On Libertarianism, and Why It's Not So Great

I want to start this post by noting that it isn’t intended to express some deep-seated animosity toward libertarians or libertarianism. Compared with mainstream liberalism or conservatism, libertarianism is a breath of fresh

Ron Paul (image source)

air, due to the willingness of many libertarians to attack policies like the drug war, the surveillance state, foreign interventionism, and so forth in ways that liberals and conservatives often won’t. On issues like these, people like myself who are further to the left, in the vicinity of Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald, should be ready and willing to make common cause with libertarians, because there’s plenty of area for agreement. I also recognize that, as with any critique of an ideology as broad as libertarianism, some of the generalizations I make will not apply to all libertarians. With that noted, I’ll proceed.

First, I want to be clear when I use the term libertarian. It’s a term with an interesting history, and was first used politically when an anarchist communist applied the label to himself; in many parts of the world, it’s a word that remains closely connected to traditional anarchism. In the United States, however, it’s used in an idiosyncratic manner, generally to apply to people who claim to support free markets. It’s even been used, rather farcically, by people who will happily tell you what a great president Ronald Reagan was, but here I use it just to refer to the Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard brand of libertarianism, which is, to its credit, strongly critical of Reagan and other Republicans, as much as it is of Democrats.

The idea really at the heart of libertarianism is, of course, liberty. But what kind of liberty, exactly? Upon examination, we find it be a very narrow conception. The Libertarian Party platform defines liberty as that “in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.” We then have, as Marx put it, “the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself…based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man…The practical application of man’s right to liberty is man’s right to private property.” We have the liberty of the individual-as-property-owner, making libertarianism a thoroughly bourgeois ideology.

The libertarian may object that his ideology only says that property (and life and liberty) are what the government (or society) should protect, not what we should personally value most of all, and that each individual is free to choose his own way in life; but society inevitably influences its members, and when property is the fundamental value of society, it becomes the fundamental value of individuals within that society, inevitably.

This commitment to, and fetishization of, property gave birth to the idea of “self-ownership”—the idea that one is the owner of their own person. This is the libertarian justification for a right to bodily integrity. In reality, individual autonomy is a simple fact, and because of individual autonomy, in order to foster this autonomy, property has come into being. Libertarianism stands this reality on its head, claiming that because of the laws of property, individual autonomy is philosophically justified in coming into being. Plainly enough, each person is their own body, no more, no less—without physical matter, a body of some sort, there is no person. In libertarianism, however, we have the individual-as-property-owner as distinguishable from his physical body, in possession and ownership of his physical body. It’s on this philosophical basis that a person has their right not to be killed or physically injured by others, and to do what they please with their own body.

With liberty and property being understood as essentially the same, we come to the third fundamental right—life. The Party platform defines this right, in practice, as “the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others.” In other words, the right to life as another property, protected from other members of society, but nothing else. The right to life, then, does not mean the right be helped to stay alive when afflicted with illness, injury, or poverty, unless those are directly inflicted by another person. The right to life is ultimately the right not be killed or maimed by another person, i.e., the right to be protected from one’s fellow-citizens, rather than any sort of genuinely right to life as such. Thus, the libertarian philosophy is strongly opposed to government welfare programs, healthcare programs, economic regulation, etc. The ill effects of not having these are explained away, or justified, by use of convenient fictions.

The most prominent of these fictions is the notion of voluntary exchange. For instance, it may seem at first glance that an employer maintaining unsafe working conditions and paying his employees starvation wages is causing them to suffer unfairly, but this is all right because the employees “voluntarily” work there. Perhaps there were no better jobs available and they would starve to death if they didn’t make money, but nonetheless this “voluntary” decision makes the suffering inflicted by the employer acceptable.

We’re furthermore invited to believe the fiction that one can acquire property as an isolated individual, without affecting anyone else, and that the individual who becomes enormously wealthy is somehow doing so without impacting the rest of society. The problem with this is that there is, in fact, a finite amount of property in existence—one person possessing wealth means that everyone else has that much less. And, of course, enormous wealth is generally accumulated by profiting off of workers who “voluntarily” receive less than the full product of their labor.

One could, alternatively, rely on the more pragmatic (but equally unconvincing) argument that, whatever undesirable by-products a libertarian economy might have (such as low-paid workers and unsafe working conditions), it would on the whole produce a better society than the alternatives. This is hard to disprove, given that there are not a plentitude of libertarian societies one can point to; Murray Rothbard cites ancient Ireland as one, but for obvious reasons it seems a bit hard to see an ancient civilization with a mostly pastoral economy as providing the perfect model for the industrialized countries of the twenty-first century, even if we really believe Ireland did follow the principles of libertarianism (which is questionable) and that it really was, as Rothbard claims, a great society.

It does seem a tad hard to believe that libertarianism would really be better than the alternatives, however, when countries that deviate so heavily from its doctrines (at least economically) do so well; the highest-ranking countries in the world on various metrics, in numerous lists, are consistently countries with expansive social welfare provisions and public programs. If it’s true that government intervention in the economy causes more harm than good, it’s a bit hard to explain why the most successful countries in the world by numerous metrics are the ones Bernie Sanders, and not Ron Paul, wants to emulate.

I would lastly like to challenge the notion that America was founded on libertarian principles, which is constantly claimed by libertarians. The easiest way I can think of to do this is to list a few “un-libertarian” quotes from the Founding Fathers:

“All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of publick Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

—Thomas Paine

“[T]he consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property..[a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

—Thomas Jefferson


“In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”

—James Madison

This should be enough to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers were certainly not, as a group, opposed to any sort of redistribution of wealth, as the libertarians are. Libertarianism can boast a sort of heritage from the bourgeois classical liberalism that is often seen in the writings of the founders, however, and it has radicalized all the most problematic elements of that philosophy so as to render it no longer even realistic. With all this being said, libertarianism is still refreshing in how willing it is to deviate from ideas that both liberals and conservatives often stubbornly cling to; but one wishes it could do so without finding other ideas to cling to just as stubbornly.

Dictators, Disease, and Destruction (and how we might boost all three in one fell swoop)

Those who follow politics closely may have heard talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new deal trade that the Obama administration is doing its best to sell. Obama is seeking to fast-track the deal, meaning that whatever agreement is ultimately hammered out would be put to a simple yes-or-no vote in Congress—no amendments, no filibusters. So, what is this thing, and why should anyone care?

From Wikileaks

In short, the TPP is a proposed between a whole bunch of countries that would impose a lot of new rules on those countries. It's called a trade deal, but it doesn't have a whole lot to do with trade, when you get down to it—it's more about creating the best possible atmosphere for huge, transnational corporations to make an even more obscene amount of money than they already do. As for the average people living in these countries? The deal's a little nastier for them.

