“I Hate My Enemies” - The Interview That Convinced the World of Hitchens’ Genius

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]when when you've been killed and all your people killed with you and your wives and children sold into slavery and your land taken and all of this um the jealous God is done with you. You you're not going to suffer anymore. It's not until Jesus says depart from me into eternal fire. That the hideous really obscene idea that also uh adopted very strongly by Islam of torturing the dead forever. Yes. I don't I don't like being told especially at a time like this that it's my duty to love my enemies. people who want to go and love bin Laden can do go do it on their own time. They're not to tell me that I'm um to do the same or and they're certainly not to tell me that that's moral preaching. No, we have to hate our enemies and try and destroy them before they destroy us.

[00:00:41]>> Christopher Hitchens, when people meet you for the first time, what's the first topic they want to talk to you about?

[00:00:49]>> Whoa. I think it's Well, at the moment it's certainly um religion in one form or another. theocracy, theology, theodysy as some people like to call it.

[00:01:00]Um, and that's been true for a while. Uh, that there'd be a high chance that we would be on be too grand to say spiritual subjects, but on on the matter of um whether or not we're here because of a divine plan or because we are evolved creatures. And I think you can tell a lot about somebody once you uh hear them say that they think they're not here because of biology. They're here cuz God wants it.

[00:01:26]>> Well, this is one of your more recent books, God is not great, how religion poisons everything. But when you look through your body of work, the 18 books that you've written, religion or atheism uh kind of permeates.

[00:01:38]>> Yes. I mean, there was the my attack on Mother Theresa, my review of her um misspent life. Um, in a way my little biography of Thomas Jefferson is is a lot to do with the origins of our first amendment in the Virginia statute of on on religious freedom and another recent little book of mine about Thomas Payne and his rights of man has to discourse a bit on um his other great work the age of reason because I think that he for him it was most most important of all for people to be free that they be free of superstition first that they they liberate their minds from the what William Blake called the mind forged manacles. The things we rivet on ourselves, particularly um serve our belief in the supernatural.

[00:02:26]>> Was Thomas Payne an atheist?

[00:02:28]>> No, he wasn't. Neither was Mr. Jefferson. I think actually Mr. Jefferson may privately have been an atheist, but they um they professed both a dism which is the view that there may have been a first cause creator. Um, the the universe seems to testify to some kind of order, rhythm, routine. This was before Einstein and before Darwin, of course, it was as far as you could probably look in in the 18th century.

[00:02:54]But that this god took no interest in human affairs. Didn't answer prayers, didn't intervene in politics or war or anything of that kind. Quite different from being a theist, which advances the view that God has a plan for you and that he has rules that you must obey. In other words, you must claim to know his mind. A nonsensical position.

[00:03:09]>> Who is Mrs. Watts? Jean Watts.

[00:03:12]Mrs. Gene Watts was uh my my nature and scripture teacher when I was eight until I was about 12 um at a little boy's boarding school in Devonshire. I'm one of those lucky ones who was sent off to boarding school at the age of eight made a man of me and um she was a fine old lady a widow um with very little culture or education but she could take us on nature walks show us the beauty of nature. I used to be able to tell all kinds of tree, shrub, flower, plant. And then um she would teach us scripture as literal truth more or less. We'd have to go through the Bible. It's compulsory still in England to to have religious education instruction. And um one day she overstepped her mark vaultting ambition of Mrs. Watts tried to fuse her two roles and discussing vegetation.

[00:04:08]She pointed out that it was largely green which you'll have noticed too and we had noticed and she said this is an excellent thing and proof of the of the glory of God because he could have made the vegetation orange or or red or something that would really clash with our eyes whereas green is the most restful color for our eyes and how how on the whole very decent of God it was to make the trees and the flowers and the grass not the flowers with the trees and the grass that way.

[00:04:36]And I sat there in my little corduroy shorts and I thought that's absolute nonsense. I don't know anything at this point. I don't know about chlorophyll.

[00:04:43]Don't know about photosynthesis. Don't know anything about evolution of course or DNA. Nobody knew about the double helix then.

[00:04:50]But I know in my in my in my water as it were I know that that's not true. It's the if anything it's the other way around. The eyes have adapted to the to the vegetation.

[00:05:01]So that was my first moment of of thinking I'm not sure I'd trust what the authorities are telling me about religion and of course I thought I was the only one as all of us do but you find as you get older that many many many people have had the same experience.

[00:05:16]>> Were you >> this is the perfect Sunday morning conversation isn't it?

[00:05:19]>> Were you raised in the church?

[00:05:20]>> Not very rigorously. I mean English education requires that you go to divine service. No, my father was a refugee somewhat from a very very very strict Baptist um family with a very tyrannical patriarchal father of his own who I I remember quite well.

[00:05:39]My paternal grandfather, a real brutal Calvinist. And my mother was from a Jewish family um originally from um what is now Poland but when they left it would have been Germany and for various reasons didn't want to be affirmatively Jewish. I mean wanted to pass as as English and and in fact had succeeded in doing so. So nothing was inflicted on me at home. No.

[00:06:07]>> What did your father do?

[00:06:09]>> He was a career officer in the Royal Navy.

[00:06:12]He was a lifer. I think he's he joined he joined a time of great poverty in his town of Portsmouth, but I think he might have wanted to do it anyway. But anyway, he he he left school and joined the Navy and went around the world with it and had a very tough time in the Second World War. And um um I remember him once telling me that war was the only time he'd ever felt terrible it had been for him. Um he never felt he knew what he was doing.

[00:06:40]That's the thing of his saying of his that I remember the best.

[00:06:43]>> Where did your parents meet?

