I don’t actually like agreeing with Bill Maher because he is a misogynist ant-vaxer putz, but when a person’s right, they’re right. (Update: It was Sam Harris who said the below, not Maher. I misread.)

The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry towards Muslims as people. That is intellectually ridiculous.

The quote is from this really good column about how liberalism is so blinded by their inability to criticize other cultures.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I am politically and ideologically. I don’t like defining myself in such limiting terms, but a liberal I definitely am not. I’m obviously not a conservative, though – I support feminism, welfare, etc., so that moniker doesn’t really fit me at all and really never did.

I’m not sure what I am. Mostly, I care about evidence, truth and giving the most freedom to the largest number of people. Secular humanism is an ok term, but I am more militant than that philosophy allows.

I used to call myself a “militant liberal,” but I don’t really want to be associated with mainstream liberals at all at this point since like the conservatives, their entire philosophy is ideologically hollow and epistemologically bankrupt.