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

Episode Date: November 22, 2015

Sam Harris speaks with author Douglas Murray about Islamism, liberalism, civil society, and the migrant crisis in Europe. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Thank you. episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming In this episode, I'll be speaking with Douglas Murray. Douglas is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist in the UK. He's the associate editor of The Spectator magazine and also associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, which is a think tank in London.

And he writes regularly for The Spectator, Standpoint, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Wall Street Journal in London. And he writes regularly for the Spectator, Standpoint, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Wall Street Journal in Europe. And he appears regularly on the BBC and other media outlets. And he has spoken in the British and Dutch and Danish and European parliaments and at the White House. Douglas is, as you will hear, a very incisive critic of political correctness and someone who is unusually engaged and extraordinarily articulate on the problem of Islamism and our habit of capitulating to it. So it's a great pleasure to talk to Douglas. I should say, to give you some context, that we spoke about a week ago, right after the attacks in Paris.

And we speak about the Syrian refugees in Europe. And things have moved on a little bit in the U.S. in the last five days or so. So there's been an active debate on Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. I should point out that Douglas and I were speaking about the European context, which is different from the US from a security point of view. As you'll hear, the vetting process for refugees in Europe is nearly non-existent. In the US, that does not seem to be the case. And this is an important difference. As you'll hear, I think our ability to vet these people, important difference. As you'll hear, I think our ability to vet these people, which is to say, understand who is coming into the country and what their ideological commitments are,

is the most important thing to consider. Since Douglas and I spoke, there have been many strange and silly declarations, both on the right and the left, relating to this crisis. And what's especially depressing is that the demagoguery has been coming from both sides. So we've had Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Ted Cruz say things like, I think Trump said there should be a registry for all Muslims and we should start closing mosques. We shouldn't let any of the Syrian refugees in. Cruz said we should let in only Christians. It's into the vacuum left by liberals that reasonable security concerns find this kind of expression, because the reasonable concerns are being denied at every turn. For instance, the president has said that no refugees have ever become terrorists, but that's simply untrue. There are Somali refugees

living in Minnesota who have gone to fight and wage jihad for al-Shabaab. So it is just factually false, morally blind, and politically stupid to treat this as a non-issue. And every time the president opens his mouth on this topic without describing the problem accurately, avoiding at all costs the noun Islam, never uttering the words Islamic terrorism or political Islam or Islamism or even jihadism, the feeling of being lied to just becomes more and more galling. The Republicans are absolutely right to be outraged by this. And they're also completely crazy. So this is a terrible situation to be in politically. President Obama has offered pure sanctimony on this topic. He talks about American values and, you know, we're better than that and disparaging anyone

who is concerned about security risks associated with these refugees as lacking in compassion and as failing to live up to American values. But step back here. Take the personalities of the people on the right out of the equation. Is it crazy to express, as Ted Cruz did, a preference for Christians over Muslims in this process? Of course not. What percentage of Christians will be jihadists or want to live under Sharia law? Zero. And this is a massive, in fact it is the

only concern when talking about security. If we know that some percentage of Muslims will be jihadists, inevitably, if we know that some percentage of Muslims will be jihadists, inevitably, if we know we cannot be perfect in our filtering, if we know that a larger percentage will, if not be jihadists, will be committed to resisting assimilation into our society, then to know that a given refugee or family of refugees is Christian is a wealth of information and quite positive information in this context. So it is not mere bigotry or mere xenophobia to express that preference. I hope you understand I'm expressing no sympathy at all with Ted Cruz's politics or with Ted Cruz,

but it is totally unhelpful to treat him, though he actually is a religious maniac, like a bigot on this point. This is a quite reasonable concern to voice. And the fact that we have a president who will not even name the problem is giving the right enormous energy that we really don't want them to have here. So while we don't talk about the U.S. context directly with respect to the refugee crisis, you'll hear Douglas and I try to articulate a middle position here, which is understanding the real world facts related to the migrant crisis, acknowledging that the immediate problem of global jihad is not a matter of migration. It's a matter of already radicalized citizens in all of these societies.

In any case, Douglas is one of the best people on this topic. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. And now I give you Douglas Murray. Douglas, welcome to the Waking Up Podcast. It's great to be with you, Sam. Well, thank you for doing this. As you know, we were supposed to speak last week. I canceled on you twice, one for a recording malfunction and one for a cold, which still lingers.

