's great to be with you, Sam.

00:06:49.340 Well, thank you for doing this. As you know, we were supposed to speak last week. I canceled on you

00:06:53.820 twice, one for a recording malfunction and one for a cold, which still lingers. But in the meantime,

00:07:00.980 the jihadists of the world have produced further evidence, perhaps the best in anyone's memory that

00:07:06.660 we cannot live alongside them. And so they've given us even more to talk about. So, but before we dive

00:07:13.980 into that and get into all the areas of our shared interests, I just want to spend a few minutes to

00:07:20.640 talk about your background, just for people who don't know who you are in my audience. When somebody

00:07:26.580 asks you what you do, how do you answer that question? I use the all-embracing term, writer,

00:07:35.380 which is what I do. I've been a writer ever since I've been an adult and a bit before.

00:07:41.920 I started off by writing about literature, which is my first love. And now in more recent years,

00:07:50.320 for the last 15 years anyway, I've ended up writing by necessity, I think, rather than desire about

00:07:57.460 politics, about international affairs, particularly about terrorism, particularly about security.

00:08:04.180 It isn't because I'm a political nut in particular. I think it's because I think that you have to be

00:08:11.520 involved in politics if you care about the culture. And I care about the culture. And I'm very concerned

00:08:17.680 and have all sorts of views on it, which I write about for a plethora of publications and books and so

00:08:24.800 on. And I am also a broadcaster, I suppose. I do a lot in the UK in particular, where I'm from,

00:08:32.300 as I'm sure your listeners can tell from my accent. And yes, and I like to think I write about a very

00:08:37.680 broad range of subjects. I do. But I suppose in recent years, I've ended up being caught more and more

00:08:44.340 writing about the big issue of our time. I wish it would go away. I wish it were possible for me to go back

00:08:51.320 to writing about literature and about music and other things I love. But yeah, there we are.

00:08:56.400 Needless to say, I share your feeling of boredom on this count. I just view every moment spent in

00:09:02.680 conversations of the sort that we're now going to have as a really an extraordinary opportunity cost.

00:09:08.760 And it's really, it's just lacerating to contemplate all the work that is not getting done and all the

00:09:16.860 amusement not being had because of this distraction from the work of civilization. But so what percentage

00:09:24.760 of your time would you say you spend on the issue of Islamism and its problems?

00:09:30.980 Well, I try with my editors at various publications to have a deal that I write an article about

00:09:39.420 something I love for every article I write about something I hate. The 50-50 quota never works out

00:09:46.320 these days quite that much. But I did manage to write a piece. It was before Friday that came out

00:09:53.280 in one of the magazines I'm at, the Spectator magazine here in the UK, which is our oldest weekly

00:09:58.820 magazine. I managed to write a piece on one of my favorite artists, 20th century artist Rex

00:10:03.920 Whistler, who was killed in Normandy in 1944 on his first day of action, but was a wonderful

00:10:09.180 artist. I managed to write about that and I was actually focusing on a review of the new

00:10:13.380 two volumes of T.S. Eliot's complete work in a new critical edition, which I was really hoping

00:10:19.220 to get around to this week. But once again, I'm afraid I've spent time, all my time, on these

00:10:27.040 issues. And I suppose, I mean, one can't moan about it too much. One could always stop.

00:10:32.080 But my hope has always been that there would be lots more people who would say the things

00:10:38.120 you say, say some of the things I say, and that they would come along in greater and greater

00:10:43.140 numbers and that basically I could retire.

00:10:45.980 Alas! Alas, they don't come along in sufficient numbers. But as I say, it's still my hope. Maybe

00:10:55.560 by the time I'm 40, I'm 36 at the moment. Maybe by the time I'm 40, I can, I can retire from

00:11:00.580 the scene. I doubt it.

00:11:01.920 Yeah, well, I can't quite say that I wish for it because for the listeners who are not familiar

00:11:08.120 with you, they should know that watching you debate on these issues, probably on any issue,

00:11:14.980 but I think I've only caught your debates on this topic. It's just a thing of beauty. And

00:11:19.340 happily, YouTube, YouTube is now full of examples of you laying waste to your opponents. So don't

00:11:25.740 retire until some competent disciple can take your mantle.

00:11:31.820 Find me some, find me some.

00:11:34.540 So, okay, well, we seem to be pulled to the topic by a tractor beam here. Obviously, we're going to,

00:11:41.840 we'll talk about Paris. We're now talking on Monday, the Monday after the Friday, where

00:11:47.260 over 130, I think now, people were murdered in Paris by jihadists.

00:11:53.980 I want to get into the larger footprint of our concerns here, which is it's really free speech

00:12:01.880 and the failures of liberalism to protect it and the problem of Islamism and Western masochism

00:12:09.240 in response to it. And also just the related problem of identity politics and imaginary grievances

00:12:17.160 that millions of people find captivating. So there's much more than just AK-47s going off

00:12:24.100 in polite society. But let's get into that. I think I always burn a lot of fuel in talking

00:12:32.340 about this, knowing who my audience is, trying to convince someone that there really is a

00:12:38.720 problem here. Now, that probably is not so necessary in the immediate aftermath of Paris.

00:12:45.040 But people seem to think that people like ourselves are exaggerating the nature of this problem.

00:12:53.100 And so I just give that to you as a doorway into this topic. And we'd just love to hear what you

00:12:57.620 have to say.

00:12:59.320 Well, you know, there are people who exaggerate the problem. And there are many people who

00:13:05.840 underestimate it. As you say, I mean, in the wake of an atrocity like that a couple of days ago,

00:13:12.180 it's unlikely many people are going to underestimate it. But there still are some who do.

