[ETHICS] Sam Harris on journalists acting in bad faith (Greenwald, Hedges and friends)

I think criticizing Harris for his advocacy of religious and ethnic profiling is totally fair, because he has openly advocated those positions. And I don't think calling those ideas 'fascistic' is entirely off-base, though it is over the top. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.

Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and efficiently, wouldn’t they, too, want a system that notices people like themselves? At a minimum, wouldn’t they want a system that anti-profiles—applying the minimum of attention to people who obviously pose no threat?

It is not enough for moderate Muslims to say “not in our name.” They must now police their own communities. They must offer unreserved assistance to western governments in locating the extremists in their midst. They must tolerate, advocate, and even practice ethnic profiling.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html

The first 20 minutes of this video is seriously nothing but argument by labels, calling his critics "loons" and "psychopaths" and "deranged". Whether or not you think those labels are fair, or accurate, he's clearly not dealing with his critics in good-faith. Exactly what he's accusing them of.

I will say that I don't think many of his critics (including myself in a past comment) were entirely fair in characterizing his position on torture, however. I thought he was more pro-torture but I do see now that he was dealing with the idea in a more abstract sense as opposed to making any policy recommendations.

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