But in the meantime, the jihadists of the world have produced further evidence, perhaps the best in anyone's memory, that we cannot live alongside them. And so they've given us even more to talk about. But before we dive into that and get into all the areas of our shared interests, I just want to spend a few minutes to talk about your background, just for people who don't know who you are in my audience. When somebody asks you what you do, how do you answer that question? I use the all-embracing term writer, which is what I do. I've been a writer ever since I've been an adult and a bit before. I started off by writing about literature, which is my first love, and now in more recent years, for the last 15 years anyway, I've ended up writing by necessity,

I think, rather than desire about politics, about international affairs, particularly about terrorism, particularly about security. It isn't because I'm a political nut in particular. I think it's because I think that you have to be involved in politics if you care about the culture, and I care about the culture, and I'm very concerned and have all sorts of views on it, which I write about for a plethora of publications and books and so on. And I am also a broadcaster, I suppose. I do a lot in the UK in particular where I'm from,

as I'm sure your listeners can tell from my accent. And yes, and I like to think I write about a very broad range of subjects. I do, but I suppose in recent years I've ended up being caught more and more writing about the big issue of our time. I wish it would go away. I wish it were possible for me to go back to writing about literature and about music and other things I love, but there we are. Needless to say, I share your feeling of boredom on this count. I view every moment spent in conversations of the sort that we're now going to have as a really an

extraordinary opportunity cost. And it's really, it's just lacerating to contemplate all the work that is not getting done and all the amusement not being had because of this distraction from the work of civilization. But so what percentage of your time would you say you spend on the issue of Islamism and its problems? Well, I try with my editors at various publications to have a deal that I write an article about something I love. For every article I write about something I hate. The 50-50 quota never works out these days quite that much,

but I did manage to write a piece just before Friday that came out in one of the magazines I'm at, Spectator magazine here in the UK, which is our oldest weekly magazine. I managed to write a piece on one of my favorite artists, 20th century artist Rex Whistler, who was killed in Normandy in 1944 on his first day of action, but was a wonderful artist.

I managed to write about that, and I was actually focusing on a review of the new two volumes of T.S. Eliot's complete work in a new critical edition, which I was really hoping to get around to this week. But once again, I'm afraid I've spent a time all my time uh on uh on these issues and uh i suppose i mean i can't moan about it too much one could always stop but um uh my hope has always been that there would be lots more people who would say the things you say say some of the things i say and that they would come along in greater and greater numbers and uh that basically i could retire alas alas they don't come along in sufficient numbers but as i say it's still my

hope maybe 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 the scene i doubt it yeah well um i can't quite say that I wish for it because for the listeners who are not familiar with you, they should know that watching you debate on these issues, probably on any issue, but I think I've only caught your debates on this topic, is just a thing of beauty. And happily, YouTube is now full of examples

of you laying waste to your opponents. So don't retire until some competent disciple can take your mantle. Find me some, find me some. So, okay, well, we seem to be pulled to the topic by a tractor beam here. Obviously, we'll talk about Paris. We're now talking on Monday, the Monday after the Friday, where over 130, I think now, people were murdered in Paris by jihadists. I want to get into the larger footprint of our concerns here, which is truly free speech and the failures of liberalism to protect it and the problem of Islamism and Western masochism in response to it.

And also just the related problem of identity politics and imaginary grievances that millions of people find captivating. So there's much more than just AK-47s going off in polite society. But let's get into that. I think I always burn a lot of fuel in talking about this, knowing who my audience is, trying to convince someone that there really is a problem here. Now, that probably is not so necessary in the immediate aftermath of Paris. is not so necessary in the immediate aftermath of Paris. But people seem to think that people like ourselves are exaggerating the nature of this problem. And so I just give that to you as a doorway into this topic,

and we'd just love to hear what you have to say. Well, you know, there are people who exaggerate the problem, and there are many people who underestimate it. As you say, I mean, in the wake of an atrocity like that a couple of days ago, it's unlikely many people are going to underestimate it, but there still are some who do. I would say that one of the most interesting ways

of looking about this is one that the American scholar of Islam, Daniel Pipes, says quite often, which is the striking thing in this whole area is that it is a one-way street, pretty much. Very few people say, I used to be worried about Islamic extremism, but I'm not anymore. I used to be worried about Islamic extremism, but I'm not anymore. More people say more every day, many more every year, I'm getting worried about this. And that is something that in a way is a signal for hope. It means that people are paying attention to what is happening in the world.