00:13:18.320 I would say that one of the most interesting ways of looking about this is one that the American

00:13:26.140 scholar of Islam, Daniel Pipes, says quite often, which is the striking thing in this whole area is

00:13:33.940 that it is a one-way street, pretty much. Very few people say, I used to be worried about Islamic

00:13:41.980 extremism, but I'm not anymore. More people say more every day, many more every year. I'm getting

00:13:50.800 worried about this. And that is something that in a way is a signal for hope. It means that people

00:14:00.540 are paying attention to what is happening in the world. They're starting to join the dots.

00:14:04.700 Late. Sure. But they're starting to join the dots, and they are concerned about it. And as I say,

00:14:11.660 I agree with that. I think it is a one-way street. I've never heard anyone who said, you know, I used

00:14:17.400 to worry about the persecution of religious minorities within Islam, but I don't anymore.

00:14:23.700 Nobody says, you know, it used to be worse, Islamic extremism 20 years ago, and so on.

00:14:29.320 Right. So all of these things, in a way, are very bloody parts of a very bloody learning curve.

00:14:38.100 And I suppose for those of us who care about ideas and about writing and thinking and speaking and

00:14:45.320 the idea of free inquiry and of debate, I suppose one of the most saddening things about all this

00:14:52.160 is simply that it seems to require events always, rather than reason, to propel most people into

00:15:02.700 realizing there's a problem. And that is very disconcerting. It's very sad because obviously we

00:15:10.400 would wish that most people listened to reasonable argument, listened to reasonable summaries of the

00:15:17.280 problem and acted and thought accordingly. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And recent events

00:15:26.360 will, I think, just bear that out further.

00:15:28.960 Yeah. Yeah. People have a hard time taking our enemies at their word. It's really nothing. Speech

00:15:36.980 doesn't count, even when the speech entails a crystal clear discussion of what they plan to do,

00:15:45.160 want to do, aspire to do, if only they had the power to do it, and the incremental evidence ever

00:15:51.080 accruing that they are accomplishing many of these aims. It's just a... I find that secular people

00:15:59.300 tend to doubt that anyone really believes what they say they believe.

00:16:03.980 Yes. Oh, absolutely.

00:16:05.720 They just don't... they can't imagine anyone really believes in paradise. And I've told

00:16:09.980 listeners this many times, but I have literally met anthropologists who have told me that no one

00:16:17.940 believes in paradise and no one is ever motivated by the content of their religious doctrines.

00:16:23.580 This is always some other reason. And this is... when you're in the presence of someone like that,

00:16:29.020 this was at a academic meeting where we were debating these issues. And this was... I mean,

00:16:33.500 this is the kind of thing this person said in public. I've named this person before. I don't know why I'm

00:16:38.780 being sheepish about it now. It's Scotta Tran. Scotta Tran is an anthropologist who is incredibly

00:16:44.560 influential. He gets meetings with various governments, and he has inserted himself very

00:16:51.580 much into the dialogue about terrorism and Islam and all the rest. But he is someone who told me in

00:16:58.740 private, even, both in public and in private, when I said, listen, just level with me. We're standing in

00:17:04.120 the men's room at the Salk Institute. And he said, he looked me in the eye, he said, nobody believes in

00:17:09.700 paradise. And so he's either presuming to be a mind reader because... and knows that everyone is lying,

00:17:17.740 even those who are willing to blow themselves up, you know, and even those who are willing to celebrate

00:17:21.720 their children once they do. You know, it's the greatest deception in human history, if that's the

00:17:28.160 case. Yeah, I mean, that's... I've, for many years, marveled at the capability of reasonable and intelligent

00:17:36.980 people to put reasons into the mouths of terrorists that the terrorists never asked for. And also to come

00:17:45.280 up with increasingly bogus, and now demonstrably wrong, explanations for why things are happening. You know, my

00:17:54.980 think tank, the Henry Jackson Society in London, we've analyzed every single person convicted of

00:17:59.900 Islamist-related offenses in America and in the UK in the last 15 years. It's kind of an ongoing

00:18:04.900 project. It's the only project of its kind that actually just does the statistical analysis of

00:18:10.620 people. And one of the reasons we did that was that some years ago, I got fed up with hearing people

00:18:16.360 saying, for instance, that terrorists that we're dealing with were, for instance, suffering from a lack

00:18:21.620 of education. Obviously not true. Demonstrably not true. But I used to demonstrate it wasn't true by

00:18:27.020 giving the anecdotal cases. You know, the murder of Daniel Pearl was at the London School of Economics.

00:18:32.760 The people who blew up Mike's bar in Tel Aviv were from King's College in London. The 2009 Detroit

00:18:39.180 bomber was from University College London. I'm just focusing on about a square mile of London.

00:18:44.320 So I used to give those. They were anecdotal. So I thought, well, it's worth doing this in the

00:18:49.140 statistical analysis. So we had to enter all the hundreds of cases. And good, you know, you can

00:18:54.220 show this now. Actually, the terrorists in America and in Britain that have been convicted, we're not

00:18:59.660 talking about putative cases or disputed cases or anything. We're talking about people who've been

00:19:02.960 convicted are disproportionately well-educated, are disproportionately likely to have attended

00:19:08.560 university, disproportionately likely to have done further education. So, you know, one by one,

00:19:14.580 you can shoot down these things. It's laborious. It takes a long time. It's very costly. But you can

00:19:19.340 shoot these things down. And I think that we are in the process of that at the moment.

