Sam Harris' Dreadful Argument

Sam Harris, author of The Moral Landscape, among other works, has caused a minor kerfuffle for essentially exclaiming on a recent podcast that virtually any act of deception or, if we're to follow his logic to its conclusion, any act at all, is justified if it keeps Donald Trump from being re-elected president:

Podcast host Sam Harris raised eyebrows on Twitter this week for saying that he believes the danger posed to "democracy" by former President Trump is so much greater than any potential corruption involving the Biden family that: "Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement, I would not have cared."

Trump poses such a grave threat to the nation that all the rules of fairness and justice must be suspended to stop him. All the institutions, like the FBI and the media, must sacrifice whatever's left of their reputations and integrity in order to deceive the American public into opposing this man.

Harris also suggested that the peril a second Trump presidency poses to our democracy is analogous to an asteroid about to strike the earth: "If there was an asteroid hurdling [sic] towards Earth, and we got in a room together with all our friends about what we could do to deflect the course -- is that a conspiracy?"

From the link:

[Donald Trump is] unfit for office in every possible way. It is not that he has just got a few screws loose, every screw is loose. Every screw you would want totally cranked down is loose or nonexistent in him.

So yes, that's my argument. My argument is that it was appropriate for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the head of journalistic organizations to feel like they were in the presence of something like a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency, right?

This is not the same thing as not liking George W. Bush or not liking John McCain or not liking Mitt Romney for their politics. Here's a guy who is capable of anything, right? He's not ideological, but he is a black hole of selfishness, so there's no telling what he is going to do, and we can not afford to have four more years with this guy.

So what should well-intentioned people do who have a lot of power in these ways? If you're running the New York Times, CNN, or Twitter? Should they conspire to do that under these conditions?

Harris insists that the Hunter Biden laptop, despite what it tells us about the corruption of the Biden family, including the president, is not at all a concern of his compared to the horror of re-electing Trump:

"Listen, I don't care what's in Hunter Biden's laptop, I mean, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement, I would not have cared," he declared.

"Whatever scope of Joe Biden's corruption is, if we could just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand that he's getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden's deals in Ukraine or wherever else, right, or China, it is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in," Harris explained.

For Harris, who's a moral utilitarian, the ends justify the means, and the end of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House apparently justifies any means, no matter how devastating they may be to our polity in the long run.

There are a few things to say about this.

First of all Harris' position is absurd, especially so for one who has written books on morality. If any means are justified would Mr. Harris condone assassination if that were the only way to prevent a second Trump term?

I'm sure he would deny condoning killing the man, but what non-arbitrary grounds has he left himself for doing so? The moral legitimacy of assassination certainly follows from what he stated in his podcast.

Secondly, he claims that Mr. Trump's corruption is beyond the pale, but does he know something that most of us don't? He mentions Trump University which is surely egregious, but is it worse for our national security and economic well-being than being in the pay of the communist Chinese as Hunter informs us his father was?

It's not clear what other corruption Trump is guilty of that would warrant the comparison to an earth-bound asteroid. He's been impeached twice and vindicated both times. The January 6th committee is striving to find something, anything, that he can be indicted on, but so far the most their investigations have revealed is that Mr. Trump is an odious, irresponsible narcissist.

These are unpleasant character traits, to be sure, but they're not criminal, nor do they come as news to anybody who's been paying attention for the last five years.

Lastly, utilitarians like Mr. Harris insist that the right act is the act which produces the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness, but despite its popularity, this is a bankrupt ethics. His podcast illustrates one reason why.

In order to assess which act will produce the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness one has to know all the facts about a matter, including what the eventual consequences of an act will be. Does Mr. Harris know what will be the long term consequences to American democracy if we prostitute and pervert our institutions in order to prevent Mr. Trump's re-election?

Does he know for a fact that we'd all be better off if the media, congress and the FBI lied, perjured themselves, libeled and prosecuted innocent people, as they've already done, in order to prevent Mr. Trump's return to the White House?

I feel safe in saying that the answer to these questions is an obvious "No, Mr. Harris has no idea what the consequences would be."

Thinking such as that offered us by Mr. Harris is itself extremely dangerous to a democracy, which relies on trust between a people and their government. When trust is gone a democracy will unravel and there's precious little trust left now as it is.

Sadly, Mr. Harris and those who agree with him are willing to obliterate what little there is left.