I Used To Be A Fan But I Am Now Shocked, Disgusted And Appalled With Sam Harris

[henryp]

I say this all the time. In 50 years, something you believe today without even giving it a second thought will be what some 20 year old in the future will use to label you a horrible bigot. You are an awful person according to the future, and you have no idea why. I have lots of guesses. It's definitely something I'm curious to find out when I get older.

Transgender stuff got dumped on us in a hurry. There's a target audience for this type of progressive stuff. People who've been raised to immediately buy into this kind of thing. For who being progressive is their identity. A lot of other people weren't raised that way. So when they say "Caitlyn Jenner is a woman now, and gender isn't related to that chromosome stuff you learned in school" a certain group of people have been bred to accept it unquestionably, and immediately move to labeling everyone else who disagrees a phobe or bigot. But it takes a breath or two for others to come around, or Allah forbid, maybe they come to a different conclusion. But people aren't given a breath, because it's quicker just to shame people now than talk to them.

But I guess as long as you keep up with the latest fashion, you can ignore past transgressions? Like supporting an anti-gay marriage candidate in 2016 would be homophobic. But when everybody in the country voted for a candidate in 2008 that was against gay marriage, that wasn't the bar for determining if you were homophobic. The phobic/bigot bar conveniently moves to wherever a certain group of people happen to be. And if anyone isn't moving at exactly the same pace, they are bad.

It's definitely an interesting thing to watch socially. People are odd ducks. A phrase that will probably be duckphobic in 50 years, when animals rights are determined to be afforded the same rights as humans, and such language disparaging duck behavior will not be tolerated.

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't like racists. At all. None. Zero. I have zero tolerance. If a person is racist, yet they're a good parent, I don't give a fuck. I don't like them and we can't be friends. I'm black and white in that aspect. If a person is a bully to lgbt, they're out of my tolerance zone, too. Zero. So, I get it when people get passionate. I just want to be sure I'm not mistaken when I think someone is what I think they are. I've learned that's not always the case.

And I tried very hard to interpret the above clip in a way that didn't make Sam Harris out to be an obvious transpbobe what with him not only being complicit while Murray was saying all that transphobic shit, but also laughing at it like it was funny.

I tried so hard to interpret Sam Harris as not being bigoted.

Believe me, I really really tried... I've been a huge fan of Sam Harris since 2009, he's been my favorite public intellectual until literally yesterday when I watched this clip. I really tried. But saying he's not a bigot after this would be like staring at a spade and calling it a taco.

I used "taco"v as an example just for you

[Longhorn]

I don't like racists. At all. None. Zero. I have zero tolerance. If a person is racist, yet they're a good parent, I don't give a fuck. I don't like them and we can't be friends. I'm black and white in that aspect. If a person is a bully to lgbt, they're out of my tolerance zone, too. Zero. So, I get it when people get passionate. I just want to be sure I'm not mistaken when I think someone is what I think they are. I've learned that's not always the case.

I understand this, and feel the same way about a number of beliefs held by other people.

[Edwardo Piet]

I say this all the time.  In 50 years, something you believe today without even giving it a second thought will be what some 20 year old in the future will use to label you a horrible bigot.  You are an awful person according to the future, and you have no idea why.

Obviously the future is by definition not morally relevant yet so I fail to see the moral relevance.

[paulpablo]

hammy, no.
Many liberals did in fact fuck up with their purist mentality. It did cost us the election. It wasn't just bigots voting for Trump. It was liberal purists crucifying Clinton and voting for, say, Jill Stein. There is such a thing as the extreme left and that is not a fantasy. Sorry, honey. Also, I just wrote a shit ton of stuff and accidentally closed the window. Fml lol

Yeah it wasn't just bigots voting for Trump... like I said calling people bigots obviously made things worse.

But identifying as liberal doesn't make someone liberal. If someone is trying to shut down free speech that doesn't make them liberal that makes them authoritarian.

My point is that obviously many many bigots voted for Trump for bigoted reasons. Who are the people who hate Mexicans going to vote for, Trump or Hilary?

What would the extreme left be like? I know there are people who identify as left who are extreme. But how can you really be "extremely liberal" if you're trying to shut down free speech?

I think the term liberal is usually used in a less literal sense.  Left wing people who try and stop opposing views being expressed are often called "So called liberals" or the term liberals is used sarcastically.

Not literally to describe a group of people who have ideas of liberty and equality.

Although I think there is a catch that liberals might justify themselves as being liberal and shutting down someone else's freedom of speech by saying that the person expressing themselves, using their freedom of speech, is a Nazi who is trying to influence people in a way that would be a threat to the liberty and equality of the general public.