00:19:25.260 And you don't hear that so much anymore. You sure you do from some people. I mean, Tariq Ramadan,

00:19:32.160 long foe and very close enemy of mine, was on the radio in Britain this morning saying that it was to

00:19:36.800 do with integration, education, a whole load of other things. But fewer and fewer people buy that,

00:19:41.180 I would argue. So what this means is you whittle them down to what is the point? What is the cause?

00:19:49.900 What is the propulsion? And this, I say, is a long and slow trudge that people in liberal Western

00:20:00.580 democracies are making towards the truth. And it's going to take a long time. But things like this do

00:20:08.160 take a long time. Because there's so many reasons for us to want to avoid the truth. Because it's

00:20:13.720 very worrying. It has all sorts of very serious implications. And one thing lurking in a lot of

00:20:20.380 people's minds may be, oh my God, if that's the case, then we're screwed.

00:20:25.320 Yeah. And there are other things that make this so difficult to talk about. So for instance,

00:20:30.080 I was noticing, even in your, even in this conversation, some of the mad work of liberal

00:20:38.060 demagogues, or people who Majid Nawaz and I are now calling regressive leftists, was effective

00:20:46.120 even in the way I was listening to you. So for instance, you brought up Daniel Pipes.

00:20:51.940 And now Daniel Pipes is someone who I don't know directly. I've never met him. We've had some

00:20:56.940 email correspondence in the past. I've read some of him, but I haven't, it's been some years since

00:21:02.760 I've followed him. And so I'm not totally familiar with his stuff. I can't really, which is to say

00:21:08.700 that if someone mentions Daniel Pipes, as you just did, there is between me and his name, some residue

00:21:17.660 of charges of bigotry that have got into my head in the same way that no doubt charges of bigotry

00:21:25.560 against you or me have gotten into the heads of others. And so I noticed that there's kind of a

00:21:32.020 bad odor associated with his name. And I could name many other people for whom this is true and for

00:21:37.500 whom it is almost certainly unwarranted, right? But I just don't have the time to read everyone's

00:21:43.960 books at this point or to watch everything they've said on YouTube. And so not being able to vet some

00:21:50.200 of these people, I have declined to make common cause with them. And there's another big example

00:21:56.280 of a person you, I know, have collaborated with before who, you know, I've seen one of his talks

00:22:01.960 and found him really impeccable, but he's often vilified as being a bigot. And that's Mark Stein,

00:22:09.760 right? So I'd like to ask you about both of them, but, or you can decline to talk about their cases,

00:22:17.500 but I just, I just want to point out how insidious this is because here are people who

00:22:24.180 I just simply haven't had the time to read in any depth. And yet, because people have called them

00:22:31.840 bigots, I am now wary of making common cause with them, aligning myself with them,

00:22:37.320 or even forwarding their stuff when I happen to see it and like it, if it's an article,

00:22:41.320 because I don't know how that's going to blow back on me dealing with my own charges of bigotry.

00:22:45.800 Yeah. If I can say so, I mean, I mean, you have, as it were, a bigger problem than I have on that

00:22:51.160 because you, I think you self-identify as a liberal, I suppose, as a left winger, don't you?

00:22:56.620 And we should, we should get into that. Cause I, at this point, I'm not even sure what that means.

00:23:00.200 We should just, we should go through the checklist.

00:23:03.020 I'm not sure what it means either anymore. Um, and, uh, and so on, but I've never,

00:23:08.540 never particularly cared for that. Um, I, um, in all sorts of ways, regard myself as a liberal,

00:23:14.160 in all sorts of ways are regarded by some people as being left wing, but I don't particularly care

00:23:18.820 about it. And I think I'm more identified as being a right winger or a small C conservative and so on.

00:23:23.880 And I don't, I sort of don't mind about the labels anymore. And to tell the truth,

00:23:28.360 I know it might be different in America, but in Europe and in Britain these days,

00:23:32.820 I think that these things are mattering less and less, and we're losing patience with this game.

00:23:36.880 Because you see, if the whole game is played on the left's terms as well, as it were, then first of

00:23:44.560 all, we'll lose. Um, because there are, there is no possibility of confronting very large societal

00:23:52.020 issues only with one fragment of the political, uh, spectrum. And, uh, it's also very, uh, uh, clear,

00:24:00.440 I would say by now that the, and I mean, look, I've got, you know, I'd say some of my best friends

00:24:06.960 on the left, but it is very clear to some of us that the left has been the problem on dealing with

00:24:12.440 these issues. It is the left that has been throwing around willful. And I think deliberately knowing

00:24:18.920 that they're not true allegations against people. You know, I've often said that with the modern left

00:24:25.080 since certainly the end of the cold war, they've basically had a supply and demand problem.

00:24:30.140 They want racists, they want Nazis, they want bigots. And actually, thank goodness, certainly

00:24:36.960 in my society, I think in yours, they're in pretty short supply. And so these people, um,

00:24:43.440 have to find them. They want, they want a supply of bigots and racists and fascists. And actually

00:24:48.180 the supply is extremely small. And the people that are, that they demand, uh, too small in number to

00:24:54.600 really, uh, uh, um, uh, give them enough of a political identity. So they stretch it out. They've

00:25:00.500 deliberately used as offensive terms as they could and use them of people that they must know

00:25:07.600 do not fit that, uh, uh, label. And I think the result is by the way, among other things that they

00:25:15.200 have denuded certain terms of any meaning and that this is going to come back and bite the left in a

00:25:21.560 big way. And I can see this happening in Europe all the time at the moment, you know, the accusation of

00:25:27.460 racism, for instance, I don't think it's going to wash for very much longer. I just don't, uh, nobody

00:25:34.020 cares as much as they used to about that because they have seen the left use it on everyone. I've seen