For instance, the TPP gives businesses the right to sue any country that's signed onto the deal if the government of that country introduces any law or policy that could interfere with that business's profit. This is a pretty big concern given the minor issue we have with our climate currently falling to pieces and the fact that a lot of environmental legislation that desperately needs to be enacted would cut into the profits of companies that are polluting the atmosphere; if a country enacted one of these laws, under the TPP, they could be sued by one of those polluters for "unfairly" cutting into their profits. Not exactly the best way to address the climate crisis.

There's an even more immediate impact to be felt due to the provisions when it comes to prescription drugs. Prescription drug companies have a huge role at the negotiating table for the TPP, and, not surprisingly, aren't big fans of the fact that people in developing countries are buying cheaper versions of their drugs from someone other than them. The TPP "fixes" this "problem" by having increased "intellectual property" protections; in short, higher drug prices for people in developing countries. Some would say that making drugs harder for poor people to afford is not too likely to get us closer to a disease-free world, but don't worry—according to President Obama, those people are just conspiracy theorists who don't understand how great the TPP really is.

As appealing as I'm sure the deal sounds from what I've said so far, there's still more that's worth mentioning. Two of the countries whose governments are helping to negotiate the TPP are Brunei and Malaysia, both countries that harshly punish any same-sex acts; Brunei punishes homosexuality with death by stoning. This means that the TPP, in effect, offers trade benefits to countries that are punishing LGBT citizens, sometimes with death. Sort of makes you wonder how sincere Obama's commitment to LGBT rights really is.

Aside from basically just flat-out lying about what the deal will do, the White House has defended it by saying that, because it's good for businesses, it'll be good for the workers too—that's right, it'll trickle down. Let that serve as a reminder that Republicans have no monopoly on this stupid justification. In fact, it's been used by both parties for decades to justify their economic policy; Democrats may use debates over relatively minor tax increases as an opportunity to paint themselves as the anti-trickle down party, but the major parts of their agenda—trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP, repealing New Deal legislation, appointing Wall Street insiders to high positions—testifies otherwise. Neither of the major parties stands for the economically exploited, and that's something we would do well to keep in mind.

Obama's Not-War On ISIS

"What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."

—GWF Hegel

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages (edited by me)

I've already addressed the Obama Administration's Totally-Not-War-Or-Anything-Like-That against ISIS a couple times before, but it's particularly pertinent to do so now, once again. President Obama has requested from Congress another Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), or what we might refer to as a declaration of we're-still-not-calling-it-war. Obama conducted an entire offensive in Libya without congressional approval, and our "counterterrorism" against ISIS has now been ongoing for six months without any such approval—so why is that the president now feels it's appropriate to ask for a new AUMF?

The answer is not exactly a comforting one. It's clear that Obama isn't admitting wrongdoing, as he's continued to maintain his current not-war is authorized by the 2001 AUMF. He could just be offering Congress the chance to have its voice heard just to be polite, but that seems a tad dubious. So what possibility is left? In a word, escalation.

As we know well by this point, Obama has given us his guarantee that there will be no "boots on the ground." This hasn't proven to be very meaningful so far (unless the over-2,500 security personnel and military advisers in Iraq are wearing sneakers, maybe), and the proposed AUMF doesn't do much to strengthen it. We have a vague promise that there will be no "enduring offensive ground combat operations," which is essentially meaningless when one takes into account that (by pure coincidence, of course) the president is the one with the authority to decide what "enduring" and "offensive" mean (and presumably what "ground" means, too, given that the boots worn by US military personnel in Iraq are apparently not on it).

Of course, as I've previously noted, even if Obama does maintain his "no combat troops" pledge, that doesn't mean the next president will—and, conveniently enough, the sunset provision on the AUMF would be in 2018, well after Obama's successor is in office; whether that's a Republican or Hillary Clinton, we have some reason to be worried.

As Noam Chomsky, among others, has noted, it's US involvement in the Middle East that's helped to create the scourge that is ISIS—the idea of a war (erm, I mean "counterterrorism offensive") to rectify that problem is, of course, completely nonsensical. As if to remind us the dangers of US involvement in the Middle East, the government of Yemen was recently overtaken by a coup. The culprits are the Shia Houthi, who have been alienated by the policies of Yemen's US-backed government (both before and after the 2011 revolution). The Sunni community within the country, feeling threatened by the Shia insurgency, has increasingly turned to al-Qaeda (you know, that group that we thought was the worst thing ever, before ISIS came into being).

Even if we were to devote the resources (i.e. lives and money) necessary to defeat ISIS, there's no reason to think that that wouldn't have the effect of creating some other horrible terror group, just as our war to get rid of Saddam Hussein ended up creating this nightmare. There's no pretty solution for the ISIS problem, but greater US involvement is no solution at all. If you live in the US, now would be a good time to call your representative and urge them to vote "no" on the AUMF that's been proposed. Before you write this off as pointless, keep in mind that it succeeded back in 2013, when Congress was scared away from approving Obama's plan for airstrikes on Syria.

The new war (whether we call it that or not) is not going to be to the benefit of the general populace of the US, Europe, Iraq, or Syria. It's hard to imagine ISIS can be defeated in any way but through war, but it's not our war to fight and we are not helping anyone by getting involved in it. Even if the fearmongering about ISIS were anything but blatant lies, this would be exactly the wrong thing to do in the course of addressing the problem. If Congress approves the AUMF as it's been proposed, it perpetuates the same policies that have created the current situation.

How Political Incorrectness Was Stolen

I've always detested political correctness. Even before I was old enough to actually understand politics, it always came off to me as a stupid set of rules written by people who thought that no one should ever have to be offended, and that even innocuous speech and behaviors should be deemed "offensive." My impression of it over the years has hardly improved; it’s always seemed like—and still seems like—an excuse to get outraged over stupid things, act victimized, and prevent any sort of enlightened discussion on serious issues from actually taking place, often while promoting shallow, empty catchphrases that are more problematic than helpful.

George Carlin (Image from Reuters)

Ever since I discovered them, I’ve been a fan of George Carlin’s numerous takedowns of the hypocrisy and frivolity of the PC movement; it’s in that vein of anti-PC thought that I’ve always fallen. Historically, I consider myself to have pretty good company: Carlin, Marilyn Manson, who’s always been just as ready to offend PC liberals as he has the Christian right, and Hunter S. Thompson, who always represented the spirit of political incorrectness in his very existence. The stated goals of political correctness—moving toward a society where we tolerate our differences with one another and no one is unfairly discriminated against or made to feel inferior—were always ones I supported, but the victim mentality of the PC movement, their constant and usually unjustified outrage, their readiness to glorify people who say and do things that have reason to be offensive, just not to their side—those were always enough to turn me off.

