http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i...108&s=hitchens

Should the electors decide for the President, as I would slightly prefer, the excruciating personality of George Bush strikes me in the light of a second- or third-order consideration. If the worst that is said of him is true--that he is an idiotic and psychically damaged Sabbath-fanatic, with nothing between his large Texan ears--then these things were presumably just as true when he ran against Al Gore, and against nation-building and foreign intervention. It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the parallel lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me skeptical. You don't like "smirking"? What about the endless smirks and smarmy hints about the Administration's difficulties, whether genuine or self-imposed? The all-knowing, stupid smirks about the "secular" Saddam, or the innocuousness of prewar Iraq? The sneers about the astonishing success of our forces in Afghanistan, who are now hypocritically praised by many who opposed their initial deployment? This is to say nothing of the paranoid innuendoes I don't have to name that are now part of pseudo-"radical" rumor-mongering and defamation. Whichever candidate wins, I shall live to see these smirks banished, at least.

I can visualize a Kerry victory, in other words (and can claim to have written one of the earliest essays calling attention to the merits of John Edwards). What slightly disturbs me about most liberals is their hypertense refusal to admit the corollary. "Anybody But Bush"--and this from those who decry simple-mindedness--is now the only glue binding the radical left to the Democratic Party right. The amazing thing is the literalness with which the mantra is chanted. Anybody? Including Muqtada al-Sadr? The chilling answer is, quite often, yes. This is nihilism. Actually, it's nihilism at best. If it isn't treason to the country--let us by all means not go there--it is certainly treason to the principles of the left.

One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause. In Kabul recently, I interviewed Dr. Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. "For us," she said, "the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing." I dare you to snicker at simple-mindedness like that.
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God I adore the man.

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

when he writes for your side.

This guy is the true flip flop artist (when he's sober)

As opposed to people like you, who will even endorse the words of Osama Bin Laden if it appears doing so will benefit your candidate.



Yuck.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

maybe he'd like Bush also.

Asks my husband.

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a good article the whole article should be read !!

If he's correct in his assertions, then the Left has impoded. REflected in Hitchens moving to the right but still rejecting the old-fogie traditional right wingers (Buchanan, Tories..)

I found it funny that a republican white house would reject the leader of the Tories , their old allies Reagan/Bush-Thatcher , its now Bush-Blair , Blair mad ethe same jump across to the right as Hitchens did.

another one lost to the neo-cons

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should tell you something about the sinking boat you're sitting in, Eirgo.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

who said that I was a leftie?

my political affiliation is still up for grabs

In fact the left over-simplify everything. and are a bunch of cretins.

oh well welcome the era of the libertarians!!

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"oh well welcome the era of the libertarians!! "

I have been asserting for a while now that the outcome of this election will lead to the implosion of the Democrat party.... I fully expect a party like the libs to fill the vaccuum....


Wait and watch=)

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I was banned from godlike productions(over 400 times)... and loved it.

"I haven't made you angry, have I?" -Malcolm Reynolds

if the right-wing of the Dems get annoyed this time around, they'll break away

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