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When Christopher Hitchens recently used the word “us” to refer to “Americans,” I knew the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had made its biggest mistake yet.

Like most on the Left, I am disgusted by Christopher Hitchens’ hitching his wagon to the neo-conservatives and the warmongers on account of the “war on terror”.  For the first few years, I kept expecting him to say, “Just kidding!  I have been fooling all of you, just to show how easy it is to become a darling of the Right.”

I’m still not sure if he really means it or if this is all a product of his alcohol-sodden brain.  Unfortunately, the lizard part of his brain—the part that controls his poisonous tongue—is fully functioning.

When Hitchens turned traitor, it nearly spelt disaster for those of us on the side of humanity.  Hitchens could defeat all comers, like Brad Pitt’s Achilles in the movie Troy, only fat and smarmy.

When I was a graduate student at Oxford, I saw many English undergraduates with this kind of wit.  At first I respected it, before I saw that they all had it.  I then realized it must have been something they picked up in public school, like an affinity for buggery.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with a little buggery now and then: everything in moderation.)

I became positively disgusted when I saw that this “wit” only ever had one object: to insult the other party, and not in a playful, let’s-all-share-in-the-joke way.  I went from loving England and Oxford to still preferring England to America, but loathing the OUP (Oxford University Pratts).

Himself an Oxford graduate, Christopher Hitchens is so sharp his wordplay can slice your argument in two.  Indeed, Hitchens is literally too clever by half: he takes the “tionary” out of “Oxford English dictionary.”

He is the Mule in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation: In the long lineage of Oxford Union debaters, he represents the tail end of evolution’s bell curve.  He is the anti-Jesus: He can defeat all challengers in a verbal duel, but instead of the power to heal, he has only the power to hurt.  He is an anti-Jesse Owens: Quicker than everyone, but he works for the fascist criminals rather than against them.

He makes us look stupid.

Where Satan’s Mistress goes wrong is that he believes the person who can get the audience to laugh at his opponent is the person who is right.  I assure you that if I were to debate Hitchens...he would defeat me handily and make me look like a fool.  But an Oxford Union or television debate is not the proper format: Give me instead a debate where the audience has to read the transcript, and where each party has days to respond to the other side (including time to read books that touch on the other party’s claims).  Hitchens would lose such a debate.

He would never agree to one either.  But we don’t need him to.

Let’s bombard his editors at Vanity Fair, and every American university that invites him to speak, with complaints about his being an opportunist or simply a bad writer.  American liberals generally are cowards who cave in to this sort of pressure.

A web page should be maintained of all of Hitchens’ right-wing statements, which should be carefully refuted. 

He has also made enemies of at least one powerful American, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who might perhaps relish contributing to Operation Enduring Fools.

Christopher Hitchens’ mouth is a cave in which deadly munitions are stored.

Let’s send in bunker busters.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Dr. Jonathan David Farley, is the 2004 Harvard Foundation Distinguished Scientist of the Year. He is currently Teaching and Research Fellow teaching mathematics at the Institut für Algebra Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Linz Österreich Click here to contact Dr. Farley.

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