But it’s because of my disgust for that sort of shallowness and hypocrisy that a disheartening truth has become clear to me, after a barrage of events to back it up—the uncritical deification of the dead Charlie Hebdo journalists, Salman Rushdie’s vindictive attacks against those who criticize “our fallen comrades,” Bill Maher’s claim that liberals are “bullying” him, and then, of course, Jonathan Chait’s empty-headed bad joke of an article; there is a new breed of political correctness: Political Incorrectness. People like Maher, who I once thought of as almost an heir to Carlin’s anti-PC individualist legacy, have revealed themselves to be no more eager to have a rational discussion, no less willing to play the victim, and just as ready to exploit good ideas as an excuse for loathsome garbage, than the PC crusaders they so despise.

Political correctness, to this new movement, is a convenient accusation to lob at anyone who challenges their mendacity—take when, back in May of 2013, Maher had Glenn Greenwald on his show, and after Greenwald threw a mountain of facts at him rebutting his claims about Islam, Maher eschewed rational argumentation in favor of accusing him of holding “a silly, liberal view that all religions are alike, because it makes [Greenwald] feel good [to think so].” Similarly, when, last year, Brandeis University decided not to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree because of her statements on Islam (such as that the West should fight a war against it using military force and that it’s a “nihilistic cult of death” that it “legitimates murder”), Sam Harris immediately responded by deeming the university’s act a capitulation to “PC-bullying.”

Harris also wrote off criticism of his support for ethnic profiling as being largely motivated by political correctness, and lacking substantive critique; Rushdie, too, has claimed that because of the “intimidation” of political correctness, we are unable to address the major problems associated with the War on Terror (presumably, he’s not referring to the very true, but largely unmentioned, fact that the United States, being the world’s leading terrorist nation, has no business waging a “War on Terror”). Like Jonathan Chait in his recent article, Harris, Rushdie, Maher, and the rest of the “Political Incorrectness” movement readily write off whatever arguments or actions contradict their “Politically Incorrect” views as being motivated by PC standards, regardless of who’s behind them and the rationale that’s offered for them.

As can be seen from these quotes, though, it’s not enough for the champions of “Political Incorrectness” to just dismiss criticism of their views as PC bullshit; rather, it’s crucial that political correctness of almost any incarnation is now a type of “bullying” or “intimidation” (or fascism, depending on who you’re talking to). One of the most annoying traits of the PC movement (particularly among self-proclaimed feminists on sites like Tumblr), for me, has always been the victim mentality underlying it, so it’s particularly disappointing to see these proponents of “Political Incorrectness” succumbing to the same self-indulgent nonsense. The downright whininess of the “Politically Incorrect” is, at times, farcical, such as when Sam Harris complained to Cenk Uygur about (perish the thought!) being called a “douchebag” in an article on Salon (we can only hope poor Sam has gotten the help he needed in recovering from that degree of PC bullying). The “Politically Incorrect” crew throws around accusations of bullying, authoritarianism, and censorship almost as readily as online “Social Justice Warriors” throw out accusations of racism and misogyny. What makes this particularly ironic, of course, is the standard line from the “Politically Incorrect” that what they really want is an open discussion and that their opponents should “just stop being so sensitive!”

Even worse, though, is that the “Politically Incorrect” crowd is really not that great when it comes to “politically correct” issues like the LGBT cause, religious tolerance, women’s equality, and so forth. Not long ago, Bill Maher cited how “Facebook has now decided we have to choose, in our profile, from 56 different genders” (which, if he’d checked, he would know are largely just slightly different terms for the same things, and are really just various prompts you’ll get if you select the “custom” option and begin typing, rather than some long list you have to scroll through) as an example of liberals being “obnoxious;” in a stand-up routine, he went on to mockingly list options like intersex, bigender, and genderfluid (apparently Bill Maher is unaware of the various societies throughout history—all, no doubt, ruled by PC fascists—that have recognized more than two genders). And, even taking into account that he’s a comedian, it’s a bit hard not to detect misogyny in some of his routines, as he talks about the "feminization" of society, where sensitivity matters more than facts.

Harris is worse; his ideas about “conversational intolerance” are completely incompatible with the view of a society where no one is made to feel unwelcome based on personal creed (as long as that creed tolerates others and harms no one). His advocacy for “benign dictatorship” being imposed on Muslim countries by the West as a means of transitioning to democracy shows an undeniable belief in an almost inherent superiority of Westerners, to the extent that even a Western-imposed dictator is better than a Middle Eastern Muslim democracy (until, of course, we can properly civilize the Muslims).

Then, of course, we have the late Christopher Hitchens—not a just a saint for the New Atheists, but for many of the “Politically Incorrect” as well (no surprise, given the overlap). With him we run into a gold mine of awful views, from his support of the Iraq War to his view that Native Americans really should get over the whole “genocide” deal because it was one of those unfortunate things that happens in the process of advancing as a species. Hitchens said and did the sort of things that even some of today’s conservatives would back away from.

With Manson, Carlin, or Thompson, while you might not exactly get that “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” feeling, there's always the sense of a sort of “you don’t screw with me and mine, I won’t screw with you” attitude—that as long as someone else isn’t hurting anyone, there’s no reason to bother them. The Manson-Carlin-Thompson dream society is an essentially libertarian one—not libertarian in the Ron Paul free market sense of the word, but rather a society where people are free to be who they are, and aren’t under the thumb of big business, big government, religious institutions, or the thought police. In the end, they're on the side of the “little guy,” whoever it is, in the present or the past, that's getting unfairly kicked around (or worse) based on race, class, or personal creed. The same, I’m afraid, just can’t be said for the Mahers, Harrises, and Hitchenses of the world.

In the end, though, there really is a defining feature of “Political Incorrectness” that makes it vastly worse than the PC values and attitudes it’s supposed to save us from: it consistently, with few exceptions, ends up defending the worst aspects of Western foreign policy. This stands in stark contrast to the old-school political incorrectness I’ve mentioned. Between Carlin’s scathing quips about how the US likes to bomb brown people, Thompson’s unequivocal condemnation of George W. Bush for “killing brown skinned children in the name of Jesus and the American people,” and Manson’s comparison of America’s role in the Iraq War to a large-scale version of the Columbine shooting, it’s very clear where each of them falls on the foreign policy debate: with those who hold the Noam Chomsky-esque view that American foreign policy is largely murder on a massive scale. And why not? Isn’t the idea that when the government disintegrates innocents halfway across the world, it’s somehow more noble than any other instance of murder, just an example of a particularly awful sort of political correctness? Isn’t calling out the crimes of the government we live under challenging the standard on what it’s “acceptable” to say in perhaps the most important way possible?