They're starting to join the dots. Late, the world. They're starting to join the dots. Late, sure. But they're starting to join the dots, and they are concerned about it. And as I say, I agree with that. I think it is a one-way street. I've never heard anyone who said, you know, I used to worry about the persecution of religious minorities within Islam, but I don't anymore. Nobody says, you know, it used to be worse,

Islamic extremism 20 years ago and so on. Right, right. So all of these things in a way are very bloody parts of a very bloody learning curve. And I suppose for those of us who care about ideas and about writing and thinking and speaking and the idea of free inquiry and of debate i suppose one of the most saddening things about all this is simply that

it seems to require events always rather than reason to propel most people into realizing there's a problem. And that is very disconcerting. It's very sad because obviously we would wish that most people listened to reasonable argument, listened to reasonable summaries of the problem, and acted and thought accordingly. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And recent events will i think just bear that out further yeah yeah people have a hard time taking our enemies at their word

is it's really nothing speech doesn't count even when the speech entails a crystal clear discussion of what they plan to do want to do do, aspire to do, if only they had the power to do it, and the incremental evidence ever accruing that they are accomplishing many of these aims. I find that secular people tend to doubt that anyone really believes what they say they believe. They can't imagine anyone really believes what they say they believe. They just don't, they can't imagine anyone really believes in paradise. And I've told listeners this many times, but I have literally met anthropologists who have told me that no one believes in paradise, and no one

is ever motivated by the content of their religious doctrines. It's always some other reason. And in the presence of someone like that, this was at an academic meeting where we were debating these issues, and this is the kind of thing this person said in public. I've named this person before. I don't know why I'm being sheepish about it now. It's Scott Atran.

Scott Atran is an anthropologist who is incredibly influential. He gets meetings with various governments and he has inserted himself very much into the dialogue about terrorism and Islam and all the rest. But he is someone who told me in private, even, both in public and in private, when I said, listen, just level with me. We're standing in the men's room at the Salk Institute. And he said, he looked me in the eye and he said, nobody believes in paradise. So he's either presuming to be a mind reader and knows that everyone is lying, even those who are willing to blow themselves up, and even those who are willing to celebrate their children once they do.

It's the greatest deception in human history, if that's the case. Yeah, I mean, I've for many years marveled at the capability of reasonable and intelligent people to put reasons into the mouths of terrorists that the terrorists never asked for. into the mouths of terrorists that the terrorists never asked for. And also to come up with increasingly bogus and now demonstrably wrong explanations for why things are happening. You know, my think tank, the Henry Jackson Society in London, we've analyzed every single person convicted of Islamist-related offenses in America and in the UK in the last 15 years. It's kind of an ongoing project.

It's the only project of its kind that actually just does the statistical analysis of people. One of the reasons we did that was that some years ago I got fed up with hearing people saying, for instance, that terrorists that we're dealing with were, for instance, suffering from a lack of education. Obviously not true, demonstrably not true. But I used to demonstrate it wasn't true by giving the anecdotal cases. You know, the murder of Daniel Pearl was at the London School of Economics. The people who blew up Mike's bar in Tel Aviv were from King's College in London.

The 2009 Detroit bomber was from University College London. I'm just focusing on about a square mile of London. So I used to give those, they were anecdotal, so I thought it's worth doing this in statistical analysis. So we went through all the hundreds of cases, and good, you know, you can show this now. Actually, the terrorists in America and in Britain that have been convicted, we're not talking about putative cases or disputed cases or anything, we're talking about people who've been convicted, are disproportionately well-educ educated, are disproportionately likely to have attended

university, disproportionately likely to have done further education. So, you know, one by one, you can shoot down these things. It's laborious, it takes a long time, it's very costly, but you can shoot these things down. And I think that we are in the process of that at the moment. down and I think that we are in the process of that at the moment and you don't hear that so much anymore you you sure you do from some people I mean Tariq Ramadan long foe and very close enemy of mine was on the radio in Britain this morning saying that it was to do with that integration education a whole load of other things but fewer and fewer people buy that, I would argue. What this means is you whittle them down to what is the point, what is the cause, what is the propulsion. This I say is a long and slow trudge that people in liberal Western democracies are

making towards the truth and it's um it's going to take a long time but things like this do take a long time because there's so many reasons for us to want to avoid the truth because it's it's very worrying it has all sorts of very serious implications and one thing lurking in a lot of people's minds may be oh my god if that's the case then we're screwed yeah and um there are other things that make this so difficult to talk about so for in a lot of people's minds may be, oh my God, if that's the case, then we're screwed. Yeah. And there are other things that make this so difficult to talk about. So for instance, I was noticing even in this conversation, some of the mad work of liberal demagogues or people who Majid Nawaz and I are now calling regressive leftists, was effective even in the way I was listening to you.

