May I be blunt? Sam Harris is an obtuse buffoon who, worse still, is convinced otherwise. Pardon me for a moment while I heap derision on the inanities which apparently pass for deep thoughts in his myopic world. Need a dose of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, firmly grounded in an either profound ignorance or stubborn rejection of history? Or perhaps just hungry for the bloody red meat of the intolerant secular set? Sammy'll serve it up all musty and steaming hot, with a soupçon of snark and a generous dollop of condescension.

A few grotesque specimens for your perusal...

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed.... If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

Right out of the starting gate: Non-left-wing Christian running for office = theocracy. This is the kind of cartoonish analysis which apparently passes for deep insight in Sam's writings.

Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter.

Or perhaps (speaking of certain people's need of technical assistance to look good) the heavy editing may have also played a role?

Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism.

Erm -- wasn't one of Obama's associates a terrorist? And wasn't his mentor a philandering racist? And wasn't he himself deeply in bed with the Illinois political machine? Sam laments that some people overlook flaws in their favored politicians, but (speaking of that very effect) he only seems to be able to see that behavior in one party. (And precisely what *has* Sarah Palin done which needs more overlooking than, say, kicking off one's campaign at a bomber's home?)

However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune...

Why is Sam unable to engage his opponents' actual argument? The complaint is not that the news honestly shows Palin to be flawed or human, but rather than the bulk of the (unprecedentedly slimy) allegations have been revealed as patently false. Sam's apparently inability to confront this complaint suggests either that he lives in a very resilliant bubble, or that he suffers from a mental tic which prevents him from hearing what is plainly being said.

... and, above all, [her supporters will focus] upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.

You mean the "reasonably educated" people who insist there are no actual gender differences? (Or, on alternate Thursdays, that "gender" is entirely socially constructed?) You mean the "reasonably educated" people who are convinced that Carter was making a really smart move by offering to pay off Kim Jong Il for his gosh-honest word he'll stop developing nukes? Or, looking towards the home front, the "reasonably educated" faculty who all but formed a lynch mob at Duke University? Those "reasonably educated" people?

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state...

(It's not to be lamented, but you just thought you'd throw it in anyway, right, Sammy? But I can't help but notice that he could just as easily be describing Harry Truman as Sarah Palin. But Sam's not much for history, is he?)

The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her.

And again: Sam and I have irreconcilable differences. He thinks that an advanced university education uniquely qualifies one to rule. I agree with William Buckley (no intellectual slouch) who said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone directory than the 2,000 members of Harvard's faculty. Doubly so with the passage of time.

I believe that the experience of having opposed and successfully overcome a corrupt party boss, and having won a 75% approval rating among Alaskan Democrats does qualify as "training" for such a role, and does indicate some aptitude for precisely the sorts of skills needed on a larger stage. But Harris carefully phrases his criteria as "intellectual training" -- apparently boldly standing up and fighting (successfully) for cleaner government can't count, in Harris's reckoning, because it's not cerebral enough. Better to sit attentively at the feet of Hegel, Marx, or Focault.

... In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience.

... And her opposition often makes an even more straight-faced and serious claim that running for President gives him the essential executive experience! (For a far more important job.) Yet Sam can only detect absurdity in the former?

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today.

Unlike the those chanting vastly more intellectually substantive slogans like "Change!" and "Yes we can!" -- but can't detail even one of Obama's policies? (Of course, that's a trick question, because Obama apparently can't explain them in detail either.)

Go back and re-read Harris' words, paying careful attention to phrasing: "Apparently sentient... beings"? "Provoked" by a microphone? One gets the image of a dull animal in a cage. And, of course, being a mom is, for Harris a "detachment from the real problems of today." Because moms have no experience of real problems. Caring for, providing for, and raising children doesn't at all drive home the real-life impacts of high-minded political ideologies, does it? (What a bloody idiot.)

One wonders if he reserves the same condescension for "being a dad" -- or is it just that women are uniquely dim, in his view, when they breed and rear their young?

