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| Click above for the Sam Harris oral essay at Bari’s “Honestly” pod |
From Bari Weiss:
For today’s episode, we’re thrilled to share the most recent episode of our friend Sam Harris’s podcast.
Moral confusion is plaguing this moment like never before. It’s everywhere: from college campuses to congress. Sam, better than almost anyone, is able to speak to that confusion, with facts, nuance and moral clarity. Importantly, he doesn’t just visit this topic with the narrow lens of this particular war between Hamas and Israel, but with a bird’s eye view of history. But according to Sam, it’s not the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that matters so much right now, but rather the history—and enduring global problem—of jihadism. And that’s what this episode is about.
The sum of the problem in two words: “Blind Faith”. aka “True Believers”.
And for me, it’s meeting up with dear old Sam, after a long separation. I’d read all his books and subscribed to his podcast, “Waking Up”, but then got pissed off when he went all feral over the appointment of Bret Kavanagh to the Supreme Court. Lost his mojo, imo. And went super TDS.
But here, above, he’s spot on. Back in form. Kinda like seeing Beckham back to kicking those crazy corners. He’s back! Bend it like Beckham! Say it like Harris! The threat to the world, the existential threat, of the ideology of Islam, as most concentrated and poisonous in the ideology of Jihad. No-one describes it better, more cogently and more urgently.
It’s a touch over an hour. But surely your life and that of your children and grandchildren is worth that. Isn’t it? I mean, it’s a pretty big issue. And Sam is not crazy. Well, not about this, anyway....
ADDED: Sam mentions a 2016 podcast of his in which he looks at the glossy and professional ISIS magazine called Dabiq, which showed clearly “Why they hate us”. Aka “What does ISIS really want?". I wrote a post about it at the time, here.
