When Atheists Attack
I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.” His Web site is samharris.org.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: Degsy @ 11/06/2008 1:30:14 PM
Comment: I agree wholeheartedly with Battlestar. There was no need for this article to be pitched as an attack on Sarah Palin, and certainly not one perpetrated by an atheist. The title suggests a latent contempt for, if not Sam Harris, certainly his views. Very disappointing. I thought better of Newsweek. Whoever decided on the monicker for this article has done the publication a great disservice.
Posted By: desecheo @ 11/01/2008 7:41:00 AM
Comment: whoever chose the title for this article should be fired
Posted By: Battlestar @ 10/18/2008 7:46:47 PM
Comment: This is a great article but some jerk editor gave it a title ("When Atheists Attack: A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin -- and defends elitism" ) which appears to have been intended to undermine the credibility of the author, who is unlikely to have referred to himself in the third person as a "noted provocateur" or his article as an example of an "attack" which "rips" its subject. Nor is there any reason for the author to have been identified as an atheist! The article could have just as improperly been entitled "When Jews Attack" or "When Unitarians Attack" or "When Protestants Attack"! Whoever gave this article its title should be identified and should write an apology to the author and to Newsweek's readers.