[Crunchy]

Hammy Wrote:
You ignore the part about him calling transgender people weirdos and men with penises and you ignore the fact that Harris just laughed through that rather than educating Murray about gender issues. It's pretty obvious that he laughed through it and didn't take offence to it because he holds the same highly ignorant and highly ignorant "opinion" (it's more about being ignorant wrong about the facts than an "opinion").
Am I the only one here who finds transgenderism to be a serious issue that shouldn't be trivalized like this and finds calling all transgender people "weirdos" to be thunderously ignorant and bigoted?

Am I the only one here who watches the clip and sees the bigoted language against a whole group of people for what it is? There's no sense in which it's not bigoted to hold the opinions that all transgender people are "weirdos" and all transwomen are "men with penises". Holding such opinions against a whole group of people is the very essence of bigotry.

You do realize that referring to transgender people as "weirdos" is as bigoted as referring to black people with the N word?

If you comb through anyone's words deep enough you can always find a situation where they said something off, made or laughed at the wrong joke. Finding a couple of such incidents through a person's life proves absolutely nothing about that person. But go ahead and trash those people's entire lives if it makes you feel righteous.

If you think you have discovered that Sam Harris is an ignorant transphobe out to ridicule the trans community you're wrong. Douglas Murray may be such a person but I don't know him. There is simply zero evidence from this clip and from Harris' response about it and from Harris' entire public life to this point to support your reaction to Harris over this.

I've only read one book by Harris, but I've seen him speak and be interviewed many times and your reaction to a couple of minutes of interview in which he doesn't even speak means nothing. Harris has shown himself to be a very liberal concerning human rights and equality throughout his life , but you heard him laugh inappropriately (in your opinion) and feel ok to label him a horrible fuck faced bigot? 

SteelCurtain Wrote:
You throw around this word bigot and it starts to lose it's meaning. Yeah he might be an asshole, but I don't think he's advocating that trans people are less than human. He's not exactly a trans rights activist, but I think his point (Murray) is that the regressive response to disagreement by progressives gets often taken way too far, where it's not even about disagreement, it's about punishment. 

You sort of proved his point here, Hammy.

This exactly.
What bothers me about this is that you are throwing away an ally for the sake of purity of speech. And it's not even speech. In your opinion he chuckled inappropriately therefore you feel ok to label him a bigot. That's a far bigger problem IMO than the alleged offense.

Bill Maher, Dawkins, Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, Stephen Colbert and on and on have all been outed as horrible racists and bigots thanks to vigilant liberals scanning through thousands of hours of their speeches searching for bad words & thoughts while ignoring 99.9% of what they've said and done. That's really messed up.

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, I go the other way with it.  When someone says something deeply bigoted, I think it does absolutely prove something about that person.  Just doesn't amount to much, for me, most of the time.  No need to twist my scrote and say "well, yeah, he only says stuff that nazis would say, he's not actually a nazi".  OFC he is, probably volunteers for the spca too, though. Compartmentalization ftw.

[Longhorn]

Bullshit. No I don't. Where the hell did I say it made them any less than a person? I am saying that a bigoted person is a bigot (that's what a bigot is). I'm calling a spade a spade, I'm not saying they're any less of a person.

That's not really what I meant. You said yourself, that you were a fan of Sam Harris, but now that you've heard him say something questionable, you're not just not a fan anymore, you're calling him a bigot. Clearly this is important and a big deal to you, since you made this long winded rant about it, or at least you feel strongly about it. Bigot is a pretty strong word and the way you're using it feels like saying 'he's one of them'. So you used to like him and now that you think he holds an opinion you disagree with, you think of him like a bad person. I don't know if this is clearer.

Duh. No need to be condescending. I'm not saying they're not nice in other respects... I'm saying I have higher standards and I'm not a fan of bigots.

I didn't intend to be. But it did come over like that. See your other post. You said sweet old bigoted ladies aren't sweet. That came across to me like denying their other aspects.

I'm not interested in your condescension, your stating of the obvious and your myopic mischaracterisation of me.

Again, I didn't intend to be condescending. I pointed out what I thought was the cause of the problem described in this thread in your thinking. The way I characterized you is how you honestly came across to me in this thread. If I am wrong, I'm sorry. It was just the impression I got. I see that this is an emotional topic for you, so maybe let's end this here. Perhaps I misunderstood you, you misunderstood me, or even more likely, both.

[Minimalist]

Sadly, exactly what Bill Maher is talking about.  The SJWs are insistent that the phrase "the perfect is the enemy of the good" does not apply to them.








If someone agrees with you on every issue you are talking to yourself.  And that is no way to win elections.

[Crunchy]

Meh, I go the other way with it.  When someone says something deeply bigoted, I think it does absolutely prove something about that person.  Just doesn't amount to much, for me, most of the time.  No need to twist my scrote and say "well, yeah, he only says stuff that nazis would say, he's not actually a nazi".  OFC he is, probably volunteers for the spca too, though.  Compartmentalization ftw.

Yeah, but you interpret everything that you don't agree with as bigotry so the word loses all meaning when it comes from you.