[00:06:44]>> In the war in the Navy. My mother was in the Navy too. She was she was what we call a REN, Women's Royal Naval Service.

[00:06:51]And they met, I think, in fact, I'm sure, in Scarpa Flow, which is in the Ornne Islands. It's a very it's a wonderful wild natural harbor in the York Islands off the north coast of Scotland which is commands the the North Sea the approaches to Iceland and and um was a place where uh the Royal Navy used to organize convoys to go to the um Russian front. very very hazardous business of escorting cargo ships over the hump of Scandinavia to Merman and Archangel where the Nazis controlled the entire coastline and the air. Very grim job anyway. That's where they met.

[00:07:27]>> And you have one brother?

[00:07:28]>> I have one brother.

[00:07:29]>> And where is he?

[00:07:30]>> He still lives in Oxford, which is was for a long time our family home and was where I went to university.

[00:07:36]And he's a sort of how should I describe it? He's a kind of Rush Limbbo. No, that wouldn't quite do it. He's better than that actually of England. I I He's actually a better writer than he is a broadcast. He's a lot on the air um radio and television as an extreme Christian and an extreme conservative.

[00:07:57]So, I guess there has to be one in every family.

[00:08:00]>> Are you close?

[00:08:01]>> No, we never were actually. I mean, we I think well for one reason we're not close is we're too close. In other words, we're too close in age.

[00:08:10]He must be about a year and a half younger than me. Not much more. Which is which is I've read a lot about this. Is too close. It's not small enough to be a baby brother. And it's too near to be a rival. Yeah. Too close for comfort.

[00:08:25]We're also not like each other as personalities. He takes very much after my father. Me, I would say, more after my mother. We haven't lived in the same town for a very long time anyway.

[00:08:35]and our differences are not narrow ones.

[00:08:38]But that's not really the problem. I don't think it's not that we have different opinions. I have lots of friends who are religious and conservative. Um it's um it's just a a sibling difference.

[00:08:52]>> The strongest point here is simple.

[00:08:54]Religion often starts with the answer, then forces the world to fit it. The Bible says plants appeared before the sun in Genesis 1. But basic biology tells us plants depend on sunlight for photosynthesis.

[00:09:08]Modern science explains green plants through chlorophyll light absorption and evolution, not divine color design.

[00:09:16]Even the human eye developed over millions of years through natural selection, which supports the idea that life adapted to nature, not nature being customuilt for us.

[00:09:26]>> The New Testament exceeds the evil of the Old One is the title of one of your chapters.

[00:09:31]>> Yes.

[00:09:32]Um that's actually a very easy proposition to prove. I think in the Old Testament there's a lot of horror as everybody knows enough horror actually that some early Christians thought of founding their religion without the Old Testament. Why don't we just start a new one and leave these terrible old books behind. Marian among the early Christian theologians took that view but they're stuck with it because they have to say that Jesus fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament. So they they have to wrap it around their neck. And as you know, it's full of murder, slaughter, torture, genocide, um gentle mutilation, massacre, cruelty, and so forth. But there's no hell in the Old Testament.

[00:10:14]There's no talk about punishing the dead. Not in any canonical accepted New Test Old Testament book. There isn't.

[00:10:19]when when you've been killed and all your people killed with you and your wives and children sold into slavery and your land taken and all of this um the jealous God is done with you. You you're not going to suffer anymore. It's not until Jesus says, "Depart from me into eternal fire." That the hideous, really obscene idea that is also uh adopted very strongly by Islam of torturing the dead forever um is introduced. So, so the New Testament, it's commonly thought of as meeker and milder than the Old, but it's not. It's much nastier.

[00:10:56]>> Want to show some of the other books that Christopher Hitchens has written over the years. This is a long short war, the postponed liberation of Iraq.

[00:11:04]uh rather short book about Iraq, >> a pamphlet really. Pamplet should be called >> the trial of Henry Kissinger. Do people still want to talk about Henry Kissinger? You seem to >> Oh yes, absolutely they do. Yeah, and they should because he's still around. I mean he still his advice is sometimes sought given to understand by the administration which if it's true in the case of Iraq might explain something of how badly things were going. And remember Paul Bremer, the catastrophic first proconsul of of post liberation Iran was a member of Kissinger Associates and Kissinger himself wrote in the Washington Post an oped piece saying you have to be very careful with Iraq because it's a Sunni majority country. That's as much as our great scholarly secretary of state knew about this rather important uh state. Well, speaking of >> No, it goes on the ben the the the malign influence of Henry Kissinger can still be felt all over the place.

[00:11:58]>> Speaking of Iraq, um the C-SPAN book TV bus travels the country and it goes to book fairs and bookstores and often times we ask people if they have a question for our guest. One gentleman that we spoke to had a question for you about Iraq. This is from Garden City, Idaho, right outside of Boise.

[00:12:18]>> And my question for Mr. Hitchens is you were a strong supporter of the Iraq war when uh when it began and and and actually beforehand. Uh uh could you maybe tell me how you feel and if you regret at all uh the role you played in uh in getting the uh support for both uh President Bush and uh Tony Blair to uh to do this war?

[00:12:46]I regret more um not having argued earlier and more forcefully in particular in 1991 when my view of it was rather different anyway that Saddam Hussein should have been removed earlier than he was. I mean, that's if we're to have an inquest on the war, which I think we should. I agree with the gentleman about that, and a full accounting of what went wrong and how our statecraft failed us, then the inquest cannot begin with George Bush's intervention in 2003. The minimum must begin with the decision to leave Saddam Hussein power in 1991. the so-called realist uh decision Kissinger's friends of General Scopra um Lawrence Seagelberger um another faction um around the president himself um George Bush and others I I think that was where things went critically wrong. We could have spared the Iraqi people 12 years of sanctions and and fascism and the degeneration of their society the consequences of which we now see.