So, for instance, you brought up Daniel Pipes. And now Daniel Pipes is someone who I don't know directly. I've never met him. We've had some email correspondence in the past. I've read some of him, but it's been some years since I've followed him. And so I'm not totally familiar with his stuff. I can't really, which is to say that if someone mentions Daniel Pipes, as you just did, there is between me and his name, some residue of charges of bigotry that have got into my head in the same way that no doubt charges of bigotry against you

or me have gotten into the heads of others. And so I noticed that there's kind of a bad odor associated with his name. And I could name many other people for whom this is true and for whom it is almost certainly unwarranted, right? But I just don't have the time to read everyone's books at this point or to watch everything they've said on YouTube. And so not being able to vet some of these people, I have declined to make common cause with them. And there's another example of a person you, I know, have collaborated with before who, you know, I've seen one of his talks and found him really impeccable. But he's often vilified as being a bigot. That's Mark Stein, right?

Right, yeah, absolutely. So I'd like to ask you about both of them, or you can decline to talk about their cases, but I just want to point out how insidious this is because here are people who I just simply haven't had the time to read in any depth and yet because people have called them bigots i am now wary of making common cause with them aligning myself with them or even forwarding their stuff when i happen to see it and like it if it's an article because i don't know how that's gonna blow back on me dealing with my own charges of bigotry

Yeah, if I can say so I mean I mean you have as it were a bigger problem than I have on that because you I Think you self-identify as a liberal I suppose as a left-winger don't you and we should get into that because I at this point I'm not even sure what that means. We should just know I'm not sure what it means either anymore and so on but I've never particularly cared for that I

in all sorts of ways regard myself as a liberal in all sorts of ways are regarded by some people as being left wing but I don't particularly care about it and I think I'm more identified as being a right winger or a small c conservative and so on and I sort of don't mind about the labels anymore. And to tell the truth, I know it might be different in America.

But in Europe and in Britain these days, I think that these things are mattering less and less and we're losing patience with this game. Because, you see, if the whole game is played on the left's terms, as it were, then, first of all, we'll lose because there is no possibility of confronting very large societal issues only with one fragment of the political spectrum. And it's also very clear, I would say, by now, that the... And I mean, look, I've got, you know, some of my best friends

on the left, but it is very clear to some of us that the left has been the problem on dealing with these issues. It is the left that has been throwing around willful, and I think deliberately, knowing that they're not true allegations against people. You know, I've often said that with the modern left, since certainly the end of the Cold War, they've basically had a supply and demand problem. They want racists, they want Nazis, they want bigots. And actually, thank goodness, certainly in my society, I think in yours, they're in pretty short supply. And so these people have to find them they want they want a supply of bigots and racists and fascists and actually the supply is extremely small and the people that are they demand a too

small in number to really give them enough of a political identity so they stretch it out they've deliberately used as offensive terms as they could and used them of people that they must know Do not fit that Label and I think the result is by the way among other things that they have denuded certain terms of Any meaning and that this is going to come back and bite the left in a big way and I can see this happening Europe all the time at the moment, You know, the accusation of racism, for instance, I don't think it's going to wash for very much longer. I just don't. Nobody cares as much as they used to about that because they

have seen the left use it on everyone. I've seen it for years. I've seen I've seen my black friends called racists. I've seen my black friends called sellouts and coconuts and all sorts of things. I've seen the most vile racial abuse of racial minorities by the left. And I don't care about this anymore. It's too late to be willing to be blackmailed by people who are fundamentally insincere in their insults yeah and but what's there is still seems to be a mystery here because i agree with you and it's something i've often remarked on that the the tactics being used here are just shockingly dishonest but the commitment to using such tactics, the fact that people see

no ethical problem in accusing someone of being a racist who they know isn't a racist, or a fascist who they know isn't a fascist, there must be some underlying urgency motivating that. They must think that the ends justify the means in some sense. Of course. It's politics. But what's amazing is that they are, certainly on the topic of Islamism, In some sense. you know, generic brown-skinned people or generic immigrants trumps any concern they should otherwise have about real fascism and real theocracy and real human rights abuses, that still strikes me as somewhat mysterious. I feel like I'm in the presence of people who have made some kind of reverse Faustian bargain, where it's like they've sold their souls to the devil and they got stupid in return.

I mean, just before the atrocities in Paris, the previous news story was the students at Yale where we just saw these students, you know, and they're shrieking narcissism. These are among the most privileged kids in human history, and they became moral and psychological invalids in response to a polite email about Halloween costumes. So something is very strange on the left right now. What the hell is going on? Could I give one explanation of what it is? Another conservative, who I'm sure would make you tingle with slight fear

if I mentioned his name. An American conservative who used to be on the left and moved very much to the right, David Horowitz, he said some years ago something very interesting about 1968.

We might have all sorts of issues about us but the he said something to me I think is far more true today which is that the surprising thing is not that young people would rebel young people always rebel this is something that young people do the surprising thing is why did the adults give in now I think this is far more relevant to today rather than 1968. The amazing question which hovers over Yale University is why do the adults sit and take it and the kids can run rampage? And this is the really large problem which Islamists and other terrible people are simply taking advantage of. Somebody needs to say to the shrieking girl who's effing and blinding at her professor, you know what? You're not at a home.

