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

[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]

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.....

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

All of which are false.

This is what I get for letting the History Channel educate me. Apparently I'm not learning as much from those specials about Hitler and the Spear of Destiny as one might hope.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Trust me, the Hitler channel is not at all about actual history.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

So you're saying the info on Chupacabras and underwater UFO's is unreliable? Sheesh, can't trust media at all these days.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

But tell you what, that show on "The United States, the story of US" is fantastic.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check it out. Part of my problem may be my late work days - my cable tv viewing tends to start after 11pm. That and I'm a sucker for chupacabra specials.

Small specious quibbles.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

1) Henry VIII, England, 1533. Reformation anyone. Started up the whole state/church thang really, which you have mentioned earlier. Before which the Pope was head of the Church and the monarchs kings in their own right but still all under his spiritual jurisdiction.

4) Louis was never head of the Catholic Church. Nor even the Catholic Church in France: there was a Cardinal for that. The flaw in your argument is that in France, the Church and State were separate. It was the feudal ancient regime bankrupting itself supporting the American war of Independence*, that precipitated the economic collapse that led, eventually, to Madame la Guillotine.

*Because what was bad for Britain was good for France. Such thinking needed a revolution. Then a long war, then a few more....

Re: Small specious quibbles.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) Actually it existed long before that. The Investiture Controversy.....

2) I said that religion and culture were the same, which they were. The idea that individual ethnicities had cultures on their own is at the extremely earliest in the Napoleonic Wars....