[00:13:48]Another topic that you have covered in in your books are the Clintons and this is the same book it but it came out with two titles. No one left to lie to the values of the worst family in paperback and in hardback. No one left to lie to the triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton.

[00:14:06]>> Yeah, the the pink one is actually a later and expanded edition as well as a paperback version. There's an extra chapter in there. One on the the politics of the first lady, which is why she's back on the cover. And one which I hadn't been able to finish in time for the first one. Wasn't sure I could ever finish about the very important and never asked and never discussed question of whether or not the women who reported being raped by Mr. Clinton were telling the truth.

[00:14:33]Well, I the the only book you can read that discusses this question even is by me and I've interviewed talked to three so three women who don't know each other's existence and I would say that I was as sure as can be that they're telling the truth.

[00:14:47]So that's the difference. That's why you should get the pink one if you're strolling past a bookstore.

[00:14:52]>> Our guest is Christopher >> more action packed.

[00:14:55]>> Our guest is Christopher Hitchens and our first call for him comes from Chicago.

[00:15:00]>> Yes, please. Thank you. Orwell wrote of thought crimes in 1984, the final movie made by Richard Burton.

[00:15:08]Just as Reagan Bushman rolled out the urine test of the trickled doubt economy, grow your own medical marijuana would bring down pharma prices just like hemp oil would bring down petrol prices.

[00:15:23]Similarly for alcohol. Is that why hemp, marijuana, and alcohol users have been persecuted throughout the 20th century?

[00:15:32]Too much of anything is bad. Small doses of narcotics have been used throughout history of medicine. Less profitable therapies have been persecuted.

[00:15:41]>> All right, caller. What's what what's your point?

[00:15:45]>> Well, I think he's I think he's made it actually.

[00:15:46]>> Okay. All right.

[00:15:48]>> Though in a rather verbose way. Well, I mean, if he's asking me, do I favor the decriminalization of marijuana? The answer is obviously yes, and not just for medical reasons. Though, the most striking thing about mar marijuana is its medical properties. It's well known to help people deal with the hor horrible results of chemotherapy, namely intense nausea, which prevents people recovering by making them unable to digest or keep down food. And it's also bizarrely, I don't know why this is. I'm not I'm not a physician, but it's a it's a very useful treatment for glaucoma.

[00:16:20]It's a very damaging condition for the eyes, but I I just think it's beyond the competence of the state to decide a question like this that you can't hope for the government to be able to control what substance somebody puts in their own body.

[00:16:33]So, even if I thought the marijuana was a poison, I still would say, you know, the government can't is not going to be able to stop people and shouldn't try.

[00:16:42]The the the marijuana user commits a victimless crime.

[00:16:46]And it's a it's really horrific that we make room in our prison system for people who've done no more than that. I was remember being on this show with Brian Lamb one morning with Richard Brookiser from National Review who said that he thought it probably uh saved him during his his own cancer treatment. He is a very strong social conservative had to just go out onto the open market and get some get some marijuana to get him through.

[00:17:12]>> Christianity often tries to sell itself as love. But its own scripture teaches eternal punishment. In Matthew 25:41, Jesus speaks of people being sent into eternal fire. Revelation 20 describes torment day and night forever and ever.

[00:17:28]Mark 9 says, "Hell is a place where the fire never goes out." That is not moral wisdom. That is fear used as control. A system that says a finite human life deserves infinite punishment has a serious moral problem. and people are right to question it.

[00:17:45]>> Uh good morning, Mr. Hitchens. Uh I'm calling to ask about your opinion of uh President Bush and whether or not he is delusional in his belief in God. I'd like to read a a short quote from Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, page 379, where George Bush is um discussing his feelings on the day he ordered the invasion of Iraq. and I quote, "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God."

[00:18:22]Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible." End quote. Is the president delusional as commander-in-chief in his decisions or not?

[00:18:37]>> Thank you. um you wouldn't be able to prove it by that. What he's actually saying there is very modest. That's what I understand the Methodist position to be. You get to a certain stage you can you can't do anymore. You you refer the matter upward if you like. You say it's in God's hands. Now I think it's a pathetic position to hold but it's not a fanatical one. It's certainly not like those who say who have in history said you know we are doing God's work. God is on our side. Deo Vindiche is motto of the Confederacy for example or got mit as it said on the belt buckles of German soldiers. Uh they thought they thought God was on their side. Bush isn't invoking the the Lord in that way. He has um to take up your challenge about being delusional, deluded himself because of his um simple-minded Christianity on several other occasions though. The most notable would be his first meeting with that KGB goon and thug of Vladimir Putin where you may recall the president said well I looked into his eyes and I saw he was wearing his grandmother's crucifix and um I thought what a great man this must be and what a what a friend I've got in this fellow now I I think the president must regret saying that by now knowing all that we know and much of what we knew then about Vladimir Putin and I'd like to know something by the way someone might want to look into this.

[00:20:01]Has Vladimir Putin been seen wearing that crucifix ever again since? Or had he ever been seen wearing it before? Or did his advisers tell him that the president of the United States is such a sucker and such a sap that that would do the trick? In which case, we have a right to reconsider the idea that having a president who's a person of faith is a good thing.

[00:20:19]>> Have you met President Bush?

[00:20:21]>> No, I haven't.

[00:20:22]>> Vice President Cheney?

[00:20:23]>> Yes, I have. Yeah.

[00:20:25]>> What was that meeting like?