00:25:41.360 it for years. I've seen, I've seen my black friends called racists. I've seen my black friends called

00:25:48.760 sellouts and coconuts and all sorts of things. I've seen the most vile racial abuse of racial

00:25:55.540 minorities by the left. And I don't care about this anymore. It's too late to be, uh, willing to

00:26:04.360 be blackmailed by people who are fundamentally insincere in their insults. Yeah. And it, but what's,

00:26:11.360 there is still seems to be a mystery here. Cause I agree with you. And it's something I've often

00:26:15.620 remarked on that the, the tactics being used here are just shockingly dishonest, but the commitment

00:26:22.140 to using such tactics, the fact that people see no ethical problem in accusing someone of being a

00:26:28.680 racist who they know isn't a racist or a fascist who they know isn't a fascist. There, there, there must

00:26:33.820 be some underlying urgency, uh, motivating that they must think that, that the ends justify the means in

00:26:40.560 some sense. And it's politics. But what's amazing is that they are in certainly on the topic of

00:26:46.340 Islamism functioning as de facto apologists for theocracy. So this is, it's the fact that they

00:26:52.600 don't see this, the fact that this, or that don't care about this, the fact that identity politics and

00:26:58.680 their concern for, you know, generic brown skinned people or generic immigrants, trumps any concern

00:27:07.620 they, they should otherwise have about real fascism and real theocracy and real human rights

00:27:13.620 abuses. That still strikes me as somewhat mysterious. I feel like I'm in the presence of people who have

00:27:19.600 made some kind of reverse Faustian bargain, whereas it's like they've sold their souls to the devil and

00:27:25.080 they got stupid in return. I mean, so like, like, I mean, just, just before the atrocities in Paris,

00:27:30.800 the previous news story was the, the students at Yale, where we just saw this, these students,

00:27:37.020 you know, and they're shrieking narcissism. I mean, these, these are among the most privileged kids

00:27:42.200 in human history and they became moral and psychological invalids in response to a polite

00:27:48.980 email about Halloween costumes. Yeah. So something is very strange on the left right now. What the hell is

00:27:55.700 going on? Could I, could I give one explanation of what it is? Uh, another, another conservative who

00:28:02.360 I'm sure will, would, would, would make you tingle with, with slight fear as it were, if I mentioned

00:28:08.320 his name, but an American conservative who used to be on the left and moved very much to the right,

00:28:13.420 David Horowitz. Um, uh, uh, uh, he said some years ago, something very interesting, uh, about 1968.

00:28:22.280 Now, I mean, you know, we, we might have all sorts of issues about this, but the, he said something to

00:28:27.680 me, I think is far more true today, which is that the surprising thing is not that young people would

00:28:33.300 rebel. Young people always rebel. This is, uh, uh, something that young people do. The surprising

00:28:38.360 thing is why did the adults give in? Now, I think this is far more, uh, relevant to 19, to today rather

00:28:47.380 than 1968. The amazing question, which hovers over Yale university is why do the adults sit and take

00:28:56.480 it? And the kids can run rampage. Why, what, what's happened to, and this is the really large problem,

00:29:04.060 which, uh, which, which Islamists and other terrible people are simply taking advantage of.

00:29:10.300 Um, somebody needs to say to the shrieking girl who's effing and blinding at her professor,

00:29:16.760 you know what? You're not at a home. This is not a home for you. It's a university. It's a very

00:29:23.720 different thing. And what's more, if you cannot cope with Halloween costumes, then you've got no place

00:29:32.700 at a university because you're going to have no chance of dealing with quantum physics or Shakespeare

00:29:39.940 or Heidegger. If Halloween spooks you out this much, you're a useless person and you're going to

00:29:47.100 go into a useless career because if you're a lawyer and you have gone to Yale, but you're too sensitive

00:29:52.900 to hear about rape cases, you're not going to be able to represent anyone in a court of law. So you're

00:29:58.400 no use for the law. You're no use for literature because you might read a novel, which will trigger

00:30:03.340 you. You're no use for the sciences. You're no use for anything. And that's what the adults should be

00:30:08.820 saying. They should be telling the kids to grow up and the adults have lost their confidence. And

00:30:14.180 that is the most striking thing to me. And let me just say one other thing about this. This whole thing

00:30:20.040 of the weirdo sexual obsession, transgender, trans polygender, identify cis, I've got a penis,

00:30:33.840 but I can still win Glamour Woman of the Year Award. And who are you? Not only do you have to respect me

00:30:40.320 as a woman, if you say I'm not an entire woman, despite the fact I've got a penis still, you're a bigot.

00:30:45.560 And then you've got to find Caitlyn Jenner attractive. If you don't find her attractive,

00:30:51.160 you don't want to sleep with Caitlyn Jenner. You're an even bigger bigot. This is what, and actually to cite the

00:30:56.520 other person you just said that would trigger you, Sam Harris, Mark Stein said this the other day.