This is not a home for you. It's a university. It's a very different thing. And what's more, if you cannot cope with Halloween costumes, then you've got no place at a university because you're going to have no chance of dealing with quantum physics or Shakespeare or Heidegger if Halloween spooks you out this much. You're a useless person and you're going to go into a useless career because if you're a lawyer and you have gone to Yale, but you're too

sensitive to hear about rape cases, you're not going to be able to represent anyone in a court of law. So you're no use for the law. You're no use for literature because you might read a novel which will trigger you. You're no use for the sciences. You're no use for anything. And that's what the adults should be saying. They should be telling the kids to grow up and the adults have lost their confidence. And that is the most striking thing to me. And let me just say one other thing about this. This whole thing of the weirdo sexual obsession, transgender, trans polygender, identify cis, I've got a penis, but I can still win Glamour Woman of the Year Award. And who are you? Not only do you have to respect me 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. And then you've got to find Caitlyn Jenner attractive. If you don't find her attractive, you don't want to sleep with Caitlyn Jenner, you're an even bigger bigot.

This is what, and actually to cite the other person you just said that would trigger you, Sam Harris, Mark Stein said this the other day, This is the conversation we're having when the Mullers will nuke us. Everyone will be discussing whether somebody is transgender, despite the fact they've not had any operation. There's a woman in Britain called Jack Monroe, a fatuous far-left wing so-called anti-poverty campaigner, totally talentless individual. This blogger has recently come out as transgender. She says, by the way,

she's not going to do anything about it. We just have to call her transgender and regard her as transgender. But she's not going to get a penis put on her and she's not going to have her breasts reduced or taken off or anything. And she's not going to... We've just got to start calling her a non-sexual pronoun. Now it's theirs, Jack Munro, the pink newspaper. I'm gay, I read some of this crap. The pink newspaper ran a story about Jack Munro becoming transgender

because she says she is. I think she just wants a bit of publicity. They run a piece about her and they've got to say there. Jack Munro wrote a piece on their blog saying that when they was younger, I mean, it's an assault on the language apart from anything else. Anyone who cares about our delicate and beautiful language should turn away now. But we'll all be discussing whether somebody who hasn't got a penis can be a man and whether somebody who has got a penis can

be glamour woman of the year. When the Islamists come in with Kalashnikovs, it's pathetic. It's a breakdown in our society, and you have to rectify it. Oh, that is hilarious. Well, for those who may just be introduced to you again for the first time in this podcast, there you have a taste of the kind of ire that Douglas is able to summon in the midst of a debate. And that's a gear, unfortunately, which I don't have and wish I did. I think perhaps that part of my brain was damaged by too much meditation. But it is bad for you.

Well, it's certainly bad for this. And you have this gear and Hitch obviously had it. And it is incredibly useful. So keep that well oiled. Now to the substance of what you just said, though. But first of all, the fact that you're gay, does that give you any more freedom to say what you just said? Are you also going to get hammered for that litany? It doesn't give you any more freedom. I say it's all about politics. Don't be fooled. homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, all these things are shut up, and let me speak. And don't think anything different from me. I've

never had a single bit of credit from the left for being a gay man opposed to radical Islam. Of course not. Why would they I don't want it by the way? I don't want it, by the way. I don't want their pats and their pandering and anything like that. But, you know, I see all of these things used against people all the time. It's politics. And they don't really care about anything else. They never did. Let's focus on that for a second, because in terms of the anti-intellectualism of all this, for me, it's really the core. People are focused on what you think more than how you think.

If you do not think what's been prescribed in the canon of your side of the political spectrum, this presents an immediate problem for you. And any train of thinking that seems to test those boundaries or, God forbid, leads into some area of novel thought or a position that doesn't align with all of the predictable ones on the checklist of left and right, then you are anathematized. And yet what you think is not what is important here. It's always how you think. It is how you reason. It is the fact that you're available to good chains of evidence and argument. And if you're not available to those things, you're simply not in touch with reality in an ongoing way.

And you are an unreliable witness to every subsequent event. I mean, all you have is dogmatism. If your views are not on the table to be modified by new evidence and new arguments, if you push a conversation in a direction that is uncomfortable, and again I find this especially on the left, although it is it's similar to what happens in a religious context when you begin to challenge the veracity of Scripture or any other dogma, if a reliable chain of reasoning and evidence begins to push up against the boundary of some leftist shibboleth, you just reap a storm of personal attacks and lies, and there are no rules.