[00:20:26]>> It was an off thereord meeting and Mr. Chinese manner is sort of an off therecord one anyway, but it was a discussion with a few involved and interested writers and reporters about the balance sheet of of Iraq as it then stood. Um, this is the summer before last.

[00:20:45]>> Did you >> fairly sobering event actually.

[00:20:47]>> Did you leave there impressed? How did you what were your feelings when you left? He gave a very quick is executive summary of how he saw the situation which I thought was extremely well delivered I have to say and and um and I think I already used the word sobering.

[00:21:00]I mean it was the news was not in general good but um and there was no attempt to make it seem any better.

[00:21:07]>> Would you consider Paul Wolfitz a friend of yours?

[00:21:10]>> Yeah, I would.

[00:21:11]>> Why?

[00:21:12]>> Well, we've been through a certain amount together. Um, but we've also talked about things that are not just political, but I I I think of him as a very intelligent and very thoughtful person. And um, and we've uh we've had some discussions that will always stay with me. Very important moments. And because I've had to defend him, this is perhaps a horrible way to become somebody's friend, but it is what friends are for. I've had to defend him a lot from what I consider to be a campaign of two campaigns of the most hysterical defamation.

[00:21:50]One about his the role the real role he played in the liberation of Iraq and second um his conduct which I thought was fairly exemplary at the World Bank.

[00:21:59]I'm also a friend of Shaha Aliza his companion. I've known her separately since she was at the National Endowment for for Democracy. I knew her before I met him. Uh, I think she's absolutely admirable woman and was treated in the most the most scandalous way the early this year.

[00:22:16]>> Another call from Las Vegas for Christopher Hitchens.

[00:22:19]>> Uh, hi, good afternoon. Am I on the air?

[00:22:22]>> Not anymore. We are going to move on.

[00:22:24]Like I said before, the book TV school bus or the big book TV bus has traveled the country going to bookstores and book fairs. We asked people if they had a question for you. Here's a young woman who had a question for you, >> Mr. Dr. Hitchens, your politics seem to be in a constant state of flux and I wanted to know how your radically shifting identity politics contribute and affect your work.

[00:22:48]identity politics. I don't think I have any of um she's right in saying when I first came on this program or on on C-SPAN I mean uh Brian Lamb uh asked me what my political position was and I said I was a socialist which would then have been true and he looked politely incredulous and um about this every time I came on subsequently he would always say are you still a socialist and I would always say yes I am more or less determined as time went by not to let him you have the satisfaction of hearing me say no. There did come a time when I was writing my book, which I see you've kindly got here, Letters to a Young Contrarian, when I found that that definition had slipped away from me somehow. I I it didn't mean anything to me anymore, and I stopped saying it.

[00:23:35]this about 10 years ago by now and I'm now not a member of any party um or or aligned with any political ideology and I don't think I ever will be again but I I don't know if that's necessarily flux to be an independent.

[00:23:55]There are times when I miss my old left allegiances um like a missing limb I once wrote maybe over dramatizing it a bit when I do and I'm not ashamed of them. I would I I would do most of what I did and said I'd do it again sometimes more but I don't believe now in the possibility of a of a total overall ideological solution to anything.

[00:24:17]>> Would you describe yourself as a contrarian as many >> No, I hate the word indeed. But at least I was true to it when in denouncing the title of the book I wrote. So I thought the publishers had given it a stupid title. But there has to be there should be a word for someone who um there isn't unfortunately who is an independent person of perhaps radical temper who prizes the idea of thinking for himself. It would be nice if we had a word for it. Contrarian isn't it because contrarian would suggest that one went around looking for fights to get publicity. And I I don't think actually even my worst enemy would say that about me. Anyway, hell with them if they did.

[00:24:54]>> I want to read an entire chapter from Letters to a Young Contrarian.

[00:24:59]>> Okay.

[00:25:00]>> How to ward off atrophy and routine, you ask? Well, I can give you a small and perhaps ridiculous example. Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. All the news that's fit to print. It says it's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine that most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim under my breath, why do they insult me? And what do they take me for?

[00:25:34]And what the hell is it supposed to mean? Unless it it's as obviously complacent and conceited and sensorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout, but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan.

[00:25:51]>> Religion becomes dangerous when leaders treat faith as proof of wisdom. History shows how easily God is on our side turns into war, nationalism, and blind loyalty.

[00:26:03]Even in the Bible, rulers are told they govern by God's authority. Like Romans 13:1, which says, "All authorities are established by God."

[00:26:12]That idea can make people excuse terrible judgment because it feels holy.

[00:26:17]When faith replaces evidence, a cross, a prayer, or a religious story can make someone look trustworthy when their actions say otherwise. That is why religion and politics should worry everyone. It can turn bad decisions into sacred missions.

[00:26:34]>> Yeah, I still do it. I did it again this morning. There they put it on the front of newspaper. All the news is fit to print in this bright little box. I mean, the just the cresism of it just never ceases to surprise me. The other thing I do cuz I live in Washington is I check that the Washington Post is still printing a horoscope every day, which they are unbelievably.

[00:26:52]I mean, they are they print astrological predictions in a journal of record. It's and I usually remember to fire off an email of annoyance to someone to complain just to make sure you know that one doesn't get too used to this kind of thing.

[00:27:05]>> How often do you fire off that email?

[00:27:07]>> Oh, in my mind all the time. I don't want to get like um there's a wonderful SBellow novel called Herzog slightly crazed old gentleman called Moses Herzog who just can't stop writing letters of complaint. They're brilliantly written which is the point of the book but you don't want to end up like Herzog does. We touched on this, but I want to come back to it via an email by Matt Poundstone of Denver, Colorado. There's a page in your book, God is Not Great, in which you appear to console the faithful, whose beliefs you are shaking to the core with your own experience of becoming disillusioned with Marxism.