00:31:01.660 This is the conversation we're having when the Mullers will nuke us. Everyone will be discussing

00:31:06.780 whether somebody is transgender, despite the fact they've not had any operation. There's a woman in

00:31:12.760 Britain called Jack Monroe, a fatuous far left wing, so-called anti-poverty campaigner, totally

00:31:19.220 talentless individual. This blogger has recently come out as transgender. She says, by the way,

00:31:27.800 she's not going to do anything about it. We just have to call her transgender and regard her as

00:31:33.400 transgender, but she's not going to get a penis put on her and she's not going to have her breasts

00:31:38.400 reduced or taken off or anything. And she's not going to, we've just got to start calling her

00:31:43.280 a non-sexual pronoun. Now it's theirs, but Jack Monroe, the pink newspaper, I'm gay, I read some

00:31:50.560 of this crap. The pink newspaper ran a story about Jack Monroe becoming transgender because she says

00:31:56.500 she is. I think she just wants a bit of publicity. They run a piece about her and they've got to say

00:32:01.400 their. Jack Monroe wrote a piece on their blog saying that when they was younger, I mean,

00:32:08.100 it's an assault on the language apart from anything else. Anyone who cares about our delicate and

00:32:12.500 beautiful language should turn away now. But we'll all be discussing whether somebody who hasn't got

00:32:18.220 a penis can be a man and whether somebody who has got a penis can be glamour woman of the year

00:32:22.640 when Islamists come in with Kalashnikovs. It's pathetic. It's a breakdown in our society and you

00:32:28.880 have to rectify it. Oh, that is hilarious. Well, for those who may just be introduced to you again

00:32:35.780 for the first time in this podcast, there you have a taste of the kind of ire that Douglas is

00:32:42.000 able to summon in the midst of a debate. And that's a gear, unfortunately, which I don't have

00:32:47.600 and wish I did. I think perhaps that part of my brain was damaged by too much meditation.

00:32:53.120 But it is bad for you.

00:32:55.660 It is bad for you.

00:32:57.060 Well, it's certainly bad for this. And you have this gear and Hitch obviously had it and

00:33:02.760 it is incredibly useful. So keep that well oiled. So now to the substance of what you just said,

00:33:10.000 though, but first of all, the fact that you're gay, does that give you any more freedom to say

00:33:15.680 what you just said? Are you also going to get hammered for that litany?

00:33:19.720 Doesn't give you doesn't give doesn't give you any more freedom. I say it's all about politics.

00:33:23.500 Don't be fooled. Homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, all these things are shut up and let me speak

00:33:33.220 and don't think anything different from me. I've never had a single bit of credit from the left

00:33:39.800 for being a gay man opposed to radical Islam. Of course not. Why would they? I don't want it,

00:33:45.460 by the way. I don't want their pats and their pandering and their and and and anything like that.

00:33:52.360 But, um, you know, I see I see all of these things used against people all the time. It's politics.

00:34:02.980 Um, and they don't really care about anything else. They never did. Let's focus on that for a

00:34:09.920 second, because in terms of the anti intellectualism of all this, this for me, it's really the core is

00:34:16.040 people are focused on what you think more than how you think. You know, if you do not think what's

00:34:24.060 been prescribed in the canon of your side of the political spectrum, this presents an immediate

00:34:29.940 problem for you and any and any train of thinking that seems to test those boundaries or God forbid

00:34:36.460 leads into some area of novel thought or a position that doesn't align with all of the of the predictable

00:34:44.100 ones on the checklist of left and right, then you are anathematized. And and yet what you think

00:34:50.760 is not what is important here. It's always how you think it is how you reason it is the the fact that

00:34:56.600 you're available to good chains of evidence and argument. And if you're not available to those

00:35:02.620 things, you're simply not in touch with reality in an ongoing way. And you are an unreliable witness

00:35:08.220 to every subsequent event. I mean, all you have is dogmatism. If your views are not on the table

00:35:14.540 to be modified by new evidence and new arguments, if you push a conversation in a direction that is

00:35:20.620 uncomfortable, and again, I find this especially on the left, although it is it's similar to what

00:35:27.040 happens in a religious context when you begin to challenge the veracity of scripture or any other

00:35:32.720 dogma. If a reliable chain of reasoning and evidence begins to push up against the boundary

00:35:39.980 of some leftist shibboleth, you just reap a storm of personal attacks and lies and there are no rules.

00:35:49.820 Sure. But I mean, why would there be? I mean, these people, as I say, they're fighting for everything

00:35:53.560 that they think they believe in. Why would they not play as dirty as they like? I mean, I think the more

00:36:01.620 interesting thing is, as it were, why people don't do it back. We don't do it back for a very clear

00:36:06.120 reason, which was that we think there should be some decency in this world. But, you know, I or you

00:36:13.420 could at any point decide to turn around with as frivolous attacks on our enemies as they do on us.

00:36:22.300 You know, we could perfectly easily turn around and say, you know, the problem with Glenn Greenwald is

00:36:27.360 he's such a pedophile. Right. He is such a pedophile. And, you know, the problem with Reza Aslan is he

00:36:34.300 just can't stop shagging kids. We could do that. Yeah. It would be as frivolous and as untrue as their

00:36:41.700 constant smears of their opponents. But we don't do it. Why? Because we have a belief in the truth,

00:36:47.960 because we don't want to pump out lies simply to further a political agenda, because we've got a bit

00:36:53.380 of decency in this world. And I think we have to hang on to that. And I'm very glad that by and large

00:36:57.560 people of our thinking do. Let's talk about that. I mean, in what sense are you a conservative?

00:37:04.640 Several different ways. I mean, one is that I've got a very conservative instinct. And I don't like

00:37:13.140 the term progressive. I don't like this term. I don't like the idea. I don't like the idea. I mean,

00:37:19.600 progressing towards what? I think a lot of the fundamental things of progressive so-called

00:37:25.880 politics are things that should make people suspicious. All sorts of things. The idea of

00:37:35.680 a leveling out of society, of fighting until a day when everyone is utterly equal and so on.