The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Frankly, I would bet that Sarah Palin -- or a randomly-selected farmer from Nebraska -- is far more likely to be right, in retrospect, on any of those subjects than Sam Harris will.

(And do you notice how Harris carefully subjects Joe Biden to the same litmus test? Biden can't even remember not to criticize his boss's judgment before the national press -- and Harris thinks he'd be the perfect guy to conduct hard-nosed negotiations with, say, Putin or Achmadinijad? I'll take the "hockey mom", thanks.)

What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

As you'll see in just a second, her "relative ignorance" of these things is "guaranteed" because she is a member of the exact same religion that Barack Obama professes to believe.

I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with millions of Americans—but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either.

After all, in Sam's world, intelligence and good judgment correlate with secularism. Never mind that we have almost zero examples of heroic atheist presidents or statesmen. Lincoln, JFK, Roosevelt, Truman, and Churchill? Sam would apparently have preferred Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot. Those are the kind of people you could trust with the nuclear codes, as they all rejected belief in a God who consciously directs world events.

Bright boy, this Sam Harris.

Now, about that quote that Gibson used out of context:

In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations.

Erm, what? That is precisely what the Abraham Lincoln quote teaches: don't hope or pray that God is on your side, rather pray that you are on his. Why that would be a "dodge", a "lie" or "absurd" (and how Harris has read her mind to know her conscious intent to deceive) I have not yet heard explained.

Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land.

And this makes her reference to Lincoln a "lie", how? Lincoln also believed in God, and quite "literally" believed that the Civil War was probably a judgment from God for the sin of slavery. So it's not quite clear how Harris is transmuting her reference to a well-known quote from Abraham Lincoln into a claim of secularism. But Harris isn't exactly being lucid here, is he?

Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times."

Militant atheists amuse me. Often, they haven't the faintest clue about even the basics of the religion they claim to understand and reject. First, Harris should note that even Christians don't understand the details of biblical prophecy. Yes, sure: we all agree with the broad outline: Earth gets ultra-yucky, God comes back to set things right. But beyond that? Nobody's even sure what the symbolism means -- Sam's ignorance aside, there are dozens of different Christian interpretations of those passages. (And it would be rather hard to draw detailed foreign policy proposals from any of them.)

So it sounds to me as if Sam Harris has confused the Left Behind novels with the contents of the bible. A few Christians I know do that too, but they're not exactly, shall we say, well educated about their own religion. Yet Sam appears to be running a notch below them here. (Which would be fine if he wasn't simultaneously pretending to educate others on the subject.)

Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather.

Gee, I thought the whole problem with Christians is that they did not buy wholeheartedly into those (often entirely secular) predictions of "cataclysm of [...] bad weather"?

Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire.

Heh! Pretty stupid, huh? On the other hand, Sam Harris believes "rational" things like (a) the inherent goodness of humans, and (b) that unaided "reason" is enough to prevent civilized people from devolving into masses with murder on their mind. Of course, ONE of these beliefs has been tested and thoroughly discredited as laughable by history. By which I mean, of course, Mr. Harris's. (I'll side with someone who believes an unprovable doctrine well before I'll side with someone who still believes something which has been tested and thoroughly proved false.)

Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?

If I recall correctly, Obama's Reverend Wright regularly stood before his congregation and told his congregation that he was speaking for God himself. And Obama himself has on several occasions stated his absolute conviction that his specific political stances are "the Lord's work" -- with no "let's pray that" qualifiers, as Harris just admitted Palin had offered.

So I again find it odd that Harris seems acutely alarmed about this sort of belief or phenomenon in a Vice Presidential candidate, but doesn't seem to notice it at all in a Presidential candidate.

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps.

Really? That's news. I was just told that judging "the company" a candidate "keeps" was off limit, and "guilt by association." Or does the above rule only apply when the candidate is a "she"?

Harris proceeds to note that Palin's church believes (as many churches since Christianity's founding have believed) that Jesus's return is eminent, and that the world is headed for some hard times. He calls this "apocalyptic hysteria", and questions whether we can trust a leader who believes in such.

