Liberals like Bill Maher and "new atheist" Sam Harris have an awkward problem. They love to bash conservativism across the broad policy spectrum. But when it comes to Muslim immigration . . . they find themselves in substantial agreement with conservatives.
I encourage readers to listen to this edited clip from Harris's "Waking Up" podcast of October 3rd. The occasion was the 10th anniversary of Religulous, an anti-religion documentary. Harris's guests were the star of the movie, Bill Maher, and its director Larry Charles.
Harris and Maher criticized The New Yorker, and its editor David Remnick, for disinviting Bannon from a forum. Maher subsequently invited Bannon on the September 29th edition of Real Time. In the Harris podcast clip, Maher says of his interview of Bannon:
"I was sorry we ran out of time, because I was about to get to the area, immigration and so forth, where Steve Bannon and I share some ideas."
That, in turn, led to a discussion among Maher, Harris and Charles, in which each expressed concerns about massive Muslim immigration to the West, and criticized the MSM's coverage of these issues.
And yet, people like Maher and Harris have not yet taken the logical next step: stopping support of liberal politicians who advocate harmful policies on immigration, and getting behind conservatives who are realistic on the issues. It might be uncomfortable socially, but hey, it's only the future of Western civilization at stake!
Transcript highlights:
Maher: "People who are coming from societies where they were raised under Sharia law of some kind, there is going to be an assimilation problem."
Harris: "My concern about the left . . . For you to say that we don't want the US to be anything like Germany at this moment with respect to immigration and problems with assimilation, that's just tantamount to expressing your racism [in the eyes of the left.]"
Maher: "Liberals yell about Americans, did not take in as many Syrians as we should. Well, maybe we could have taken more in. But Saudi Arabia took none . . . Where's the outrage about that?"
Harris: In the UK, "there were more British Muslim citizens who had gone to fight for ISIS than in the British armed forces."
Harris: In a poll of British Muslims about homosexuality, "the percentage saying it's acceptable is zero."
Maher: "I know that liberals blow a gasket if you use that phrase, 'no-go zones.' I don't know what the right phrase would be, but how about 'neighborhood that scares me?' . . . The 60 Minutes episode . . . where there's a woman in a mini-skirt walking down the street, and all the men are screaming at her. And she turns around and goes: 'this is Britain!' But not in that neighborhood."
Harris: "There have been people who have gone 'walking while Jewish' in Paris, and been spat upon. But to talk about it in the way we are now is to sound like you're getting your news from Breitbart, because it's not the kind of thing that gets honestly written about in The New York Times . . . Writing about incidents in Germany, for instance, they're very careful. Sometimes, there's no indication given that these people are immigrants or Muslim."
Maher: "You're on MSNBC, you've seen a couple of your colleagues get fired and lose their shows. You know who the audience is. You don't want to say something there that the audience is going to give you a low rating for. So you don't want to bring this topic up. Or if it comes up, you don't want to say anything that makes them think outside the box that they are comfortable in already."