00:37:43.580 There are parts of it that are true and good and large parts of it that are obviously something

00:37:50.720 else. I believe in, I swear I was conservative because I believe in retaining the things that

00:37:58.240 are good and think very often that a lot of so-called progressives want to trample on a lot of those

00:38:06.400 things. I think, I suppose, in another way also. I believe in tradition and I believe in custom

00:38:12.040 that there are some things that are good because we have been doing them for a long time and they

00:38:20.660 reflect a wisdom of experience and collective experience and that that in itself is a is a part

00:38:28.860 of politics that should be deemed to be at least something that has worth. So, so a lot of things that

00:38:39.520 I would, by the way, say, I mean, this is different to a considerable degree to a lot of American

00:38:45.600 conservatism and certainly to a lot of American republicanism. In Britain, most small c conservatives

00:38:50.920 like me would, you know, see an Edmund Burke, for instance, and somebody we admire. Right. And

00:39:00.060 that is, I think, rather different in American tradition. Burke, I suppose, had one of the most

00:39:06.700 important statements of my form of conservatism, which is that he saw our role as being to form a

00:39:16.780 and a role of a culture, to form a unity and a pact between those who have gone before, those who are

00:39:25.060 alive now and those who are going to be born. And that you have to be very careful about destroying any

00:39:32.720 particular end of that pact or breaking the pact. And it's it's that that I think would make me

00:39:38.480 conservative, passing on laws and traditions, which have seen my predecessors well, and have done well

00:39:47.280 for them and giving them justice and meaning and all sorts of other things and security and passing

00:39:55.800 them on. Not I suppose this is the crucial difference with the left. I mean, not believing

00:40:00.600 that one can create a utopia in politics. I think this is a this is a very important point,

00:40:07.880 if I say so myself. Politics, it seems to me, is taking on too much significance in our societies

00:40:15.320 these days. It might be to do with the decline of religion. There are other factors. But, you know,

00:40:21.480 I hear of people who in Britain, when the recent election happened, the conservatives won all these

00:40:28.360 people of the left. There was a colleague of mine, a spectator and I had a competition to find the most

00:40:33.320 ludicrous response on the left. But there were people who were claiming they had cried every day.

00:40:38.120 You know, they'd woken up every day since the election, remembered it wasn't a horrible nightmare

00:40:42.040 and burst into tears. My view is this is a totally wrongheaded way to think of politics. Politics is not

00:40:50.040 about everything to do with your life. It's about a bit of your life and the orderly governance of

00:40:55.400 your society. But it's not the the means through which you make people good. It's not the means

00:41:02.360 through which you make people happy. I mean, when people when people think that politics is going to

00:41:07.160 make them happy or thing, I think they must be taking something. No, your personal life makes you

00:41:13.320 happy. Culture makes you happy. I mean, it was Alexander Hetz and I think you said, you know,

00:41:18.360 that that culture and art and the summer lightning of human happiness are the only guarantees we have.

00:41:25.640 Who who would who would want, you know, a Republican contender to give them that?

00:41:30.920 Who would want a Democrat contender to give them that? It's it's a crazy misreading of the role of

00:41:36.520 politics. So I do worry about that on the left. I think it is among the things that makes me makes

00:41:44.680 me conservative. I think it may be just a problem with translation here across the pond, because

00:41:51.320 certainly 90 percent of what you described as the terrain of conservatism, I certainly can align with.

00:41:58.520 But all of that, once you bring it into an American context, is vitiated by a level of ambient

00:42:06.520 religiosity and bamboozlement that is just, you know, when you talk about tradition in Alabama or

00:42:13.880 even in Pennsylvania, tradition is of the sort that would prevent you from believing in evolution.

00:42:21.000 Right. And it would. Right. Now, that's the problem. Yeah. And it would prevent you from believing

00:42:24.680 that's a big problem. Yeah. Even if you're a presidential candidate who happens to be a

00:42:28.520 Yale trained surgeon. Right. I mean, so it's it's. Well, that's that. That, by the way,

00:42:33.640 can I say without wanting to sound too nationalistic is this is that we are very lucky in in Britain,

00:42:44.760 rather specifically in England and I suppose in Scotland as well, but Wales and rather less so

00:42:50.520 Northern Ireland, we're very lucky in that the form of religion which we've inherited is a wounded form

00:42:56.760 of Christianity. It's a cultural form of Christianity, undoubtedly, but one in which belief actually is,

00:43:05.880 you know, is not that important. It's it's quite different from the Christianity of parts of America.

00:43:14.840 I suppose the nearest you'd get, you might get on the coasts, the form of Episcopalianism that was

00:43:20.520 that was close to it, but it's not remotely fundamentalist. The idea of being a fundamentalist

00:43:26.600 Anglican is is is so ludicrous that you know one would put the two words together. And that's partly

00:43:32.760 because of the fact that Anglicanism, Protestant Anglicanism in the United Kingdom in England,

00:43:37.880 was sorted out the church state problem some centuries ago.

00:43:43.880 And made a made a made a made an interesting reconciliation whereby effectively the state

00:43:52.040 owned the religion. But but the religion had a place at the table that was very important,

00:43:57.800 but that that all sorts of compromises happen that have meant that by the 20th century.

00:44:05.400 It isn't it isn't remotely weird, by the way. I mean, there's there are books about this now

00:44:09.480 called there's one only a few years ago from the the the rector of the university church at Oxford

00:44:14.680 University called and called Christian Atheist. And quite a lot of people would regard themselves

00:44:21.000 as that I call myself a Christian atheist, because as various Italian philosophers have said, that's

00:44:28.120 the product of what you are you believe or not is is important. But you are a product of that just as

00:44:34.600 as there are Jewish atheists. And indeed, as we now know, thank goodness, and more in number,

00:44:39.000 Muslim atheists. But but what they've come from is not something that necessarily can be completely

00:44:45.880 ignored or necessarily should be completely ignored. If there is worth in it, then that itself should be

00:44:51.800 should be considered. That's why I don't I don't like the wholesale ridiculing of all religion that

00:44:57.160 some people I think a bit too glibly do. So would you detect some daylight between yourself and

00:45:05.160 me and some of my colleagues for a very long time? Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel

00:45:10.600 Bennett and I were being described essentially as a four headed atheist. We're the new atheists.

