Sam Harris is Wrong...Again.

Sam Harris is an icon of the atheist movement. We owe him much for his outspoken opposition to religious intrusion into our lives and the damage it does to society. I respect him immensely.   But Sam is not an icon of international diplomacy, nor is he infallible.  We’ll leave infallibility to the pope.

The same can be said for Chris Hitchens. He was and remains a hero of mine, but he was a misguided rabid supporter of the war in Iraq.  

I disagree with Sam Harris on a few things, not the least of which is his demonization of liberal Xtians.  You’d think a man of letters who firmly accepts evolutionary theory, would see liberal Xtians as part of, a stage in, the evolution of religion - leading ultimately to reason and the demise of religion over the long haul.  Sam, it seems, isn’t satisfied with that. 

To Harris liberal Xtians are cherry picking doctrine (and they are); accommodating myth with reality (which they do); creating a hybrid or bastardization of Christianity which prolongs religious belief (and it does) and enables fundies.  It seems that to Sam anything short of the immediate self extinction of fundamentalist belief, with no stage between total belief in myth and fable and complete atheism, is unacceptable and unworthy of nurturing or acceptance, but worthy only of disdain.  This is my summary interpretation of his perspective, not his precise words.

To me this is tantamount to despising Australopithecus for standing between his arboreal ancestors and the development of Homo sapiens. Heck, Australo was just delaying the inevitable.

Sam’s not much of a pragmatist in that regard, nor is he a diplomat nor politician if his latest screed is any indication. 
  

Today Sam Harris came out and accused the Obama administration of practicing “quivering lip diplomacy” based on the tweet issued by the US embassy in Egypt before the Libyan murders occurred, and based on subsequent government statements that seek to distance the US government from the act of a private US individual.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-freedom-to-offend-an-imaginary-god

 But where Sam sees this as weakness I see it as diplomacy, civility, and an attempt to establish credible arms length distance between government involvement and private citizen's action; not at all indicative of an offer to relinquish our rights and freedoms or an admonishment against free speech by anyone of any kind.

Unfortunately, some Americans, Sam included, seem not to understand that every Muslim who lives in the Middle East lives in a culture where all media must be approved and sanctioned by their ruling government. It is unheard of for a private individual, under decades of autocratic / despotic rule, to be able to produce and air a film without government approval and blessing.  This then feeds the Muslim world’s assumption that this policy / reality extends to foreign countries because they know nothing else.  The failure to recognize this is symptomatic of the Western-centric mindset, and a failed educational system, or just a preference to remain ignorant of other cultural realities.  Mercifully, unlike Romney, McCain, Palin, my neighbor up the street and Sam Harris, the Obama administration understands this. 

If establishing that the US government does not endorse specific speech antagonistic to a billion or so foreigners, and seeks to maintain an arms length between a private citizen’s inflammatory speech and our body’s politic is some how weakness, it is only so in the minds of those who fail to understand this difference (or prefer to reject the difference ).  It speaks more to those Americans' knee jerk ethno-centric ignorance, or political agenda,  than to an administration kowtowing to Muslim indignation.

No...the private citizen does not speak for the US government.  His words and actions do not necessarily reflect our nation’s policy or perspective. While blasphemy, insult, and hate speech are our right, the government has no obligation to imply it endorses what is said, only to endorse our right to say it.   I'm glad we have an administration that knows the difference and did just that.  

That said:  Phuque the Profit Muhammad. 

(Note:  I was criticized by a fb friend for referring to Christopher Hitchens as "Chris" in this article, an abbreviated name Hitch despised.  A thoughtless oversight on my part. But I doubt "Hitch" is going to object. After all,  I've never received a complaint from Chuck Darwin)