But, unsurprisingly, the “Politically Incorrect” see it differently; this is obvious enough with Harris or Hitchens, given their readiness to use whatever force necessary to eliminate the Islamic extremism they claim is the real threat to civilization; given his unfettered praise of Obama, one can’t expect anything too impressive from Chait on the foreign policy front, either. Steven Pinker, another “Politically Incorrect” “intellectual,” asserts that democracies like the US “tend to stay out of disputes across the board,” disregarding all examples to the contrary and asserting there has been a “Long Peace” since World War II. Maher is probably the best in this respect, given his opposition to the Iraq War and that he even went as far as to compare the drone war to terrorism—but, as illustrated in his scuffle with Glenn Greenwald, that doesn’t keep from ultimately defending the idea that we Westerners are far more civilized than Those People (i.e. Muslims).

For all the stupidity of political correctness, it is at least on the right side of this issue; while the PC warriors may be obnoxious, one rarely finds them defending Western foreign policy or trying to stick up for the human rights record of the US or UK. The PC left is not only annoying, but certainly also hypocritical at times. But issues like these are trifles compared to the monstrous crimes that have occurred as part of US foreign policy, and which the “Politically Incorrect” would often like to gloss over or even defend. By giving cover to that sort of barbarism, “Political Incorrectness” earns itself the scorn and disgust of anyone concerned with human rights. It’s this issue, ultimately, that’s prompted me to focus so much on figures like Maher and Harris recently.

Anti-PC individualism, as espoused by Carlin, Thompson, Manson, and numerous others, has been buried by people claiming to represent it but using it as a façade to promote a completely different set of ideas. We need someone who condemns the stupidities of the PC movement on the one hand—a movement that really has gained a disquieting amount of influence—but who stands just as strongly against the violence of Western foreign policy and the lies than enable it from people like Harris and Hitchens. I don’t know who might fill that role, but whoever it is, now would be a great time for them to step into the spotlight.

[Later note: Originally, I cited California's affirmative consent law as an example of political correctness leading to a bad policy. However, I have since reevaluated my position and consider my former views on the law to have been based on a poor understanding of it, and I have concluded that, while there may be some concerns in how it's enforced, the law is fundamentally sound.]

Not a Very Accurate Thing to Say: A Response to Jonathan Chait

There's an article by the journalist Jonathan Chait that's gaining a decent bit of attention lately, entitled "Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say." It's already gotten a fair bit of criticism (not all of which I agree with), but I thought I'd throw in my two cents on it anyway. To be honest, upon first seeing it, I thought it might be something I'd end up agreeing with—I'm no fan of political correctness, and I think it's one of the most annoying tendencies within the modern left. However, it became clear after not too long that this article was not some well-thought-out critique of political correctness so much as an attack on viewpoints Chait doesn't like by strawman and by associating them with legitimate stupidity which isn't directly related to them in any meaningful fashion. Per the usual, I'll pick the article apart here.

The article starts out decently enough, talking about a recent incident where a student journalist was harassed and fired because of a piece he published satirizing PC culture, and an incident in 1992 when a group of angry radical feminists stole a videotape from another feminist who had an exhibition documenting the lives of sex workers who viewed their profession as empowering. Correctly, Chait views both of these incidents as PC stupidity run amok. However, it's shortly after this that Chait begins to reveal how this article is ultimately his own stupidity run amok, as he claims that the "theory animating both attacks turns out to be a durable one, with deep roots in the political left."

Next, Chait complains about the criticism of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons:

On Twitter, “Je Suis Charlie,” a slogan heralding free speech, was briefly one of the most popular news hashtags in history. But soon came the reactions (“Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie”) from those on the left accusing the newspaper of racism and those on the right identifying the cartoons as hate speech. Many media companies, including the New York Times, have declined to publish the cartoons the terrorists deemed offensive, a stance that has attracted strident criticism from some readers. These sudden, dramatic expressions of anguish against insensitivity and oversensitivity come at a moment when large segments of American culture have convulsed into censoriousness.

This is something I'm happy Chait gave the opportunity to address—while I've already attacked the New Atheist response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I haven't very much discussed the actual cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo. The truth is, not only do you not have to be a supporter of political correctness to condemn them; if you honestly see nothing wrong with some of the cartoons, I wonder if there's not something wrong with you. How about this one, making light of peaceful protestors killed by the Egyptian government (the text reads, "The Qur'an is shit—it doesn't stop bullets")? Yeah, hilarious. There's an entire letter that's now surfaced, written (before the shooting) by Olivier Cyran, who once worked at Charlie Hebdo, attacking their increasing obsession with mocking and degrading Muslims. The magazine quotes Bernard Maris (a journalist that was killed in the attack) as writing:

Show your breasts, Amina [a member of FEMEN who posed topless], show your genitals to all those bearded retards who hang around on porno sites, to all the desert pigs who preach morality at home and pay for escorts in foreign palaces, and dream of seeing you stoned to death after raping you... Your nude body is of an absolute purity, compared to their jellabas and repugnant niqabs.

Nothing Islamophobic about that. (Oh, I forgot, I'm not supposed to criticize him because he was killed. Whoops.)

Chait's next examples of political correctness gone awry are not much better; he cites the petition to revoke the invitation to Bill Maher to give UC Berkeley's commencement speech (an issue I've already addressed), glibly noting that Bill Maher has criticized Islam "along with nearly all the other major world religions." The fact that Bill Maher has explicitly singled out Islam and that his criticisms of it are particularly problematic is conveniently overlooked (though, as I said before, I don't support the petition).

Similarly, "protesters at Smith College demanded the cancellation of a commencement address by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, blaming the organization for 'imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.'" So the protestors didn't want the commencement speech given by the managing director of an organization that routinely exploits and harms third-world countries, who herself champions the disastrous European austerity measures? Can't imagine why, seems like a great pick to me.

In the same vein,

Rutgers protesters scared away Condoleezza Rice; others at Brandeis blocked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s-rights champion who is also a staunch critic of Islam; and those at Haverford successfully protested ­former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters.

