Atheist Christopher Hitchens recognizes an important difference between left-wing atheists and the Christian George Bush: The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The President fights them. In an excellent essay for Slate Hitchens delivers an indictment of his erstwhile allies on the ideological left. A couple of salient excerpts:
So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda?
Suicide murderers in Palestine-disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO-described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time....
George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he-and the U.S. armed forces-have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary-that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?
Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL.
Now if Hitchens were only willing to see that the strong sense of moral purpose and judgment which inspire his writing are without any substantial foundation in a universe without God, perhaps he would abandon not only the left but also the left's atheism. After all, a consistent thinker like Mr. Hitchens must recognize, once he reflects upon the matter, that one cannot be both an atheist and a moralist. Ultimately, one or the other must be thrown over.
If there is no God then there is no right or wrong apart from our subjective tastes or preferences. Our personal predilections, however, offer us no ground at all upon which to stand while passing judgment on the behavior of others, and Mr. Hitchens has built his career upon the passing of such judgments.