Sure, but I mean, why would there be? I mean, these people, as I say, they're fighting for everything that they think they believe in. Why would they not play as dirty as they like? I mean, I think the more interesting thing is, as it were, why people don't do it back. We don't do it back for a very clear reason, which was that we think there should be some decency in this world. But, you know, I or you could at any point decide to turn around with as frivolous attacks on our enemies as they do on us.

You know, we could perfectly easily turn around and say you know the problem with glenn greenwald is he's such a pedophile right he is such a pedophile and you know the problem with reza aslan is he just can't stop shagging kids we could do that yeah it would be as frivolous and as untrue as their constant smears of their opponents. But we don't do it. Why? Because we have a belief in the truth. Because we don't want to pump out lies simply to further a political agenda. Because we've got a bit of decency in this world.

And I think we have to hang on to that. And I'm very glad that, by and large, people of our thinking do. Let's talk about that. In what sense are you a conservative? Several different ways. I mean, one is that I've got a very conservative instinct. And I don't like the term progressive. I don't like this term.

I don't like the idea. I don't like the idea. I mean, progressing towards what? I think a lot of the fundamental things of progressive so-called politics are things that should make people suspicious. All sorts of things, the idea of a leveling out of society, of fighting until a day when everyone is utterly equal and so on. There are parts of it that are true and good, and large parts of it that are obviously something else. I believe in, I swear I was conservative because I believe in retaining the things that are good and think

very often that a lot of so-called progressives want to trample on a lot of those things i think i suppose in another way also i believe in tradition and i believe in custom um that there are some things that are good because uh we have been doing them for a long time and they reflect a wisdom of experience and collective experience. And that in itself is a part of politics that should be deemed to be at least something that has worth. So a lot of things, this I would, by the way, say, I mean, this is different to a considerable degree to a lot of American conservatism and certainly to a lot of American republicanism. In Britain, most small C conservatives like me would, you know, see an Edmund Burke, for instance, and somebody we admire. And and that is, I think, rather different in the American tradition. And that is, I think, rather different in American tradition.

Burke, I suppose, had one of the most important statements of my form of conservatism, which is that he saw our role as being to form a role of a culture, to form a unity and a pact between those who have gone before, those who are alive now, and those who are going to be born. And that you have to be very careful about destroying any particular end of that pact or breaking the pact. And it's that that I think would make me conservative, passing on laws and traditions which have seen my predecessors well and have done well for them and giving them justice and meaning and all sorts of other things and security and passing them on.

Not, I suppose this is the crucial difference with the left, I mean not believing that one can create a utopia in politics. I think this is a very important point, if I say so myself. Politics, it seems to me, is taking on too much significance in our societies these days. It might be to do with the decline of religion. There are other factors. But I hear of people who, in Britain, when the recent election happened, the Conservatives won, all these people of the left, there was a colleague of mine, a spectator, and I had a

competition to find the most ludicrous response from the left. But there were people who were claiming they had cried every day. They'd woken up every day since the election, remembered it wasn't a horrible nightmare and burst into tears. My view is this is a totally wrongheaded way to think of politics. Politics is not about everything to do with your life. It's about a bit of your life and the orderly governance of your society. But it's not the means through which you make people good. It's not the means through which you make people happy. I mean, when people think that politics is going to make them happy, I think they must be taking something. No, your personal life makes you happy. Culture makes you happy. I mean, it was Alexander Hetz, and I think he said,

you know, that culture and art and the summer lightning of human happiness are the only guarantees we have. Who would want, you know, a Republican contender to give them that? Who would want a Democrat contender to give them that? It's a crazy misreading of the role of politics. So I do worry about that on the left. I think it is among the things that makes me conservative. I think maybe I have just a problem with translation here across the pond, because certainly 90% of what you described as the terrain of conservatism, I certainly can align with. But all of that, once you bring it into an American context, is vitiated by a level of ambient religiosity and bamboozlement that is just, you know, when you talk about tradition in Alabama or

even in Pennsylvania, tradition is of the sort that would prevent you from believing in evolution, right? And it would- Right. Now, that's the problem. Yeah. And it would prevent you from believing in it. Even if you're a presidential candidate who happens

to be a Yale-trained surgeon, right? Well, that, by the way, can I say, without wanting to sound too nationalistic, is this, is that we are very lucky in Britain, rather specifically in England, and I suppose in

Scotland as well, but Wales and rather less so Northern Ireland. We're very lucky in that the form of religion which we've inherited is a wounded form of Christianity. It's a cultural form of Christianity, undoubtedly, but one in which belief actually is, you know, is not that important. It's quite different from the Christianity of parts of America. I suppose the nearest you'd get, you might get on the coasts, the form of Episcopalianism that was close to it, but it's not remotely fundamentalist. The idea of being a fundamentalist Anglican is so ludicrous that no one would put the two words together. And that's partly because of the fact that Anglicanism,

Protestant Anglicanism in the United Kingdom and England, was sorted out the church-state problem some centuries ago and made an interesting reconciliation whereby effectively the state owned the religion but but the religion had a place at the table that was very important but that all sorts of compromises happen that have meant that by the 20th century, it isn't remotely weird, by the way. There are books about this now. There's one only a few years ago from the rector of the church at Oxford University called Christian Atheist.

