It’s no secret that there’s a major power struggle happening in the United States between the left and the right. Recently, a prominent writer and podcaster Sam Harris declared that conservative commentators “should not have opinions” on topics like climate change and vaccines. Harris’s comments are elitist and out of touch with the realities of most Americans.
Harris’s comments came as a response to conservative commentator Candace Owens, who clashed with former President Donald Trump over vaccines in a December 2021 interview. Harris justified using a “left-wing conspiracy” to defeat Trump’s 2020 re-election bid in an August 2022 interview, calling the former president “an existential threat to democracy” and referencing censorship of an October 2020 report by the New York Post about the contents of a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden by Twitter and Facebook.
Harris then went on to say that Owens “should not have an opinion on these topics” such as climate change and vaccine safety. He essentially made the argument that because Owens is a conservative commentator, she should not be given a platform to share her opinion on these matters. This is a dangerously elitist perspective that disregards the experiences of millions of Americans who are struggling pay-check to pay-check.
Harris’s comments are also hypocritical given his own experience with censorship from big tech companies. In October 2020, Twitter and Facebook censored the New York Post’s report on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Harris referenced in his August 2022 interview. However, the Daily Caller News Foundation rapidly confirmed the authenticity of one of the emails in the report, and the New York Times later confirmed the authenticity of the data in March 2022.
The truth is, everyone should be allowed to have an opinion on topics like climate change and vaccine safety. What Harris fails to acknowledge is the importance of public discourse and the value of hearing different perspectives. By dismissing Owens’s opinion as irrelevant, he is in essence silencing the voices of millions of Americans who are trying to be heard.
In the end, Harris’s comments are elitist and out of touch with the realities of most Americans. His comments also demonstrate a blatant disregard for the importance of public discourse and the value of hearing different perspectives. Harris should consider these facts before making any more comments about who should or should not have opinions on important topics.
