Bill Maher: Western culture isn't just different, it's better.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

On "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart relatively soft-pedaled his defense of fellow Comedy Central employees, "South Park's" Matt Stone and Trey Parker, against a group of Muslim critics. Over at HBO this weekend, though, Bill Maher wasn't holding anything back. On his show "Real Time With Bill Maher," the show's every-incendiary host opined during his segment "New Rules:"

"When South Park got threatened last week by Islamists incensed at their depiction of Muhammad, it served -- or should serve -- as a reminder that our culture isn't just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists. It's better." In his defense of the First Amendment and other Americal civil liberties, Maher -- who made the film "Religulous" -- continued: "The Western world needs to make it clear: Some things about our culture are not negotiable. And can't change. And one of them is freedom of speech, Separation of church and state is another."

Completely spot-on observation about real differences in cultures, one that will not play well with PC police. Bill Maher is certainly no friend of religious people; and gives grief equally to Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, and Mormons as you will see. But he specifically singles out Isalm with the recent actions in Afganistan and the Taliban's attack on an all girls school.

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

So long, Bill Maher. It was nice knowing thee.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

Ooh no we are better than others? What happened to Maher?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

He's been very consistent on that subject, bud.

[medea34.livejournal.com]

I love bill maher - I don't think there is anything wrong with saying American culture(with it's freedom of expression & theoretical separation of church & state) is superior to a theocracy. Matt and Trey (and any one else) should be free to mock the (IMO) insane beliefs of Muslims, Christians, Mormons, Jews and Any group that asserts that the real world should operate in accordance with the edicts of their imaginary friends.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Hey the western world was kind of shitty until we told the Catholic Church to piss off and stop interfering with secular governments. Most of the Islamic world doesn't have any real concept of the separation of church and state and certainly things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion are somewhat alien.

I would argue that the less guided by religious mythology a culture is, the better it is.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

The monologue was very funny, but he did quaintly omit abortion doctor killers from his list of Christian terrorists. No, it's not the same scale as occurs with the excesses of Islam, but the omission was in bad faith, IMO.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the great thing about the western democracies is that we rape and pillage other countries -- instead of just oppressing our own people.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

but that's like one step away from american exceptionalism

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

From what I recall, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates were pretty liberal, and had secular law for non-Muslims, though there was no separation of Church and state: the Anglo-Saxons don't really get close to that place until the C17th and good old Cromwell who lets Jewish folk back in to England.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when football isn't working properly.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside that Islam has had separation of Church and state for over 1,000 years while the West has had it for maybe 200 at max.....

Would this be the Western world where in some cases freedom of speech means banning Holocaust denial? The Western world where freedom of religion translates to discrimination against Muslims? The Western world where freedom of speech meant censorship of things like Lady Chatterly's Lover?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually, there was a bit when the Caliphate tried to force a state Islam on the Muslims. They said "NO U" and thus Islam had separation of Church and State for over 1,000 years.....

And be he powerless or not, your head of state and head of church are the same man. When are you going to join we in the United States in having an Anglican Church without a King to prop it up?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Two societies in the Muslim world from the Atlantic to the Pacific are theocracies. The West has the Vatican, Andorra, every single state where the King is head of the local church, it has multiple states which in fact recognize state churches.......

The difference between state church and theocracy is what, exactly? Oh, wait, I get it-it's only a theocracy when those desert savages with the long beards do it. That's why all Muslim states are theocracies and say, England and Norway aren't.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Speaking of other ideals that other cultures had first-the Chinese invented the idea of revolutions. And a way to justify the succession of one government to another. In the West the mere idea of a change to the system was unthinkable, which is why the string of disasters from 1789-1991 happened. I find it telling that Western society tried to keep putting the Djinn back in the bottle only to find out that surprise, surprise the monarchies were unable to stop the Revolutions.

This where the rest of the world had already had freedom for intellectuals to publish and in China at least the Jeffersonian ideal of how to refresh the tree of liberty since, oh.....the 11th Century BC......

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is why present-day China is perfectly a paradise without any degrees of social difficulty or just plain stupidity, right? State atheism did nothing to ameliorate the ills of everything from the Elbe to the South China Sea as I recall, or is this another case of "Mao and Stalin were really theocrats all along?".

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Where exactly are you citing in the Islamic world that has this magical separation?

I'd also like some substantiation of this discrimination again Muslims other than the profiling that's been a fact of life post 9/11.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

And be he powerless or not, your head of state and head of church are the same man.

