When Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, in her acceptance speech fired back at the media and the Washington Elite for having raised questions about her qualifications to be vice president, one wondered if the media was being too aggressive in pursuing information on her background.
But as the dust has settled in over the last couple of week's and the initial hoopla of her nomination has died down, it is time to revisit this issue. Sam Harris in a recent article of the Time Magazine says that being elite and well informed is a essential thing especially when you want to be the most powerful man/women (read president/vice president of the US) in the whole world. Below is an excerpt from the article:
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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.
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Read the complete article When Atheists Attack
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