[00:27:43]>> From this passage, it sounds as though you really lost your faith later in life as a leftist rather than in the green fields with your teacher as a boy. Is this a fair characterization? And how would you compare your experience with Marxism to those who come to similar conclusions about God?

[00:27:59]>> Well, the the it's an excellent question by the way and I'm grateful to Mr. Panstone, but I just have to differ with him on the grammar of his question.

[00:28:08]Namely, Marxism is not in the sense he implies it or or analogizes it a faith at all.

[00:28:15]It's a method of thinking um it which used to claim to be scientific. does did claim to be scientific. Um, and it's it arises exactly from the quarrel with the idea of religious uh thinking which is based on faith. So it it just isn't to be compared with a religion. Of course, the the communist systems and parties were sometimes compared to churches uh because of the way they evolved, the the dogmas that they assumed uh the witch hunts that they carried out, the heresies that they condemned, the miracles mainly economic that they claimed to have created and so forth. And there's some truth to that.

[00:28:54]But I didn't that I never had any illusion in that to lose.

[00:28:59]It's just that um I found in the end that the word the word socialists didn't describe a thinkable future to me anymore. It wasn't a crisis of faith or dark night of the soul.

[00:29:12]>> Honolulu, you're on with Christopher Hitchens.

[00:29:14]>> Yes. Good morning. It's very very excited to talk with you this morning.

[00:29:19]Um I'm very curious about how you have been able to to write the book that you've written and walk through the the talk shows uh especially on the conservative right and not become the real target of um bashing I guess is the most simple way to put it. You seem to be able to remain um at least a neutral um party as you walk through this. And also I'd as a two-parter, how do you feel about some of the interviews that you have and some of the debates that you have with with people that are so opposed? How do you develop different opinions of them as as you listen to their arguments and and the way they respond to you? And thank you very much. I I really enjoy you.

[00:30:07]>> Oh, please. Thank you. Well, I asked my publisher when we started with the book to u make the book tour as far as possible go through the southern portion of the country instead of the traditional book tour which tends to be New York, Chicago, um, San Francisco, Seattle, LA, but so on, but to take it to the what people think of as the heartland and and tried every spot and at every stop to have a debate, challenge somebody, ask the locals to sort of bring out their best advocate for religion. And in a remarkable number of places, they they did do that. Um, and we had some extremely strong and I think often quite amusing and entertaining uh public events, some of which were broadcast.

[00:30:51]And I have to say first that I was very impressed by the general courtesy of people to be willing to have someone come in their midst and challenge their dearest beliefs um and reply politely.

[00:31:04]Uh, Christianity Today, for example, asked me to be on its website for an online debate that went on for about eight weeks.

[00:31:11]uh which is very hospitable of them. um Hugh Hewitt um who is probably the conservative host you have in mind or with one of them has had me on for a very very long time two hours perhaps three with um in one case a um a Catholic teacher at Annapolis naval college um literary excuse me a literature teacher and in the other case um a man in holy orders from the Presbyterian church in Orange County.

[00:31:42]So, not bad really. Um, but I hope it doesn't sound chish having said all that if I say that I didn't encounter one new argument or argument that made me think I wonder what the answer to that is.

[00:31:55]That may also sound very complacent of me to say. I don't know if it does. I hope not. As I I I do try and look for the weaknesses in my own position and I I I will if I'm challenged by a new point or a new argument, I will force myself to think about it. Then I realized, of course, well, how could there be any new arguments? I mean, this argument is a very old one. I shouldn't there shouldn't be any novelty in it.

[00:32:17]But if you see what I mean, um, it it's it's impressive to me anyway to hear people repeating arguments that they very often don't know were discredited centuries past.

[00:32:31]>> This is the missionary position, Mother Teresa in theory and practice. And this is a recent article from the New York Daily News. Mother Teresa's shocking struggle. What was your reaction to her uh uh crisis of faith?

[00:32:46]>> I've written an article that's in the current Newsweek about it if you like to check or if any anyone is more curious.

[00:32:53]Um and it's already up on their website, I believe. Well, I think it's it's actually extremely interesting because it shows um that for very nearly 50 the last 50 years, last half century of her life, she really couldn't make herself believe in the in the presence of Christ in the mass, the Eucharist, which is the the central tenet of Catholic faith, almost the cynic known, and that she felt that when she prayed, there was no one listening and there was nothing happening there. Um my theory is that because this happened just after she'd got what she wanted which was to let the church allow her to run her own order.

[00:33:31]She was very ambitious woman. The church used to suspect her of ambition and pride and and overzealousness. It was just after she got permission to start in 48 or so that she had this meltdown.

[00:33:43]And I think the the whole life that people think they admire so much of her endlessly working herself to death apparently of her tremendously ostentatious austerity, professions of poverty, almost masochistic. All of this turns out to be nothing but an an attempt to drown out the demons. And the church knew very well that this woman who they were using because she was such good publicity um didn't really believe a word of it.

[00:34:10]So I think it was very cynical on their part.

[00:34:13]What kind of reaction did you get to the missionary position?

[00:34:16]>> Overwhelmingly positive to a surprising extent because a lot of Catholics know that there's a danger of finalism um and excessive zeal and it's it's the greatest danger the church has ever had to face. And she was a perfect example of it. I'll give you an instance. The church, everybody knows, regards the the unborn child as a real thing.

[00:34:36]Um, as as a person, so to say, and and abominates abortion. As as a matter of fact, that's my own view as well. I think the concept unborn child is embryologically correct, and that's that's what it is. Um, and I think abortion is is abhorrent and should be avoided wherever possible. But Mother Theresa, when she got the Nobel Prize for Peace, went to Stockholm. You have to make a speech. You can't just pick up the check. You got to say something. Has to be about peace. She said, "I've discovered the greatest threat to world peace. The greatest threat to world peace is abortion." Now, nobody thinks that. It's impossible to think that.