00:45:17.800 And, you know, there are differences between certainly differences of emphasis, but also just

00:45:22.360 differences of what we believe to be true or important there. But the generic picture of a

00:45:28.760 very strident attack on all religion, yes, in principle, because it's so much of it, really all

00:45:36.200 of it that's relevant to us rests on a claim about the divine origin of specific books, which is on its

00:45:42.680 face ridiculous and disproved by the contents of every page of those books. It sounds like you you

00:45:48.840 aren't fully aligned with that project. No, I'm not. I'm not for various reasons. But I mean,

00:45:54.360 one is and I don't apply this by any means to you or to to Christopher. I have a I have a problem

00:46:02.760 with something that, as it were, some of your admirers have ended up doing, which is to say the

00:46:09.240 problem is all religion. And you see, and I find this a weaselly way out. I think this is one of the

00:46:15.320 ways in which people avoid the problem. Look, I can understand why people think it.

00:46:21.880 So just to be clear that the problem is all religion as opposed to the problem of Islam.

00:46:27.400 We've got a real problem. Oh, exactly.

00:46:29.560 Well, yes. Well, if I haven't been energetic enough on spelling out why that's confusion,

00:46:34.680 I have to get less sleep at night. And Christopher also was very clear about that. I have a residual,

00:46:42.920 I am sure you won't mind me saying this, a little problem with Richard Dawkins that has an amusing

00:46:52.360 background, if you don't mind me relaying it for a few minutes. Richard and I were meant to be doing

00:46:58.840 a debate a few years ago at the Cambridge Union, where I think the plan was that it was him and me

00:47:05.560 beating up a couple of imams, which sounded great to me. I was looking forward to it enormously.

00:47:11.080 Of course, as you know, actually, Muslim religious leaders never actually turn out for debate. I

00:47:15.160 mean, I don't know if you've ever debated. I mean, they just don't debate. Various sort of

00:47:19.960 scholars and pseudo scholars and publicity seekers do. But generally, the imams steer clear of it

00:47:26.680 for a very clear reason, which is that they know that they'll look like idiots and what they believe

00:47:32.520 or pretend to believe will be disproved. I mean, they're right to avoid debate on their own terms.

00:47:38.440 Mm hmm. But anyhow, I was looking forward to this. It turned out that we didn't have any imams,

00:47:43.320 but we did have Rowan Williams, a sheepish former Archbishop of Canterbury and Tariq Ramadan,

00:47:53.160 as I mentioned before, a very dear enemy. But unfortunately, Richard, I think it was Richard's fault

00:47:58.760 that the motion became stronger and stronger and harder and harder, as it were. And it became that

00:48:03.080 there's no place for religions in the 21st century. And I thought that was a preposterous

00:48:08.040 thing. And so I switched sides and won the debate for the other side, despite the fact I couldn't

00:48:15.560 talk to either of my people on the other side, because I've been so rude about the Archbishop

00:48:20.120 and so vitriolic about Tariq Ramadan that I think we agreed that I would speak last.

00:48:25.320 He said he said he wouldn't have that, Tariq, because he said, you will spend the whole time

00:48:29.800 attacking me. And I gave him my word I wouldn't. I only spent half the speech attacking him.

00:48:34.200 But I tell you this because there's another segue of this, which is that I've also been a bit

00:48:40.280 rude about Richard in that he I think now he has changed on this. But certainly some years ago,

00:48:47.640 he used to give Islam a bit of a soft ride in compared to Christianity. And there's a famous

00:48:53.720 interview which he did on Al Jazeera with somebody called Mehdi Hassan, where Mehdi Hassan read the

00:48:59.880 opening of chapter two of The God Delusion, an amazing piece of rhetoric about how the God of the

00:49:04.520 Old Testament is the most vile, appalling, disgraceful, disgusting figure in all of fiction.

00:49:10.360 So this was read to him on Al Jazeera. And the interviewer said to Richard Dawkins,

00:49:15.240 you know, you believe that of the God of the Old Testament? He said, yes, I do,

00:49:18.520 quite rightly. The interviewer said, you believe that of the God of the Christians?

00:49:21.720 And Richard said, I do, quite rightly. And then the interviewer said, and what about the God of

00:49:25.640 the Koran? And this little flicker went across Richard's eyes. And he said, the God of the Koran,

00:49:32.440 I know less about. And I wrote a piece after this saying that this wasn't surprising and a

00:49:39.080 surprising response from Richard Dawkins. Professor Dawkins was simply demonstrating the

00:49:44.360 survival instinct of his species. I was so pleased with this gag. I reported it, I retold it everywhere

00:49:53.720 I went. And Richard quite rightly took exception to this and said when my next saw him that I owed

00:50:02.200 him an apology. And I gave him a sort of half-arsed apology. But because he has actually, and did

00:50:08.840 actually later in that interview, to be fair to him, you know, ridicule the idea that, you know,

00:50:14.280 Prophet Mo flew around on a half-human horse and all this kind of crap. And so he did go into it a bit

00:50:23.080 more. But I knew exactly what was going on in that moment and that Richard Dawkins effectively came up

00:50:30.200 against that cliff, which we all know is there, which is when what is true and what needs to be said

00:50:39.560 is right at the point where it could screw everything in your life up. Not because it isn't true, but

00:50:47.240 because you're on Al Jazeera and the entire Muslim world could be watching and you may very well discover

00:50:53.400 you've got to leave your house. You've got to go away for a bit. You've got to go into hiding and

00:50:58.600 worse. So I don't, I, it's a bit cruel that I ridicule him and give him as an example is because

00:51:05.880 actually I think Richard Dawkins has done amazing work in all sorts of ways in his career, but I

00:51:11.400 understand the slight reticence and it's a bit cruel of me to, to pick up on it when it has occurred.

