Balak - 28 August 2009 08:48 AM

I agree, Shinta, but would put it more strongly.

When it comes to Hitchens and Harris, secularism and atheism are merely camouflage for their real agenda, which is promoting full-throated liberal support for U.S. imperialist goals in the Middle East.  They don’t criticize Western policies of conquest, plunder, occupation and the imposition of ‘friendly’ governtments on Middle Eastern countries, because they don’t see these as any kind of crime. On the contrary, the only ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists’, by their lights, are those resisting U.S. policy.

In my opinion such ‘secularism’ is not only discredited by Hitchens’ disgusting Islamophobic diatribes (the thinnest camouflage for pure racism), or Harris’s blood-chilling appeals for the nuclear immolation of Iran, but above all by the fact that they are willing to make common cause with the most extreme right-wing Christian crusaders and ultra-zionists to advance their cause.

CFI’s openness toward these ‘cruise-missile secularists’ is the counterpart of the bristling hostility you find toward Hedges - not for his hand-wringing liberal moralism - but for his (unthinkable) hostility to the sacred imperial mission.

I agree, but I don’t think that is the only reason people are upset and resistant, or that it applies to everyone who is upset. 

I think that a lot of people are just unsure of how to process a real debate on a different area of their work.  It’s fun to watch debates with Harris and Hitchens as they debate religious figures on the existence of god, but it’s also a bit ridiculous at the same time.  We know there is no argument to prove the existence of god, or the validity of superstitious scripture, so we are basically completely unchallenged, it is the illusion of challenge and debate.  I think that a lot of people are just not sure how to handle a serious debate.  Are any of you actually willing to be challenged and concede anything?  It’s a question worth asking.

mindcore - 03 May 2008 06:52 AM

The thing that I love about Point of Inquiry is that it tells me things that I don’t want to hear along with telling me so much of what I do want to hear.

Chris Hedges is a leftist idealogue.

He is linking Hicthens and Harris’s positions on foreign policy with the arguments for the non-existence of God.

He is flatly lying when he accuses Hitchens and Harris of advocating rabid violence.

Harris never advocates a nuclear First Strike, he doesn’t advocate any specific action, he merely goes on a tirade intended to make us aware that the existence of Iran as a theocracy is really, really, alarming.

To call Hitchens historically illiterate is like calling Einstein illiterate on physics.

This guy goes home and looks at pictures of the Democratic donkey and weeps tears of joy. He’s angry that atheist are no longer giving a free pass to the left wing religious moderates, and this new book sounds like his tantrum.

As something of a leftist ideologue myself, and repelled as I am by the neocon catchphrases in it, I nevertheless have to agree with the above assessment.  Hedges’ reference to Sam Harris’ alleged advocacy of a nuclear first strike against the Arab world has been convincingly refuted by Sam’s own references to Sam’s own works.  Hedges was being fundamentally dishonest and self-aggrandizing in his interview.  I think DJ could have been a bit harder on Hedges, especially re his slander of Harris, but overall, DJ did a good job of letting Chris expose himself as the poser that he is. 

I don’t hate Muslims, but I do agree that the religion of Islam has a lot of hateful things in it, and because it has not had a reformation, has not made as much of an effort to paper over those aspects of its dogma as Christianity and Judaism have.  There are certainly Jewish and Christian terrorists, but they seem to have a smaller base within the mainstream of their respective religions than islamists seem to have in theirs.  Nevertheless, it is instructive to remember that islamists have so far killed many times more of their fellow muslims than members of any other identifiable group.  The problem isn’t with the victims of the cult of islam.  The problem is the cult itself.  The same is true of the various christian and jewish cults.  The only differences among cults (and all religions are also cults) is the degree to which they enslave their members (victims) and the degree to which they separate them from the rest of the human population.  In some cases, these differences are quite significant as the survivors of 9/11 will attest.

jgavin - 04 May 2008 12:05 AM

but I find it dubious listening to Mr. Hedges that he has a clear unbiased grasp of them.  I’ll reserve judgement till I read his book.

I’ve just finished “I Don’t Believe in Atheists”. It is a painful read. He plays the same game that other critics of free-thinking do: Rationality and Naturalism=an empty Materialism. Ridiculous!

I’d love someone to ask Hedges if he feels that teaching little girls in Afghanistan to read is another worthless plot of the Godless Utopians.