[00:35:10]That's a crazy thing to say. It's a it's beyond fanatical. The church doesn't demand it of you. People will think, "Good God, you know, the woman's gone around the vend." Um, that's what I mean.

[00:35:20]>> Religion keeps repeating old arguments because it has no new evidence. Faith is treated like a virtue, but in plain terms, faith means believing without proof. That is a dangerous way to decide what is true. Even Mother Teresa, one of Christianity's most famous symbols, privately struggled for decades with the feeling that God was absent, according to her published letters.

[00:35:43]Time reported that her crisis of faith lasted nearly 50 years. Then she publicly called abortion the greatest destroyer of peace. Even though war, genocide, famine, and disease have destroyed millions of lives. That shows the problem. Religion can take one doctrine and place it above real human suffering.

[00:36:04]>> Christopher Hitchens, I want to show you this picture.

[00:36:06]>> So, and then the second thing, I'm sorry, is this. It's very important.

[00:36:09]People misunderstand it all the time.

[00:36:11]She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She liked poverty. She thought it was good for people. She told people to think of it as a gift from God. And she made sure that they stayed poor because she preached against the only thing that can abolish poverty, which is the empowerment of women. Give women some control over their own reproductive cycle, particularly with contraception.

[00:36:31]Give them uh uh chance to get off the wheel of husband who forces annual pregnancies on them, many of which are going to die.

[00:36:40]You do that, you can raise the floor of the poorest village in in Bolivia or Bangladesh. She spent all her life trying to make sure that could not happen.

[00:36:49]So, a lot of people are much poorer and much sicker and much less well educated um and much less happy than they would have been if she had never come on the scene.

[00:36:59]>> Is that an argument in favor of capitalism?

[00:37:02]>> Not on its own. It isn't though because capitalism doesn't always insist on the empowerment of women. But if if anyone's interested in the alleviation of poverty, um that's that is the only thing we know definitely works is giving women control over their reproduction.

[00:37:19]>> I want to show you this picture, Christopher Hitchens. Uh this is in the Washington Post style section yesterday and it's a woman praying at the uh memorial for Diana in England. What do you think about that? What's your reaction to Well, that's exactly what I'd say about the the sickly influence of religious cultism. It is that it it leads to um man-made Well, I think sorry, I'll back up. I think all religious cults are man-made and they they've created false objects of worship um mythical legendary ones. When you see it happening in front of your eyes, you can see how it got started.

[00:38:01]There you see it happening in front of our eyes. We think that's grotesque. I expect most people do. What are you doing? Praying to an image of basically disco dancing princess.

[00:38:12]But it's no more absurd than saying that you think Joseph Smith dug up some gold plates in upstate New York that had angelic writing on them, which is one of the front runners for the Republican nomination claims he believes. Or the or the cargo cults of Polynesia. or the belief that um that after several hundreds of thousands of years of indifference, heaven waited till 2,000 years ago to conduct a human sacrifice in Palestine so that we could be forgiven our sins. I mean, as I say, if you'll believe this kind of thing, you'll believe anything and you might as well make a goddess of Princess Diane.

[00:38:48]>> Springfield, Illinois, you're on with Christopher Hitchens.

[00:38:50]>> Good morning, Peter and Christopher.

[00:38:52]>> Morning. Um, you were recently on a book panel where your co-panelist Jonathan Kersh I believe was rebutting a point you had made and as he was talking you interjected it's immoral to love your enemy.

[00:39:10]Um, you were not given a chance to elaborate on that. So, I'm going to give you that chance now. Thank you.

[00:39:17]>> I think I can remember the event you're talking about and I I think I think it was in Los Angeles, wasn't it? that the books out. Yes. I don't I don't like being told, especially at a time like this, that it's my duty to love my enemies. People who want to go and love Bin Laden can do go do it on their own time. They're not to tell me that I'm um to do the same or and they're certainly not to tell me that that's moral preaching.

[00:39:42]No, we have to hate our enemies and try and destroy them before they destroy us.

[00:39:46]That's a responsibility to to to be neutral on such a point, especially if you're a father or if you consider yourself a citizen with duties to his fellow citizens, is is wicked and should be described as such. Christianity is is masochistic pabulum in that way. It actually disarms those of virtue and leaves them at the mercy of those who are wicked.

[00:40:10]>> This is in depth with Christopher Hitchens on Book TV Denver. You're on the air. Hi, and Christopher, big fan.

[00:40:17]Um, I noticed you took some exception, um, maybe even umbrage at the notion that by invading Iraq, we've given Bin Laden what he wants. And I wonder if you'll admit that the problem people maybe were trying to articulate with that statement is that the more or less secular or more or less civilian population of that region might become a larger uh, substrate for these fundamentalist wackos like Bin Laden.

[00:40:44]when their civil society is destroyed and they're thrown out of work and their homes and maybe even their families are turned to ash. In other words, all guerilla campaigns need the support of the population. And shouldn't we therefore do two things? One is address the legitimate complaints of the region and thus not increase the substrate for these right-wing fundamentalist gerillas. And then couldn't we just go after the terrorists themselves? Thanks.