00:51:17.560 And I don't think it occurs so much now, but no, my main beef is with the people,

00:51:22.360 the sort of Twitter warriors who responded after Paris the other day by saying the problem is all

00:51:28.920 religions. And I, I think that's a cop-out because I think you need to say, actually, you know what,

00:51:34.040 the response to the load of jihadists, Islamists going around Paris, gunning people down for being

00:51:39.080 in a restaurant does not mean you've got to close like Anglican schools in England that do a perfectly

00:51:47.480 good job of educating kids. It does not mean you need to crack down on rabbis, you know, in synagogues

00:51:56.360 across Europe. In a way, this points to a deep, deep, a cowardice underneath, underneath a cowardice in

00:52:04.200 our time, which is that I think that you and Christopher and others made it possible to say all religions are

00:52:13.080 untrue. All religions can be terrible. All of this is true. But the thing is, in a way,

00:52:21.080 you've also given people the ability to say, we've got a problem with one religion at the moment.

00:52:26.840 But I would say that there is one thing beyond that, which it's also important to consider that

00:52:31.640 some of us still think, which is actually some religions are better than others.

00:52:34.680 Yes. You know, Anglican Christianity, Brian Larch, is a lot better than Sunni Islam.

00:52:42.120 I mean, you know, you'd much rather have the local Anglican vicar come round to tea than your average

00:52:48.400 fire-breathing imam. And we're very lucky, you know, that that is the case. And I sort of just think it

00:52:56.400 needs nodding, too. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm actually perpetually nodding on that point. And since the

00:53:02.840 beginning, I have always been very clear to spell out that generic atheism doesn't make any sense. I

00:53:10.320 mean, there is this bias, a very strong bias among self-identified atheists, that if you're going to

00:53:16.400 be an intellectually consistent atheist, you have to oppose all religions equally, because they're all

00:53:22.040 equally invalid. But this is just simply untrue. It's untrue as a matter of fact, and it's untrue as a

00:53:29.640 matter of moral imperative. So all religions are not equally improbable, because any specific

00:53:37.420 doctrine can be more or less at odds with what we know to be true about the nature of the universe.

00:53:42.520 And if you keep adding doctrines to one another, your belief system becomes less and less plausible.

00:53:48.760 So it's a very simple point I've made, and to the confusion of many people. But Mormonism

00:53:54.980 is objectively less likely to be true than generic Christianity is. Because this is a simple

00:54:02.880 statement of mathematical probability. Mormons believe basically everything Christians believe,

00:54:08.020 and they believe some additional nonsense. So whatever probability you put at Jesus's return to

00:54:14.700 earth to resurrect the dead, you have to put a lesser probability on the claim that he will return

00:54:20.640 to the precise spot of Jackson County, Missouri, right? As opposed to returning anywhere. So

00:54:26.180 the Mormons lose that probabilistic contest there.

00:54:30.840 Wouldn't it be brilliant if there were actually documentation saying that Muhammad had a conviction

00:54:35.620 for fraud before pretending to hear the Quran? I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. We just don't have

00:54:40.800 the paperwork.

00:54:41.600 It's too bad we don't know as much about Muhammad as we do of Joseph Smith, no doubt. And this,

00:54:47.500 obviously, just across the board, this is relevant. So when I say that specific beliefs matter,

00:54:55.640 that means that when I criticize the religious impediments to embryonic stem cell research,

00:55:03.000 I'm not talking about Islam. Because Islam doesn't take a position there. Islam has an admittedly crazy

00:55:08.420 idea, but nonetheless useful idea that the soul doesn't enter the fetus until far past the moment

00:55:15.820 of conception, either day 80 or day 120, depending on which hadith you believe. And so the Islamic

00:55:22.200 state could practice embryonic stem cell research, right? So Islam is not a problem on that front.

00:55:28.180 On that front, we're talking about Christianity and Judaism for the most part. But on every other

00:55:33.780 front now relevant to the maintenance of civilization, Islam, political Islam, jihadism is the problem

00:55:43.820 we all have to focus on. And my concern, which I've voiced now, no doubt, to the boredom of our

00:55:51.520 listeners. They've heard me say it many times over, but perhaps you haven't heard it. My concern is that

00:55:56.360 because of what has happened to the left, and because of the narcissism of the small difference

00:56:02.100 that just captivates everyone in polite society now, where, as Mark Stein said, we're going to be

00:56:07.740 talking about the truly trivial when nukes go off in some major American or European cities. My concern

00:56:14.860 is that at a certain point, we will see only the far right in our own society become energized enough

00:56:23.720 to call a spade a spade and address this, the problem of creeping theocracy under the guise of

00:56:31.560 the civil rights of Muslims.

00:56:34.340 Could I give another example of why that is? This gets into another point, as I say,

00:56:41.060 it might be a point of difference between us before I get to a point of similarity.

00:56:45.420 I mean, I am very concerned in this. I think, again, this is a matter of it's a point of that.

00:56:50.600 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

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00:57:20.600 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 22, 2015

#21 — On the Maintenance of Civilization

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