But, again, the universities today are full of apocalyptic hysteria. A former presidential candidate is making a very nice living peddling such, and the New York Times and many other allegedly-credible news outlets carry dire, apocalyptic warnings every day: Global warming, the Large Hadron Collider, Bird Flu (remember that one?), Global cooling (another one down the memory hole), Peak Oil, the looming "theocracy", etc, etc, etc.

So you get the drift: Most of what Harris complains about could also be applied to the presidential candidate he appears to support. Thus I see no serious attempt to reason consistently here: what's evil in one candidate is apparently just fine in another. All depends on whether the candidate is on the left or on the right.

But he's just been winding up to his thesis paragraph, which demonstrates his cluelessness quite nicely.

Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? 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.

Pointing again to his apparent deficits in historical understanding (a rather troublesome theme, given his allegedly superior position), I'd note that elitism first became a "bad word in American politics" when the colonists first rebelled against a king and his nobles who were, on the whole, wealthier, better educated, better "bred", and far more civilized than they were. Throughout US history, the image of a President being "born in a log cabin" has been considered a badge of honor, where in Europe such a description would elicit gales of laughter. Yet Sam is with the Europeans on this one, yet imagines the change is somehow recent in the US.

(Case in point: Here, being one of the "elite" means that Sam is apparently ignorant of one the most basic aspects of US political history -- and yet is also given a national forum to parade that ignorance in Newsweek. Anti-elitism is a new trend in American politics? Really? Nobody laughed. No editor or friend pointed out the obvious.)

Thus, to make his case, Sam equates the qualities many people seek in would-be leaders -- courage, moral wisdom, and insight into human nature -- with "neurosurgery". I don't, and believe Harris's mistake here is self-explanatory. Just as those who have no (aesthetic) taste aren't aware of it in others, and the tone-deaf cannot directly appreciate the awfulness of their own enthusiastic choruses, so also those who lack moral wisdom can't detect its presence or absence in others.

No-one is born knowing neurosurgery, or dentistry, or medicine. But children are often more adept at detecting moral inconsistency or absurdity than a college professor. The dentist learns something important, whereas the professor unlearns something important. There are experts in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. There are no accredited "moral experts".

Most ordinary people understand this (and still share the child's abilities), and thus look, correctly, upon university postgraduate humanties departments as a farce. Harris, on the other hand, seems utterly unaware of the distinction between the academic and the practical, and apparently sees nothing comical or farcical about today's chattering "elites".

For example, Ward Churchill lied on his resume about being an Indian, and about his academic credentials. He passed off other people's artwork as his own. He fabricated historical incidents. Yet he was defended by his fellow academic "elites" and still revered by them as an expert. Most people I know understand that if they lied on their resumes that they'd soon be fired. So they think university faculty who stick up for such a person are either idiots or amoral.

Another example: Most children treat people the same, regardless of their skin color. But if you look to the "elites" today, on the subject of racism, you hear "leaders" like Jessie Jackson saying that to ignore race is racist. You'll hear the "elites" of the Democratic party insist that the way to get us past race is to focus on it obsessively, and divide everyone up into little categories, to send them to group-specific classes, and teach them that they're all at odds with everyone around them. This passes as wisdom among these political "elites", but most of the rest of us recognize it as one of the stupider suggestions we've ever heard.

Sam Harris, of course, apparently hasn't bothered to talk to any "non-elite" citizens to ask them why they prefer "elites" for things like surgery, yet detest "elites" when it comes to matters of national security or political policy. If he did, his line of questioning wouldn't be rhetorical. He would have listened to farmers, plumbers, taxi drivers, and (shudder) even Pentecostals and learned why they thought this way. He might even have been challenged: Do they actually have a point there?

But Sam Harris apparently doesn't spend time among such non-elites. He is one of the Truly Smart People, as demonstrated his unquestioning commitment to his chosen set of secular dogmas, his open defense of cultural elitism, his inability to detect nuance and draw distinctions easily seen by others, and his typically spotty grasp of history.

Heaven help us when such people are taken as seriously as they take themselves.