What's shocking is not that these figures were "blocked" by protestors but that the universities would even consider them as commencement speakers: Rice avidly backed the US invasion of Iraq, a major war crime; Hirsi Ali said that the West needs to fight a war against Islam, using military force if necessary; Birgeneau sided with police who brutalized nonviolent protestors on his campus. Are we honestly supposed to feel bad that they were scared off?

Chait then goes on to cite a number of other examples of what he views as PC craziness, which I mostly agree are genuinely stupid. In fact, I agreed so substantially that I wasn't sure that the article would actually be worth responding to—that is, until, it got to the latter bit of it. There, the things he says begin to become so absurd that it's quite a task to demonstrate how wrong they are—the best way is to simply look at them bit by bit.

The right wing in the United States is unusually strong compared with other industrialized democracies, and it has spent two generations turning liberal into a feared buzzword with radical connotations. This long propaganda campaign has implanted the misperception — not only among conservatives but even many liberals — that liberals and “the left” stand for the same things.

This part is actually true, and I find it quite annoying for reasons very unlike Chait's. I find it very annoying that my ideology is constantly grouped in with those whose views I strongly dislike (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, etc.)  as "leftism." Likewise, I find it incredibly annoying that the right wing actually believes liberal hacks like these are "left-wing" in any sense; and I find it equally irritating that it's popular among some mainstream Democrats to fancy themselves as somehow being far-left just because they hate Republicans.

It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. (So, for that matter, do most conservatives.)

Uh-huh. Let's look at the three claims this paragraph makes, in effect: Claim A: "liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights..." If by liberals you mean mainstream liberals like Chait, this could hardly be less true. Chait is yet another Obama apologist, willing to overlook or endorse minor issues pertaining to individual rights under the president such as his expanded drone strikes (so much for the right to a fair trial), expanded NSA spying (so much for the fourth amendment), and role in keeping a Yemeni journalist in prison on bogus charges (and there goes freedom of the press). This sort of thing is all too typical of mainstream liberals, who often continue to hail the greatness of Obama in spite of his blatantly problematic (to put it politely) legacy.

Claim B: "most conservatives" also "hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition." Even more absurd, considering that Obama's worst policies have often been too mild for many conservatives. American conservatism is largely American liberalism minus the few shreds of humanity that that ideology has. To say it defends individual rights or holds to Enlightenment values is laughable.

There's also an implicit third claim: leftists don't "hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace." I guess someone should tell that to Noam Chomsky, one of the most renowned leftists on Earth, who has consistently defended individual rights, freedom of expression, and a "free political marketplace" (whatever that means) from attacks on them by liberals and conservatives, and who cites Enlightenment principles as the core of his anarchist philosophy.

It gets better next:

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

This overlooks the minor fact that Marx wrote an entire work defending freedom of the press and attacking censorship and that prominent Marxists throughout history, such as Rosa Luxemburg, have defended "freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly...the free battle of opinions." It's a bit telling that Chait neither quotes nor cites anything to back up his claim. Why complicate an idiotically contrived narrative with actual facts, though?

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. “The liberal view,” wrote MacKinnon 30 years ago, “is that abstract categories — like speech or equality — define systems. Every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere. Strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of Blacks.” She deemed this nonsensical: “It equates substantive powerlessness with substantive power and calls treating these the same, ‘equality.’ ”

The idea that strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of blacks is, in fact, nonsensical. Of course, if you genuinely believe in free speech, you have to support it for even abhorrent groups like the Klan; but it's odd that Chait should choose this view from MacKinnon to illustrate the "problems" with the far left. Furthermore, what right does MacKinnon have to represent the far left? By no means is every radical leftist a radical feminist, like MacKinnon--in fact, while many of the radical feminists I know of hold far-left viewpoints, not that many of the radical leftists I know of are radical feminists.

Skipping ahead a bit, we get this paragraph:

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.

I have a longstanding distaste for political correctness, but the idea that the "p.c. left" is more "philosophically threatening" than conservatism (or the psychotic ideology that we refer to today in the United States when we use that word) is unfathomably stupid. Let's have a brief refresher of the "accomplishments" of Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of American conservatism:

• support for the South African apartheid regime, whose military aggression killed 1.5 million people in neighboring countries
• support for IMF "structural adjustment programs" which led to the deaths of an estimated 6 million children under five per year
• funding of South American terrorists who reportedly raped, murdered, and tortured civilians
• weakening of unions and the middle class at home in the United States 
• policies that helped pave the way for the surveillance state we have today

And the movement that venerates this man as some kind of American hero is supposedly embracing a less damaging philosophy than the "p.c. left" because the latter tend be whiny and oversensitive. A bit of a stretch.
 
Chait then launches into a discussion of a professor of feminist studies who encountered young pro-life activists and, after they refused to take down their sign, "snatched the sign, took it back to her office to destroy it, and shoved one of the [protestors] on the way." Supposedly this event and the fact that there were people who defended it is some damning indication of the evils of the far left and the danger of political correctness. While the incident and the defense of it are deplorable, somehow the fact that there are people in the US government who still defend the illegal invasion and occupation of a country that posed no threat to us seems a tad more pressing.

Chait goes on to discuss how the PC movement of the 1990's was vanquished because, thankfully, Bill Clinton came along to rescue us from it and return us to the world of genuine, good liberalism instead of politically correct leftism. Yes, thank God that Bill Clinton could save us from political correctness. True, he did end up bombing a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and killing maybe tens of thousands for no decent reason, but isn't that a minor issue compared to the menace of political correctness?

After a couple paragraphs vacillating between whether political correctness will or won't be vanquished again in the near future, Chait wraps up with this:

That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

Yes, nevermind the small fact that social freedoms for blacks, Jews, gays, and women were advocated for by far-leftists well before American liberalism did anything to address their situation. In Chait's mind, apparently, you have to abide by what he considers American liberalism (singing the praises of Clinton and Obama, essentially) or you must be a member of the "p.c. left." So Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and Gore Vidal are apparently either nonexistent, members of the "p.c. left" (despite holding ideas not even vaguely resembling the ones Chait describes), or actually mainstream liberals (despite detesting the ideology Chait espouses).

Ultimately, this is either Chait's attempt to smear leftism in order to deflect its criticism of mainstream liberalism, or Chait is really just too ignorant to know the complete stupidity of his claims about leftism. Neither says anything good about him as a journalist. But, in spite of his mendacious claims about their ideology, major far-left figures both today and throughout history would eagerly defend his right to publish this article. That fact, of course, defeats his arguments far more effectively than any kind of censorship ever could.

Note: The claim that the structural adjustment programs led to the deaths of six million children under five per year was slightly reworded for greater accuracy and the hyperlink was directed to a more reliable source. I also qualified the claim about Clinton's bombing killing tens of thousands as the number is unknown.