And is unelected. And we seem to prefer it that way, until, of course, we care to change it. And just to rub the injustice of it all in, there are more practising Roman Catholics in England than practising Anglicans.

Being culturally Catholic myself, could I give a damn? No.

You guys may have a constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state, but such seems functionally meaningless given your society. Especially in the South.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Caliphs tried to force this on the Muslim masses the way the Kings of Europe and the Emperors of Rome did with Orthodoxy and Catholicism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%27tazili

It failed, utterly.

Would it help to note that in Francophone countries they repeatedly try to outlaw the hijab and then wonder why Muslims really don't like the double-standards? Or is this a case of "It's only discrimination if it's somebody else?"

And I should note as well that for a long time the Caliphate was far closer to approximating Western ideals of the present than anything in Europe or the shattered wreck of the Roman Empire. And that even today Islam is actually egalitarian in theology where Christianity is very much still not....

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I should have clarified that religion is far from the only irrationality we cling to. Mao and Stalin were authoritarian assholes who made the state the object of worship but I wouldn't call them theocratic.

Now you can answer my questions if you don't mind.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Contemporary Fundamentalism is what the Union gets for conquering us. They leveled much of the South and all kinds of religious extremisms came out of the woodwork when the South remained and remains the poorest individual sectional bloc.

But either way, limey, you guys don't have separation of Church and State so until you do as the French did and create it, don't lecture people who have had this for hundreds of years while you still persist with feudal atavisms.

If it was a Frenchie, I'd actually listen to his bitch-whining about our culture, because y'know, the French actually *have* some of the stuff we should. The UK with its theocratic monarchy and the strongest aristocracy in Europe? I fart in its general direction.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I would note that there were no questions in your first comment, only statements. All of which are false.

1) Nobody told the Catholic Church to piss off until about 1789 or so, by which point theocracy lost its bite to the degree it had and religion was replaced with the racist conceits of late-19th Century Europe. White supremacy replaced Christianity but both met the same need. With of course those who were still the uber-devout as prone to racism and defense of slavery as anyone else.

And in the 20th Century, well....between the fascists and the communists Europeans really showed how to shoot yourselves in the foot twice.

2) Most of the Muslim world exists under various secular Westernized dictatorships. The Muslim world includes everything from Morocco to Indonesia, and only two countries are actually theocratic: Iran and Saudi Arabia. The majority of it is various strands of secular dictatorships which repress everybody, Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike.

3) They must be equally to the West then, given that European countries censor things like Holocaust denial, given that the Grundgesetz outlaws certain political parties (albeit 30% of Germans would vote Nazi anyway so it's perfect political sense), and given that the West contains a lot of countries with state churches. If Theocracy is religion and the state together, then by that logic, a state which recognizes and patronizes a particular denomination is....

4) I've already answered your point that it's not religion that's the problem it's when Kings use it to safeguard themselves. But that results in the Catch-22 of religion and culture technically being near-identical the further away one is from the French Revolution.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And let's be clear on another thing-most of the US's wars in the 20th Century after WWII were attempts to clean up the messes Europe made in the Third World and also to strengthen our own empire (the two are extremely related). I mean, we killed Lumumba because the Belgians ran a shithole, the mess in Iraq is the UK's fault, Afghanistan was invaded by the British three times to keep it from falling into Russia's sphere of influence, failing three times I might add, there's the whole French debacle in Vietnam and then there's the reality that well, the Middle East went to shit after you guys tried to run it as parts of your empires the way everything else did.....

There's a reason that much of Africa and Asia is nightmarish. That reason is your colonial misadventures (except the Philippines and certain Polynesian islands *we've* messed up/forcibly stolen).

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

You're being a nit obtuse. Many muslim dominated countries may as well be theocracies. Western Monarchies tend to be the inverse where the monarchy is just a holdover whereas in Egypt you get to elect the theocrats in charge.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the info from your first link.

I know that at one time, the Islamic world was a beacon of intellectual development - math, art, architecture, etc. But now? Those countries suck, even the ones we consider allies are horrible places for human rights, women, etc.

Do Francophone countries just go after Muslim traditions? I've only read a bit about thing like the hijab ban.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Egypt? Er....insofar as I remember, Egypt's right along with the rest of them in persecuting the Islamists, who also, BTW, hate the dictatorships of the Middle East as much as the West does. The dictatorships in the Middle East don't like Islamism because it's a revolutionary ideology that poses a clear and present danger (is it authoritarian? Yes. So was Communism but that didn't stop anyone from adopting Marxist revolutionary rhetoric).