September 28, 2008

Harris vs. Palin

I may not agree with what Sam Harris has to see about religion, but he's dead on about Sarah Palin in Newsweek this week:

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance... There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.
It's a tremendous relief to me that America seems to be catching on to what a ridiculous fraud Palin's candidacy is.

Posted by Stephen Silver at September 28, 2008 05:26 PM
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