Understanding New Atheism

Having already addressed the factually challenged attacks on Islam from the clergy and laity of the Church of New Atheism, it seems an appropriate time to examine in greater depth the dogma of that sacred institution. Like any good cult, it provides its members with a conveniently prepackaged set of beliefs that they need not take the time to think too critically about; in fact, the less they do so, the better. Let us take a look, then, the doctrines of the Church, starting with its most fundamental.

The Church of New Atheism’s golden rule, the core of its dogma, is that "religion" is the supreme evil to be exterminated; I put religion in quotes because it essentially means whatever the New Atheist wants it to at any given moment (usually Islam or, to a lesser extent, Christianity). The creation of religion is the original sin in the New Atheist scripture, and mankind has suffered throughout history because of this sin. The only way forward is for religion to be eradicated. The New Atheist Sacred Cause is the fight against religion, a fight that trumps all others in its importance.

That this is held as a sacred principle should be evident from both what those from the Church do and say; the Reverend Sam Harris has said that, given the choice to eliminate religion or rape, he would "not hesitate" to choose religion. Archbishop Richard Dawkins has said that he considers faith as "one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate." The deceased, ever-venerated Saint Christopher Hitchens went so far as to praise Lenin and Trotsky's forcible, murderous "secularization" of Russia, not even acknowledging the obvious inhumanity of the religious persecution that accomplished it.

Furthermore, the Church of New Atheism really must view religion as some kind of almost transcendent evil for it to unite its members as it does; Saint Christopher, for instance, eagerly supported the Iraq War, but even the New Atheists who opposed it (and, accordingly, must see it as the cause of perhaps hundreds of thousands of unneeded civilians deaths) still see him as a holy figure. The New Atheists have substantial differences on political issues, but are all capable of agreeing that religion is so intolerable that not only is it worth it to join arms with those whose views are otherwise horrific, but that those who fight in the name of the Sacred Cause are admirable, almost regardless of whatever else they may do.

The idea of religion as the supreme evil is held, like Holy Truths tend to be, on pure faith; there is no evidence to show that the greatest threat to the world today is religion, and the New Atheists are by and large intelligent enough to understand this if they were so inclined to try. Even if one were to hold that religion truly is the most damaging force today, is it really so much more damaging than the evils of nationalism, militarism, corporatism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia that those topics are far less important than religion? That's hard to imagine, and yet you find Archbishop Dawkins and Reverend Harris devoting a tiny fraction of their attention to subjects like that in comparison with their borderline obsession with the Sacred Cause. Even for those New Atheists who do address such topics, Saint Christopher and Reverend Harris are nonetheless held up as righteous men, despite the fact that they have only contributed to those problems.

As evidenced by Archbishop Dawkins's statement about faith, it is not just religious institutions, but religious belief that is an evil; while the New Atheists often present their objection to religious belief as being that it is irrational or harmful, their relative silence on other widespread irrational or harmful beliefs (nationalism, faith in existing societal institutions such as the government, militarism, etc.) renders these claims implausible. Religion—at least if it's Islam or Christianity—is fundamentally evil. In an instance of amazing intellectual acrobatics, both the Archbishop and Reverend Harris have accused religious moderates of helping to "make the world safe" (the Archbishop’s phrase) for religious extremists, because by being kind and tolerant, they make religious faith seem innocuous or even as if it has something good to offer; for this idea to be coherent, we must assume that religious extremists have correctly interpreted their faiths (an idea which the Church of New Atheism’s members will often eagerly agree with) and moderate Christians and Muslims are not "really" Christian or Muslim. Any more complex interpretation of these religions is, under New Atheist dogma, the propaganda of politically correct apologists for religion, who are, of course, a particularly despicable brand of infidel.

The comparison of religious faith to a mental disorder is also exceedingly common within the Church, from its deacon Bill Maher explicitly referring to religious belief as a "neurological disorder" to Reverend Harris stating that the doctrines of many religious traditions are "suggestive of mental illness" to Archbishop Dawkins naming his book (a New Atheist Sacred Text) The God Delusion. Not only does this hark back to the charming history of any "irrational" or "dangerous" belief being deemed a mental illness and being "treated" accordingly, it once again ignores the prevalence of often-absurdly irrational beliefs among the general populace. Rather than an analysis of the conditions that have allowed religious belief to persist, the Church would rather consider its survival an "accident of history," to use the Reverend’s phrase. Religious belief is to be degraded, not analyzed.

Religious institutions at their worst are not the result of relatively universal human flaws such as greed, ambition, and the like, but rather the inevitable result of religious faith. Whatever good that religious institutions do, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the religion they claim to represent, but rather is representative of relatively universal human virtues, such as generosity, empathy, and compassion. The absurdity of this double standard is, of course, obvious to those who haven't drunk the Church's Kool-Aid, but to the New Atheists it is apparently an entirely reasonable way to view history. Religion is to blame for everything bad committed in its name, but earns credit for nothing good done in its name.

Of course, the blanket statements against "religion" do not keep the New Atheists from singling out the worst religions, which is reasonable enough. Their methodology is where it gets interesting; a religion's fundamental badness is determined by how damaging its extremism is, as long as the damage is obvious to Westerners, as a general rule of thumb. Islam, whose extremism and theocracy we're constantly reminded of, is naturally the worst religion; Christianity is usually the runner-up, which is unsurprising given the prominence of Christian fundamentalism in Western society, particularly the United States. Nonetheless, Christianity is often a fairly distant second, as the ways in which its extremists have caused the most damage—the Iraq War, for instance—are not exceedingly obvious to many Westerners. Religions like Buddhism are often considered relatively benign, in spite of the widespread Buddhist violence in Myanmar against the Muslim minority; as this is not something many Westerners are readily aware of, it merits little consideration.

I've already noted the New Atheist dogma that extremists are the only religious people who interpret their religion correctly, so naturally the Church sees a religion's extremism, insofar as it is visible to Westerners, as indicative of the principles embodied by that religion's sacred texts. As Sister Jaclyn Glenn tells us, "if [Islam] were peaceful then extremists...would simply be extremely peaceful." To state the obvious, this is yet another rule that only applies to religion, according to New Atheist dogma; were it applied to other ideologies, almost every ideology imaginable would be deemed violent, given that extremists representing virtually any ideology you can name have committed violence in the name of their ideology. And, again, it goes without saying that "extremists" includes only those extremists who cause damage readily visible to Westerners.

