Christopher Hitchens roots against the Religious Right

And what else is new? After all, as he freely admits, he is neither Republican nor Christian--and definitely does not accept Jesus for Who He is, nor even believe the historical record of Him--this although He is better attested than any other historical figure--bar none. More to the point, Hitchens speaks of "shallow, demagogic sectarians." I say: Save the Republic from shallow, demagogic, and frankly bigoted secularists.

Incredibly, Hitchens claims a kind of common cause with the late philosopher Ayn Rand. Well, I studied Ayn Rand's work, and her philosophy that she called Objectivism, very extensively. I read every word she ever wrote, and almost every word written about her. (This includes Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden's two letters written In Answer to Ayn Rand after the explosive break of relations between Miss Rand and the couple, and Branden's subsequent lecture on The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.)

Christopher Hitchens, you're no Ayn Rand.

And worse than that, Ayn Rand would, if she had her way, have you arrested and tried for treason against the United States, on the grounds of "adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort." This is the same Ayn Rand who testified willingly before the House Un-American Activities Committee--and lost patience with them only when they turned out to be interested in names of men rather than fighting their pernicious ideas, which were the real un-American activity. And this is the same Ayn Rand who, years before she even set foot in America, wanted to see America conquer the world, which she always thought would be possible because America had the better system for favoring the "men of the mind." Does Christopher Hitchens really want to support that vision of America? Not if his prior record is any indicator.

Hitchens flies direrctly in the face of Rand in other ways that, to be fair, one would only know by researching her more carefully than he has done. Hitchens criticizes us Christians for pointing out that evolution is only a theory (and an incorrect theory, to boot). But did he know that Ayn Rand herself once said to her colleague, lover, and one-time "intellectual heir" Nathaniel Branden that "after all, the theory of evolution is only an hypothesis"? Unhappily, Rand never did follow the evidence to where it actually led--but she knew in her heart that the notion that mankind shared an ancestor in common with the great apes denied the very specialness of mankind that was at the very center of her philosophical system.

Leo Strauss, another philosopher that Hitchens mentions, I know less well. But here is a point that Hitchens probably never caught, or maybe hoped that we would miss:

Careful attention paid to the dialogue throughout the development of Western culture between its two points of departure: Athens and Jerusalem. The recognition that Reason and Revelation, originating from these two points respectively, are the two distinct sources of knowledge in the Western tradition, and can be used neither to support nor refute the other, since neither claims to be based on the other's terms.

That doesn't sound to me like pouring complete contempt on religious revelation. I'm not even sure that you can really put Rand and Strauss in the same category. So what kind of scholar does Hitchens think he is, by mentioning both in the same sentence and suggesting that the Republican Party is somehow abandoning both, and for the same reason? If he's going to talk about intellectual foundations, he ought to examine them more carefully than he has.

To be fair, he also rounds on his fellow leftists, whom he accuses--correctly--of "making excuses for jihad and treating Osama bin Laden as if he were advocating liberation theology." That the left has in fact done just that ever since 9/11 never ceases to amaze me. So why does Hitchens say, in the very next sentence, that it's time for senior Republicans to disown people of faith? I give you one reason only: he is not a man of faith, unless that faith is in a Great Cosmic Wheel of Fortune that spins of its own accord without even a Vanna White stand-in to turn letters. More to the point, Hitchens should be telling his fellow Democrats to repudiate John Kerry, who threw his medals (or were they someone else's?) over the Capitol Hill fence, not to mention all those anti-war ne'er-do-wells who hang on around him and Howard Dean. Instead he suggests that we Christians "stab" our soldiers "in the back" by, among other things, removing homosexuals from the ranks. Get a clue, Chris: any homosexual in the ranks is risking a fragging as it is--as has been the case going clear back to the Roman Army under Gaius Marius--and furthermore, our soldiers are far angrier with those leftists making excuses for jihad than with any official who musters out a homosexual.

Why The Wall Street Journal gives space to such shallow men, I'll never know.