"My fear of Islamic terrorism is not irrational. It's quite well-founded. "

From Christopher Hitchens, part of a must-read interview with Michael Totten.

"His shtick is really more of a “question authority” pose taken to its limits of paranoia and nihilism"

Via Hot Air (and Althouse), on this clip of Mos Def, Hitch, and Salman Rushdie on Bill Maher last Friday:



I watched the whole show, and I didn't find it that excruciating to watch, at least not quite in the same way others did. It was vexing no doubt, to see a performer I always thought was cool expose himself as being neck-deep in naivete, ignorance, and "the government-can't-be-trusted-on-anything style paranoia, but as Allahpundit points out, Hitch saves the day:

Consider this yet another reason to like Hitchens, though. Is there anyone else on the chat-show circuit who would have kept after Def as persistently as he does? You keep waiting for him to relent in the name of “cultural differences,” but he never does. No sacred cows for Hitch.

Hitch is fearless. He's proved that. You can call Hitchens a lot of things, but cowardly is not one of them.

"The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success."

Hitch gives us the word on yet another insidious plan to stifle free expression, in the name of "not offending Islam":

Yes, I think we can see where we are going with that. (And I truly wish I had been able to attend that gathering and report more directly on its rich and varied and culturally diverse flavors, but I couldn't get a visa.) The stipulations that follow this turgid preamble are even more tendentious and become more so as the resolution unfolds. For example, Paragraph 5 "expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism," while Paragraph 6 "[n]otes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."

No decent person wants to defend actual bigotry against Muslims, or ethnic profiling, but there is something subtle and wholly sinister at work here. He continues:

You see how the trick is pulled? In the same weeks that this resolution comes up for its annual renewal at the United Nations, its chief sponsor-government (Pakistan) makes an agreement with the local Taliban to close girls' schools in the Swat Valley region (a mere 100 miles or so from the capital in Islamabad) and subject the inhabitants to Sharia law. This capitulation comes in direct response to a campaign of horrific violence and intimidation, including public beheadings. Yet the religion of those who carry out this campaign is not to be mentioned, lest it "associate" the faith with human rights violations or terrorism. In Paragraph 6, an obvious attempt is being made to confuse ethnicity with confessional allegiance. Indeed this insinuation (incidentally dismissing the faith-based criminality of 9/11 as merely "tragic") is in fact essential to the entire scheme. If religion and race can be run together, then the condemnations that racism axiomatically attracts can be surreptitiously extended to religion, too. This is clumsy, but it works: The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success.

First off, I find it morally absurd to be lectured, via the agency of the U.N, by theocrats who commit unspeakable acts such as these, on the virtues of tolerance. Secondly, 9/11 wasn't just tragic. When someone drowns in a lake, that's tragic. 9/11 was an abomination, and an act of war. A lot of decent, freedom-loving, non-terrorist-loving people have decsribed it as a tragedy, but in this context (tragic events), it comes off as an insult, much like the whole of the document.

Read the whole thing.

“He’s misguided sometimes, but when you read him, you finish the whole article.”

A pretty spot-on, and unexpected take on Christopher Hitchens. Spot-on, because it's correct and concise. Unexpected, because it comes from Rush Limbaugh.

The piece is an old one, from last July, but it was near the top over at Hitch's website, so I checked it out.

BTW, It's not that I can't believe Limbaugh can get it right at least once in a while, rather it's just that Hitchens doesn't seem like the guy Limbaugh would read. Or Camille Paglia, for that matter.

"The problem with Gov. Palin is not that she lacks experience. It's that she quite plainly lacks intellectual curiosity."

Christopher Hitchens, on the weaknesses of Sarah Palin:

Nor is it snobbish, let alone sexist, to express doubts about someone who, as late as March 2007, could tell Alaska Business Monthly, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place." This statement deserves to be called mindless, because, first, it is made up of stale and received and overheard bits and bobs from everyday media babble and, second, because you cannot really coherently say that you support both the administration and an "exit plan." The same vaguely cunning wish to have everything both ways is to be found in her suggestion that both evolution and creationism be taught in our schools. In one way, this seems fair enough—if the Scopes trial is taught in history class, then the views of William Jennings Bryan and those of Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken must necessarily be given equal time.

Some predictable religion-bashing sprinkled in, but read the whole thing.

"It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year"

Christopher Hitchens endorses Obama:

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

I think he's a bit unfair to Palin in some respects, but I think he may be on to something. Read the whole thing.

HT: Althouse

And Then There's This...

Longtime Clinton foe Christopher Hitchens presents his case against continuing the Clinton dynasty. There's a lot of predictable anti-Clinton hysteria in here, but he's not entirely off base:

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses.

Good point. What gives, Mrs. Clinton?

UPDATE: Timothy Noah explains why her claim as the experience candidate is kinda bogus.

Hitchens and Huckabee

Although it is triple-marinated in insufferable anti-religious contempt, Christopher Hitchens' Slate piece on the right of people to consider religious views when judging candidates is nonetheless correct on the constitutional question:

As so often, the framers and founding fathers meant what they said, said what they meant, and risked no waste of words. A candidate for election, or an applicant for a post in the bureaucracy, could not be disqualified on the grounds of his personal faith in any god (or his disbelief in any god, for that matter).

He reminds us, though, that:

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

Like I said, chock-full of anti-religious poison, but on the facts of Article VI, he's right. I have the right to consider someone's faith (Or lack of faith) when judging a candidate, and be quite vocal about doing so. Just because the government cannot impose a religious test, that doesn't mean the people can't. Contra Dennis Prager, Keith Ellison had every right to swear on the Koran, but voters do have the right to consider his adherence to that book when voting for him. Many will consider Romney's Mormonism, or Rudy's Catholicism. Hitchens will doubtless ask himself "does this candidate hate God as much as I do, and is he as self-absorbed and arrogant about it as I am?"

The wisdom of such considerations depends on your perspective, but let me add my view: I'm a Christian. Huckabee's faith isn't a problem for me (although he is a socon Republican, so I have issues with many of his policies). My problems with Romney have nothing to do with his Mormon faith, although there are questions he will have to face.

Back to Huckabee for a moment, while I totally understand the concern of improperly mixing religious and politics, I don't see what the big fuss is about on Huckabee's new Christmas ad, with the "floating bookshelf cross" in the background. It's a Christmas ad, and Huckabee has never hid his Christian faith. I'm not naive enough to think that he didn't know it was there, or at the very least the camera guy didn't know or plan it), I just don't see the big deal.

Before anyone asks, I'm not stumping for Huckabee. Being that he's a pretty conservative guy, chances are I'm not going to vote for him, but he seems like a decent man, and the pile on is getting silly.

There is a thought that I'm planning to expand on, about a possible anti-Huckabee conspiracy coming from the right, masking as a critique of hypersecularism, but that comes later.

HT: Althouse and Stubborn Facts