Because of these rules, the West is widely viewed among New Atheists as representing the very concept of civilization; the West is less religious than the Middle East, and the damage caused by religious extremists in the West tends to damage those outside of the West, in ways that are far less visible and obvious to the average Westerner. Thus, by New Atheist logic, the West is superior to the Middle East, QED. The innumerable crimes against humanity committed by Western governments (particularly the US government) are either conveniently overlooked when discussing "Western values" or, by the bolder members of the Church, justified as somehow attempting to fight against jihadism or Islamic fundamentalism. (Reverend Harris is a good example of a New Atheist in the latter category, given his argument that the Iraq War was an instance of "civilized human beings...attempting, at considerable cost to themselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people.")

The New Atheists like to present their Church’s innovation as being its willingness to aggressively take on religion in ways it hasn't been challenged in the past, but this is yet another bit of fraud on their part. Thinkers like Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Friedrich Nietzsche have all been willing to criticize religion, and in spite of what the New Atheists may believe, their twisted, baffling ideology bears little resemblance to the ideas of these men. For the Church of New Atheism and its believers, religion is not simply the result of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, a means of subjugating and controlling the people, a means of escapism for the oppressed, or a way for the weak to enslave the strong, as for the aforementioned philosophers; rather, it is some kind of virus which has mysteriously spread and must be wiped out. It is not part of a larger problem, it is the problem, towering above all others and independent of them. This leads, predictably, to statements like the Reverend’s about eliminating religion, with no comprehension of the fact that if religion were eliminated in the world we live in today, ideologies probably just as bad, if not worse, would quickly spring up to replace it and take over the role it serves as the opium of the masses and the tool for controlling the people.

Of course, being a church, the Church of New Atheism can’t have just a force for evil it battles against—a devil—it also must have a deity to worship, or it wouldn’t be a church at all. It finds its deity in Science; not science as a tool, as a means to an end, but Science as an end itself, as the end, the sacred end, the divinely ordained end, forever and ever, amen. New Atheist dogma includes not just a belief in the usefulness and reliability of science, but rather, a faith in Science as such—scientism, as it is known. Science is, from the New Atheist viewpoint, not simply able to debunk religious superstition, but locked, by its very nature, in a struggle against religion—and, for the good of humanity, Science must win this struggle, and dethrone and replace religion.

Science is, under New Atheist dogma, the diametric opposite of religion—accordingly, whereas religion can only do wrong, Science can only do good. Whereas religion is blamed for all evil actions done in its name and given credit for no good actions done in its name, the opposite is true with science; modern medicine, technology, and the other things that have contributed to human well-being are, of course, here by the grace of Science, and you can count on New Atheists to remind you of what Science has done for the world whenever the opportunity arises; mysteriously, nuclear weapons, environmental pollutants, and increased capability of government surveillance, while undoubtedly enabled by science, don’t seem to enter into the conversation.

Likewise, Science is represented in the Church’s teachings by the Newtons, Einsteins, and Darwins of history, who, the New Atheists say represent what science really is; the Tuskegee scientists and the Nazi scientists who experimented on humans, of course, do not represent science, but rather their evil deeds reflect only on their own personalities; science was merely an excuse. This stands of course in stark contrast to the attitude toward religion, which is exactly the opposite.

Boldest of all is the idea on the part of many New Atheists that Science can even replace religion in determining what our values ought to be; and I refer not even to the soft sciences when I say “Science,” but to the most empirical, objective branches of science. Per the usual, Reverend Harris is the prime example of this principle taken to its extreme, as he claims to be able to scientifically determine the “correct” morality, which is every bit as frivolous as it sounds. This bit of insanity is not limited to the Reverend, though, as Archbishop Dawkins has also dabbled in the field of a “scientific” morality, declaring that anyone with a Down syndrome-afflicted fetus is morally obligated to abort it. One can only imagine the veritable Utopia that would be created under the principles of these men, where whether one should live or die ultimately comes down to what is “scientifically” the most ethical.

To be clear, I don’t intend to draw false equivalencies between religion and science; science is always the rational way to understand how the world works and to gain useful knowledge, and I do not believe religion is necessary to have a set of values; indeed, I wish more people would personally choose their own values rather than blindly accepting those given to them by whatever house of worship they attend. But the Church of New Atheism offers us not an analysis of the dangers and irrationalities of religion or the useful benefits of science, but rather blind vilification of the former and songs of praise to the latter (on occasion literally, as Sister Glenn can testify).

To those unfamiliar with the Church and its doctrines, it must seem amazing that anyone but utter fools could believe in such idiocies, and the New Atheists are not fools. As with any church, the members of the Church of New Atheism believe in such doctrines because of their own psychology; many likely have likely been drawn to it due to their own irreligion and the pervasive influence of religion in society around them. When one feels like an outcast, joining a cult can be easy. But, ultimately, one can hardly imagine that when John Lennon asked us to “Imagine…no religion,” and even when Marx and Engels looked forward to a world where religion was a thing of the past, that they had in mind the demonization of other people’s religious beliefs. The Church of New Atheism, like many a church before it, set out with the goal of uniting mankind under its belief system—but, as usual, the divisions have only been made starker.

An Open Letter to the New Atheist Movement

To the New Atheist Community and their Allies,

The "Four Horsemen" of
New Atheism (Image from
 Wikimedia Commons)

You know, we really should be able to get along. You don't want religion informing public policy? I don't either. You think religious fundamentalists are a bunch of ignorant cretins? So do I. You think we should believe what scientists say over what a book written thousands of years ago says? Me, too. You think atheists are treated unfairly in our society? We're one hundred percent on the same page. But then you have to go and do something to ruin it, and, well, you've done it again.

I can barely believe the ignorant statements I've heard from some voices in your community about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. I've actually heard it said by popular YouTubers that are part of your movement that Islam did the attacks, as if it's some magical entity that possessed the actual perpetrators of the crime and removed any critical thinking skills they had. You do know that Muslims all over the world have condemned the attack, right? Even Hamas condemned the attack. If you want to argue that a lot of Muslims who speak out against terrorism still hold very restrictive, reactionary views on how society should be run, I can't disagree with that. But have your members honestly gotten so lazy that they're going to ignore the numerous Muslims and Muslim organizations that have condemned the Charlie Hebdo attack just to try to make Islam look bad? You're not being bold by doing that. You're not defying politically correct ideas. You're just succumbing to intellectual laziness of the worst stripe.

