Here comes Christopher Hitchens again, blasting religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular in Slate. He's irritated by their antiwar stance and heaps tons of vitriol upon them, reminding me of why I think Christopher Hitchens has a terminal case of Intellectually Arrogant Brit Disease. I find that some English folk of fairly humble origin, or even of the Guardian-reading middle classes, tend to be terribly socially insecure and often try to convince themselves that their university degree and their career achievements make them just as good as anybody, even an aristo (who these people always hate). Then some smug, rich, good-looking know-it-all from Cambridge puts them in their place, but good, and they find out that the Old European side of Britain will only let a person rise so far on merit. This is when they go through their militant Socialist phase, which may last a lifetime but often doesn't; in Hitchens' case, he's still not finished with it. Their militant Socialist phase is often accompanied with a healthy helping of reverse snobbery and an unconvincing working-class accent, along with a conviction that they are somehow culturally and intellectually superior, which makes up for their sometimes conscious and sometimes sublimated knowledge that they are socially inferior.

I just read a collection of Hitchens' pieces from the early '90s. He's a lot of fun to read, all right, but he seems like a real prick as a human being, and his articles are always based on hectoring, ad hominem accusations, innuendo, comparing apples with oranges, making up historical "facts", manipulating statistics, and just generally being arrogant toward everyone. We don't want this guy on our team. I vote we throw him over the side after the war's over and his utility has expired. The Nation and his old pals on the British hard left won't take him back, and he'll be forced to cravenly adopt the politics of his hated social superiors, always happy to co-opt authentic working-class voices. Five years from now he'll be writing for the Telegraph and voting Tory--and not liberal Thatcherite Tory, either, more like Auberon Waugh Tory. Can you say "Paul Johnson", everyone?