Quite a lot of people would regard themselves as that. I call myself a Christian atheist because as various Italian philosophers have said that's the product of what you are you believe not is is important but you are a product of that just as there are Jewish atheists and indeed as we now know thank goodness and more number Muslim atheists but but what they've come from is not something that necessarily can be completely ignored or necessarily should be completely ignored. If there is worth in it, then that itself should be considered.

That's why I don't like the wholesale ridiculing of all religion that some people, I think, a bit too glibly do. So would you detect some daylight between yourself and me and some of my colleagues? For a very long time, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and I were being described essentially as a four-headed atheist. We're the new atheists. And, you know, there are differences between certainly differences of emphasis, but also just differences of view to what we believe to be true or important there. But the generic picture of a very strident attack on all religion in principle, because it's so much of it, really all of it that's relevant to us,

rests on a claim about the divine origin of specific books, which is on its face ridiculous and disproved by the contents of every page of those books. It sounds like you aren't fully aligned with that project. No, I'm not. Talk about that. I'm not for various reasons. But I mean, one is, and I don't apply this by any means to you or to Christopher.

I have a problem with something that as it were some of your admirers have ended up doing which is to say the problem is all religion and you see I find this a weaselly way out I think this is one of the ways in which people avoid the problem I can understand why people think it so to be clear that the problem is all religion as opposed to the problem of Well, yes, well if I haven't been energetic enough on spelling out why that's confusion I have to get less sleep at night and And Christopher also. Yeah was very clear about that. I have a Residual I am sure you won't mind me saying this, a little problem

with Richard Dawkins, but has an amusing background, if you don't mind me relaying it for a few minutes. Richard and I were meant to be doing a debate a few years ago at the Cambridge Union, where I think the plan was that it was him and me beating up a couple of imams, which sounded great to me. I was looking forward to it enormously. Of course, as you know, actually, Muslim religious leaders never actually turn out for debate. I mean, I don't know if you've ever debated. Well, I mean, they just they just don't debate various sort of scholars and pseudo scholars and publicity seekers do. But generally generally the imams steer clear of it for a very clear reason, which is that they know that they'll look like idiots and what they believe or

pretend to believe will be disproved. I mean, they're right to avoid the debate on their own terms. But anyhow, I was looking forward to this. It turned out that we didn't have any imams, but we did have Rowan Williams, a sheepish former archbishop of Canterbury, and Tariq Ramadan, as I mentioned before, a very dear enemy. But unfortunately, Richard, I think it was Richard's fault, that the motion became stronger and stronger and harder and harder, as it were. And it became that there's no place for religions in the 21st century and I thought that was a preposterous thing and so I switched sides and and won the debate for the other side despite the fact I could talk to either of my people on the other side because I've been so rude about the Archbishop and and so vitriolic about Tariq Ramadan that I think we agreed I would speak last he said and he said he wouldn't have about Tariq Ramadan. I think we agreed that I would speak last.

He said he wouldn't have that, Tariq, because he said, you will spend the whole time attacking me. And I gave him my word I wouldn't. I only spent half the speech attacking him. But I tell you this because there's another segue to this, which is that I've also been a bit rude about Richard in that he, I think, now he has changed on this, but certainly some years ago, he used to give Islam a bit of a soft ride in compared to Christianity. And there's a

famous interview, which he did on Al Jazeera with somebody called Mehdi Hassan, where, um, Mehdi Hassan read the opening of chapter two of the God delusion, amazing piece of rhetoric about how, uh, God is the God of the old Testament is the most vile appalling uh disgraceful disgusting figure in all of fiction so this was read to him on al jazeera and the interviewer said to richard dawkins you know you believe that of the god of the old testament he said yes i do quite rightly the interviewer said you believe that of the god of the christians and richard said i do quite rightly and then the interviewer said and what about the god of the Quran? And this little flicker went across Richard's eyes. And he said, the God of the Quran, I know less about. And I wrote a piece

after this saying that this wasn't surprising. And a surprising response from Richard Dawkins. Professor Dawkins was simply demonstrating the survival instinct of his species. I was so pleased with this gag, I reported it, I retold it everywhere I went. And Richard quite rightly took exception to this and said when my next saw him that I owed him an apology. And I gave him a sort of half-arsed apology. Because he has actually, and did actually later in that interview, to be fair to him, you know, ridicule the idea that, you know, Prophet Mo flew around on a half-human horse and all this kind of crap.