Now, there were some pleasant surprises I got, such as when Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie actually acknowledged just how widely Muslims have condemned the attack, and Maher even went on to argue against the idea that Islam is unique in how it's used to justify violence, citing Israeli settlers as an example of Jewish extremists (the first time I've heard him say anything negative about Israel or any Israelis). But even so, a lot of members of the New Atheist community just have to tell you that, when it gets down to it, Islam really is a uniquely bad religion. After all, look at the polls of Muslims! Look at the laws in Muslim countries! Because, of course, socioeconomic conditions and the fact that many majority-Muslim countries have in the past suffered through Western bullying and interventionism couldn't conceivably have anything to do with increased religious extremism in those areas.

Do you really think that the United States would be as free a country as it is today if the Ottoman Empire had deposed our president and replaced him with a dictator they supported? Do you really think that Christian extremism just as virulent as the Muslim extremism in Iran (where the equivalent of that situation did, indeed, happen) couldn't have sprung up? Are you just unaware of the fact that majority-Christian countries with similar histories of colonialism and imperialism and similarly poor economic conditions are often just as oppressive and unenlightened as their Muslim counterparts (Uganda, anyone)?

Better than that, though, is when you try to say the actual doctrines of Islam endorse terrorism and religious persecution. Inevitably, you end up citing verses from the Qur'an that supposedly endorse killing infidels, often mistranslating words from the original text (for instance "Fitnah," which means persecution, not disbelief, as I've seen claimed a number of times) and removing all context in order to construe them to mean something totally removed from what actual scholars interpret them as meaning. Clearly, though, anyone who points out your intellectual bankruptcy on these points is just some dumb PC liberal.

Oh, and best of all is the "draw Muhammad" bullshit. Yes, because gratuitously mocking the figure held sacred by one of the most despised groups in the Western world is making such a brave, bold statement. I'd love to hear your explanation as to just how insulting Muslims, including those who oppose terrorism and theocracy and support secular democracy, is somehow being heroic. Here's a fun idea: why don't we draw insulting pictures of Christopher Hitchens? I have this vague memory of some of you being angry that people were saying he would burn in hell after he died of cancer. Did it seem like society had no respect for you or your beliefs and was spitting on someone you admire? Gee, I wonder how Muslims feel about you treating them the same way. Oh wait, they're wrong, so it just doesn't matter. I forgot that rule about how if people believe something irrational, it's fine to try to make them feel marginalized and alienated. Because I'm sure none of you believe anything that others might see as irrational.

It truly, really amazes me that people as intelligent as many of your members can be so idiotic as to think tactics like that will somehow make things better. Are you just blissfully unaware of the fact that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda thrive by driving a wedge between Muslims and the "Western world" (and that that may have been a motivation for the Charlie Hebdo attack)? You want to make this conflict between those that think Islam is stupid and dangerous and those that kill in its name, but how can any Muslim take your side when you've defined it as the anti-Islam side? On the other hand, if you would let this conflict be about what it really should be about--those that support individual freedom even for people and views they despise versus those who will kill anyone that doesn't abide by their rules--you could get plenty of Muslims on your side. Right now, we should be talking about how encouraging it is that so many Muslims, even those you would least expect it from, have condemned the attack in Paris, and how this is a sign that just because a person's Muslim doesn't mean they can't be on "our side." Instead, you've drudged up the same tired, ill-founded attacks on Islam that you love to drudge up given any opportunity.

I'd also just like to note your community's total hypocrisy as supposed opponents of religious extremism. I've barely heard a word from many of your prominent members about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, in spite of the numerous deaths caused by offensives such as last summer's and the fact that Israeli right-wingers routinely cite a God-given right to the land of Israel. Sheldon Adelson, the number one donor to conservative super PACs, said a few months ago that it doesn't matter if Israel is a democratic state because the Torah never endorses democracy. Where was the New Atheist outrage then? How can you expect people to believe you don't harbor some kind of bigotry against Muslims when you use attacks by Muslim extremists to justify disparaging Islam and yet when Jewish extremists support and abet killing far more people, you barely acknowledge it, or even defend them?

In fact, by your crude logic, Judaism should be the religion we're really concerned with; Jews are a mere 0.2% of the world's population, and yet Jewish extremists routinely use their religion to justify and support the oppression and military occupation of the land of millions of people, and the murders of thousands. But, of course, anyone who acknowledges that must just be an antisemite.

I'd like to be abundantly clear on one point: my problem with you has nothing to do with political correctness or the idea that what you say and do is "offensive" or racist. It's that, at least on the issue of Islam, you're intellectually lazy and deliberately disregard anything and everything that could create a more complex picture than the one you want to paint. I don't insist on the idea that all religions are equal, as Bill Maher has accused opponents of his view of pretending. It's that your claims about Islam are ill-founded, and your view on how we should respond to Islamic extremism is counterproductive.

There are plenty of people within the New Atheist community that I agree with on many issues, to be sure. I agree with Bill Maher the vast majority of the time and I enjoy his commentary; I watch videos from The Amazing Atheist, a popular YouTube atheist and a supporter of New Atheism, and I almost always agree with the points he makes (including on feminism, which he's often unfairly criticized for). But these frequently intelligent, insightful voices suddenly start saying things that are at best oversimplifications and at worst completely unfounded when it comes to the issue of Islam. Of course, there are plenty of valid aspects of Islam to criticize, and there are plenty of rules and ideas in the Qur'an that really are antiquated and damaging to modern society; I'm not saying you're not allowed to hold a negative view of Islam, but having a negative view of the religion doesn't justify deliberately alienating and insulting anyone who believes it and making claims about it that really just don't hold up to scrutiny. And if the New Atheist community can't come to terms with that, maybe the New Atheist community's doctrines have a problem worth discussing.

Your Erstwhile Ally,
H.S. Buchanan

LATER NOTE:
 My criticism of the New Atheist movement made here absolutely stands; however, in the last paragraph I said some things that no longer hold true, not because they are too harsh to the New Atheist movement, but because they were not harsh enough. As I've noted now, I no longer enjoy Bill Maher's commentary, and in retrospect I believe he has been saying tasteless and prejudiced things for a long time; perhaps I realized this on some level before, but refused to let myself fully acknowledge it.

As for The Amazing Atheist, my views on him, too, have shifted significantly, and looking back there are many things he's said that I find problematic, including his take on feminism, which I defended at the time. I opted not to change what I'd already written because it would be easier to simply explain the situation and let what I had previously written stay on the record. However, my views have shifted significantly enough that I wanted it to be clear that I no longer stand by my defenses of Bill Maher or The Amazing Atheist, lest anyone stumble on this blog post and get the wrong impression.

EVEN LATER NOTE:
I have removed a reference to The Amazing Atheist as the "number one YouTube atheist" because I have been unable to verify this claim.