The world is still talking about the pope’s recent speech - a speech so boring, convoluted and oblique to the real concerns of humanity that it could well have been intended as a weapon of war. It might start a war, in fact, given that it contained a stupendously derogatory appraisal of Islam. For some reason, the Holy Father found it necessary to quote the Emperor Manual II Paleologos, who said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman...." Now the Muslim world is buzzing with pious rage. It’s a pity that Pope Benedict doesn’t also draw cartoons. Joining a craven chorus of terrified supplicants, The New York Times has urged him to muster a "deep and persuasive" apology. He now appears to be mincing his way toward the performance of just such a feat. (my emphasis)

Astrologers don't like "their most profound convictions" attacked either. Neither do people who believe that space aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Happily, these groups do not take to the streets and start killing people when their irrational beliefs are challenged.

I suspect that the pope would be the first to admit that there are millions of people on this Earth who harbor "most profound convictions" that are neither profound nor compatible with real dialogue. Indeed, one doesn’t even need to read between the lines of his speech to glean that he would place the entire Muslim world beyond the "universality of reason." He is surely right to be alarmed by Islam — particularly by its doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. He is right to find the treatment of Muslim women throughout the world abhorrent (if, indeed, he does find it abhorrent). He is right to be concerned that any Muslim who converts to Christianity (or to atheism) has put his life in jeopardy, as conversion away from the faith is punishable by death. These profundities are worthy objects of our derision. No apologies necessary, Your Holiness. (my emphasis)

We might, however, note in passing that one of the pope’s "most profound convictions" is that contraception is a sin. His agents continue to preach this diabolical dogma in the developing world, and even in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 3 million people die from AIDS each year. This is unconscionable and irredeemably stupid. It is also a point on which the Church has not shown much of an intelligent capacity for dialogue. Despite their inclination to breed themselves into a state of world domination, Muslims tend to be far more reasonable on the subject of family planning. They do not consider the use of temporary forms of birth control to be a sin. (my emphasis)

The West is endangered, primarily, by the religious fragmentation of the human community, by religious impediments to clear thinking, and by the religious willingness of millions to sacrifice the real possibility of happiness in this world for a fantasy of a world to come.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities. (my emphasis)

Forget what Pat Robertson said about gay kissing and feminism causing 9/11; forget the historic American alliance between paranoia and the political right; ignore the legion of tinfoil hat-wearing trolls teeming online. No, says Harris, the nutballs' delusion, the reason this "phantasmagoria" exists, is "the debilitating dogma that that lurks at the heart of liberalism."

What is that dogma? Here comes the hoary whipping boy. Liberals believe that "the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given suffficient economic opportunities." This, of course, is the foreign version of the liberals-coddle-criminals argument.

Set aside the fact that for decades, Democrats have gone out of their way to immunize themselves against this charge by supporting astronomically expensive weapons systems (perhaps too far out of their way, given the pork, waste and muscle-bound obsolescence of many of those systems), not to mention by building the biggest prison system on the planet. Set aside the bipartisan consensus since World War II that led to the World Bank and dozens of other economic development initatives around the globe.

The real comedy is that these days, the economic opportunity argument for international stability is at the heart of the Bush freedom agenda. It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are justifying foreign adventures by claiming that providing hope and opportunity to people around the world will make them our friends; that "debilitating dogma" is the lynchpin of the neocons' freedom = capitalism = security argument.