And so he did go into it a bit more. But I knew exactly what was going on in that moment and that Richard Dawkins effectively came up against that cliff, which we all know is there, which is when what is true and what needs to be said is right at the point where it could screw everything in your life up. Not because it isn't true, but because you're on Al Jazeera is right at the point where it could screw everything in your life up. Not because it isn't true, but because you're on Al Jazeera and the entire Muslim world could be watching

and you may very well discover you've got to leave your house, you've got to go away for a bit, you've got to go into hiding, and worse. So I don't, it's a bit cruel that I ridicule him and give him his examples, because actually, I think Richard Dawkins has done amazing work in all sorts of ways in his career. But I understand the slight reticence, and it's a bit cruel of me to pick up on it when it has occurred. And I don't think it occurs so much now. But no, my main beef is with the people, the sort of Twitter warriors who responded after Paris the other day by saying the problem is all religions.

And I I think that's a cop out because I think you need to say, actually, you know what? The response to the load of jihadist Islamists going around Paris, gunning people down for being in a restaurant does not mean you've got to close Anglican schools in England that do a perfectly good job of educating kids. It does not mean you need to crack down on rabbis in synagogues across Europe. In a way, this points to a cowardice underneath a cowardice in our time, which is that I think that you and Christopher and others made it possible to say all religions are untrue, all religions can be terrible. All of this is true.

But the thing is, in a way, you've also given people the ability to say we've got a problem with one religion at the moment But I would say that there is one thing beyond that which it's also important to consider that some of us still think which is Actually, some religions are better than others. Yes, you know Anglican Christianity Brian March is a lot better than Sunni Islam You know you'd much rather have the local Anglican vicar come round to tea than your average fire-breathing imam. And we're very lucky, you know, that that is the case. And

I sort of just think it needs nodding to. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm actually perpetually nodding on that point. And since the beginning, I have always been very clear to spell out that generic atheism doesn't make any sense. I mean, there is this bias, a very strong bias among self-identified atheists that if you're going to be an intellectually consistent atheist, you have to oppose all religions equally because they're all equally invalid. But this is just simply untrue. It's untrue as a matter of fact, and it's untrue as a matter of moral imperative. So all religions are not equally improbable because any specific doctrine can be more or less at odds with what

we know to be true about the nature of the universe. And if you keep adding doctrines to one another, your belief system becomes less and less plausible. So it's a very simple point I've made, and to the confusion of many people, but Mormonism is objectively less likely to be true than generic Christianity is. Because this is a simple statement of mathematical probability. Mormons believe basically everything Christians believe and they believe some additional nonsense.

So whatever probability you put at Jesus's return to earth to resurrect the dead, you have to put a lesser probability on the claim that he will return to the precise spot of Jackson County, Missouri, right? As opposed to returning anywhere. So the Mormons lose that probabilistic contest there. Wouldn't it be brilliant if there were actually documentation saying that Muhammad had a conviction for fraud before pretending to hear the Quran? I'm sure he did.

I'm sure he did. We just don't have the paperwork. It's too bad we don't know as much about Muhammad as we do of Joseph Smith, no doubt. And this, obviously, just across the board, this is relevant. So when I say that specific beliefs matter, that means that when I criticize the religious impediments to embryonic stem cell research, I'm not talking about Islam, because Islam doesn't take a position there. Islam has a admittedly crazy idea, but nonetheless useful idea that the soul doesn't enter the fetus until far past the moment of conception, either day 80 or day

120, depending on which hadith you believe. And so the Islamic state could practice embryonic stem cell research, right? So Islam is not a problem on that front. On that front, we're talking about Christianity and Judaism for the most part. But on every other front now relevant to the maintenance of civilization, Islam, political Islam, jihadism is the problem we all have to focus on. And my concern, which I voice now, no doubt, to the boredom of our listeners, they just captivates everyone in polite society now, where, as Mark Stein said, we're going to be talking about the truly trivial when nukes go off in some major American or European cities.

My concern is that at a certain point we will see only the far right in our own society become energized enough to call a spade a spade and address this, the problem of creeping theocracy under the guise of the civil rights of Muslims. Could I give another example of why that is? This gets into another point, as I say, it might be a point of difference between us before I get to a point of similarity. I mean, I am very concerned, and this, I think, again, this is a matter say, might be a point of difference between us before I get to a point of similarity. I mean, I am very concerned. And I think, again, this is a matter of its own.

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