[00:41:17]>> Well, you probably since you kind of saved read my stuff, you probably know that I'm very dubious about the root cause argument with terrorism. I don't think that al-Qaeda terrorism comes, for example, from the denial of a Palestinian state. I don't think so. You may have noticed that when the al-Qaeda forces with their Ba'ist allies blew up the UN office in Baghdad to murder the great Sergio Vieira Demiello, the big wonderful Brazilian human rights envoy who Kofiana had sent there. They said they'd done it to revenge themselves for his help in getting East Teour independence from Indonesia. East Timor being the the Christian formerly Portuguese island that was invaded and illegally occupied by Muslim Indonesia. So you see if you want to get if you want to make these people happy and address their their complaints you have to say well we we'd be better better off not of liberating we we'd be better off not having liberated excuse me teeour not a demand that can easily be met. If you really want al-Qaeda to go away, you have to let Pakistan take over Kashmir and tear the heart out of the Indian Federation and start a a horrible religious war in the subcontinent. The the cause of Islam is terrorism. In other words, is what I'm saying to you is the ideology of Islamic terror.

[00:42:40]That's what is recording.

[00:42:42]There are things we could perhaps have done uh to on the substrate point of yours. I certainly think that keeping Iraq under sanctions for a dozen years where the Saddam Hussein was able to build a palace for himself in every one of Iraq's provinces from the skioffs of that sanctions racket while the rest of the people were drinking sewer water. Um did help to create an underclass in Iraq of a kind it hadn't seen before. Certainly was no help to us or to the secular forces in Iraq when this when the situation imploded. But you're not to tell me that people blow up the sewer pipes in Iraq so they can get better drinking water or they blow up the oil pipelines because they're out they're out of a job because that's one way of ensuring that they remain unemployed. No, the people who do this, the the the revoling jihadists who do it are not the product of unemployment and poverty. They are the cause of unemployment and poverty.

[00:43:43]And until you get that distinction completely firmly fixed in your mind, you will always flirt with talking nonsense, as you just very slightly did a moment ago, if you don't mind my saying so.

[00:43:53]>> Because of your strong statements against uh radical Islam, has there ever been a fatwa against you?

[00:43:59]>> No, I don't.

[00:43:59]>> Have you ever gotten a threat?

[00:44:01]>> Well, there wouldn't really Well, that's an interesting question.

[00:44:04]There wouldn't really be a if that were against me um in normal Islamic law because I've never been a Muslim. So I don't apostasize when I say what I think about the Quran or the prophet I dwell in what they call jahalyah ignorance.

[00:44:18]It's not my fault. Salman rushi my friend uh got fatwa against him because he had been a Muslim and he could be sentenced to death for abandoning his religion because the not the Quran but the hadith state very explicitly the penalty for changing your religion is death.

[00:44:34]Lately, it's been a slightly sinister development, which is since around the time of the Danish cartoon controversy of last year, threats have been made against non-Muslims by Muslim extremists, saying if if you criticize the Quran, you should be beheaded, whether you're Muslim or not. Now, that people haven't noticed, but that actually is crossing an even still more dangerous line. Yes, I did once get a threat, a believable one. at least the State Department counterterrorism office told me that they thought it was believable. It was from Iran and um and they asked me to change my address.

[00:45:10]>> And did you?

[00:45:11]>> No, because I thought first, if you start running, you'll never stop. And second, if they know where I live now, it won't be that hard for them to find out where I've moved.

[00:45:19]>> Did the State Department provide any security or anything?

[00:45:21]>> No, they didn't ask them to either.

[00:45:24]The cruelty becomes clearer when religion praises poverty instead of fighting the systems that keep people trapped in it. Real poverty reduction depends on education, health care, and women having control over reproduction.

[00:45:37]The World Health Organization says family planning helps women avoid unintended pregnancies, lowers health risks, and gives women more ability to pursue school and work.

[00:45:48]UNFPA also calls family planning central to gender equality and a key factor in reducing poverty. So when religion condemns contraception, it is not protecting the poor. It is protecting doctrine at the expense of women, children, and families who need real freedom.

[00:46:06]>> No. Um and here I still am.

[00:46:09]>> Next call for Christopher Hitchens, Miami. You're on the air.

[00:46:13]>> Yes, Mr. Hitchens. I enjoyed your uh love poverty and war very much.

[00:46:18]>> Thank you.

[00:46:18]>> Part particularly the uh the uh essays on church hill and the future of an illusion.

[00:46:24]>> My my question is we have a situation where perverted priests, confidence men such as Pat Robertson, buffoons like Al Sharpton, all these characters build these enormous financial empires and yet they aren't subjected to taxation like the rest of us simply because they claim to be in the service of a of a higher power. Is this ludicrous situation an anomaly to us here in the states or is it common to the rest of the world? And again, I enjoy your your work very much.

[00:46:52]Thank you.

[00:46:53]>> Well, it's it's um it's an unintended byproduct of something that does make the United States unique, which is that uh Congress, as you know, can make no law respecting the establishment of of a religion. That's the it's the most important part of the most important amendment to the Constitution. In the country where I was born, which you can probably tell is England, uh there's a state church of which the queen herself is the head. The queen and her whoever is the monarch is exeicio, the head of the church, the head of the state, the head of the armed forces. And your tax dollars have to go to subsidize that whether you like to or not. The same is true in Germany, France, and elsewhere.

[00:47:31]Not to quite the same extent. In Germany, for example, you have to pay a tithe either to a synagogue or a Catholic or Protestant church. It's very difficult to say you're not going to choose one, but you you don't have to choose only one if you follow me. In America, it's a voluntary effort. That's why it's allowed the status of charity or whatever the tax exempt definition is, which I agree with you should not be permissible for churches that engage in political activity or political advocacy.

