Process
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Highlights
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Labels like “Islam” and “the West,” Said said, “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality that won’t be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that.” Huntington wanted to jettison class analysis for “cultural difference” but Said believed that “it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis.”
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But many bad ideas refuse to die, because they provide convenient stories to help us make sense of the world. They also help justify prejudices, and add a veneer of scientific respectability to what should be treated as bigotry and ignorance.