Originally posted 2014-11-01 12:59:44.
The recent exchange between Hollywood star Ben Affleck and writer Sam Harris on Bill Maher’s popular show has highlighted the fundamental problem of the ‘liberal left’. The crux of the argument rested on Affleck’s Politically Correct presumption that it is never acceptable to criticise another culture. This view holds that all cultures are equally valid and that persons inside the dominant culture – in this case a Post-Renaissance, post-Christian European one – may never criticise any aspect of another culture, which in this case was Islam.
Now the rights and wrongs of the argument are clear to anyone who watches the exchange, which is here: (http://youtu.be/vln9D81eO60) and I advise readers to do this. They will see that Harris maintained a reserved and non-confrontational position throughout, whereas Affleck behaved like a hectoring bully.
Affleck, while wrong, was only iterating the underlying viewpoint of the culture he espouses, which he calls ‘liberal’.
Over the last 15 years I had increasingly become sympathetic towards feminist voices. They seemed reasonable. Women should have equal rights to men, shouldn’t they? The basic premise — of ‘equality between the sexes’ — seemed unassailable, and this was how the feminist case was being presented. Men, they said, oppressed women and this had to be changed.