[00:48:01]I further think that um because we're hearing a lot of talk recently about equal time in the argument over so-called intelligent design and creationism. They say they want schools to teach uh alternatives to Darwin as well, alternatives to the theory of evolution. Well, in that case, any church that is getting a tax break from the government, let alone getting any handout from the so-called faith-based initiative, should be obliged to teach Darwin in its Sunday schools and even in its services for equal time and fairness purposes. Don't you think? I pass on the idea. Might cheer you up.

[00:48:35]>> When did you become a US citizen?

[00:48:38]>> On the 13th of April this year, the which was my birthday and Mr. Jefferson's birthday.

[00:48:43]>> Why?

[00:48:45]>> Why that day? or why did I >> why did you become a US citizen?

[00:48:47]>> Um, I applied shortly after the attack on the United States in September of 2001. No, not shortly after, not very long after. I I made up my mind to do so anyway then. um that and the arguments that came out of it, the clashes um especially the the with um certain European powers and forces ma made me realize that I I' I had fully come to identify with the country I lived in with my country of adoption. Um and as a gesture of solidarity because I felt I was cheating on my dues really if I didn't do it I ought to take out the papers of citizenship. I have done.

[00:49:33]>> Do you miss England?

[00:49:35]>> No, I don't have to in a way because I mean it's only 5 hours away by plane.

[00:49:39]I'm going there tomorrow. I have two children there. A lot of my best friends are there. Even if I'm going somewhere else, I always stop there. So, no, I've I've never regretted leaving if that's what you mean. And since I was quite young, I I had a very strong impulse to leave and to immigrate to the United States, and I did it as soon as I could.

[00:49:57]>> You're you're well known as a smoker. Is a five hour flight a long time for you?

[00:50:01]>> No, I can go for much longer than that without smoking. It's a funny thing.

[00:50:04]It's it's it's that's why it's such a stupid habit and I wish I could give it up. I don't really need it. I mean, it doesn't bother me now. I used to be able to smoke on C-SPAN, unbelievably. Um, it doesn't bother me now that I'll be here 3 hours without without a drag. No.

[00:50:19]>> Well, a couple of emails dealing with uh >> Now, if you'd like to give me a glass of sherry because we must be getting on towards lunchtime, that would be great.

[00:50:28]We'll see what we can do. A a couple of emails regarding uh the US and Britain.

[00:50:34]Please ask Mr. Hitchens to discuss the differences for him in working, writing, communicating in the US as opposed to the UK and the rest of Europe. Please ask him to focus on the intellectual and political environment. That's from Sarah Abraham in Philadelphia. And then from Mary Staser in Oak Harbor, Washington, I have a feeling that British intellectuals come to the US because they see us as easier to influence than the population in Britain. This would make their intellectual life more appealing and their sense of achievement more immediate than if they stayed in Britain. Why is it that uh we draw draws the likes of uh Simon Shama, Christopher Hitchens, and Andrew Sullivan to the life in the US? I might add that I am terrifically happy to see them here.

[00:51:18]Well, you could wouldn't always have necessarily guessed she was going to end up like that. Well, um, first to Miss M Miss Abrahams, um, the the world I live anyway is pretty much an Anglo-American one. I mean, for example, most of my books are published simultaneously in London and in New York. Um, a lot of the magazines we all like, people like me write for.

[00:51:47]um the Atlantic Monthly in our case for example Vanity Fair very conspicuously which has a special English edition um the magazines like the Times literary supplement or the New York Review of Books are effectively co-produced by British and American academics and intellectuals. It's that it's um uh you don't feel very much of a contradiction.

[00:52:12]Um I think that's also quite true of the academy. The American the American and British university system is not unlike uh itself each other more it's more more like the two are more alike than they are to any other comparable one for example. And of course there's the common language. So I don't feel very real any any tension of that sort.

[00:52:35]It's even arguable that it's hardly worth moving except that I'd prefer the atmosphere here which I think is more combative and there are more outlets and there's more uh opportunity and a small thing but not unimportant.

[00:52:53]It's very much more difficult to get sued for liel. there are fewer restraints on the press than there are in England. And you are under the great roof of the constitution and the protection of the first amendment which gives the the the press a certain role of honor even if it doesn't always discharge it very well in American culture. I know I wrote a book called Blood Plus and nostalgia about the um this is the second question now about the vulnerability of America to Angloia which a lot of people have commented on.

[00:53:21]There's Hollywood anglophilia. There's a special. I think the music industry continues to suffers from Brit invasions. There are people who claim to be overroed by English accents. I certainly sometimes get from AT&T phone operators when I'm doing international collect or something. I say, "I love your accent. We should keep talking."

[00:53:40]And I say, "No, it's not me who has the accent. It's you who has the accent. We get along." All right. Um, the Diana cult, the cult of the royal family, which completely eludes and escapes me. One of the things I did leave England to get away from was the monarchy, is very strong here, too. Um, and well, it's called English literature for a reason, but but I would say there was now a separate branch of that called American literature, and everyone should be very proud of it. Religion often asks for special treatment while claiming moral authority over everyone else.

[00:54:16]Churches can receive taxexempt status.

[00:54:18]Yet many religious leaders still try to shape politics, law, schools, and public policy. The first amendment says government cannot establish religion.

[00:54:29]And the Internal Revenue Service says 501 AC3 groups including churches are restricted from political campaign intervention.

[00:54:38]That matters because religion should not get public advantages while pushing private doctrine into public life. When churches demand influence without the same accountability as everyone else, faith turns into power. That is exactly why church and state must stay separate.

[00:54:54]And that is the real issue. Religion keeps asking society to respect claims it cannot prove, fund institutions it cannot question, and obey rules written from ancient belief systems. So, what do you think? Does religion help society or does it hold people back? Comment your thoughts below. Like and subscribe. And if you want us to keep breaking down this debate, comment more Hitchens and we will make it