Tom Piatak

June 15, 2008

Surfing the web, I came across Christopher Hitchens’ review of Pat Buchanan’s most recent book.  No surprise, he hates it.  A considerable part of Buchanan’s argument in the book is grounded in anti-communism, and Christopher Hitchens is deaf to such arguments, to put it mildly.

What is interesting is where I found Hitchens’ review—at NRO’s Daily Web Briefing.  Hitchens’ writings often pop up there.  By contrast, I have never seen a column by Pat Buchanan there.  Or anything written by Tom Fleming, Peter Brimelow, or Steve Sailer.  Or anything appearing at Takimag, or Chronicles, or VDARE, or the American Conservative.  Apparently, there is a de facto ban on including anything written by anyone to the right of NRO in the Daily Web Briefing.

Indeed, NRO appears to have a crush on Comrade Hitchens.  When he wrote a book trashing religious faith, the only review of his book to appear at NRO was one by Michael Novak, who termed Hitchens a “Treasure,” praised him as an exemplar of “moral heroism,” described him as “a public protagonist of solidarity and compassion,” and termed him a “brave and good man.”  Apparently, to Novak, saying of Mother Teresa “I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to” and praising Lenin’s murderous suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church does not debar one from the ranks of the “brave and good.”

It would be one thing if NRO linked to Hitchens and the other writers mentioned above.  I understand the importance of reading a wide variety of writers.  But for an allegedly conservative website to welcome Hitchens as a comrade in arms, and to treat Pat Buchanan and Peter Brimelow as being beyond the pale, is simply bizarre.