Geoffrey Andersen is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to be taking on Hitchens on his own turf (I suspect the latter).

The questions posed by Fray writers and posted by Anderson are boringly vapid and obtuse; Hitchens will dissect and obliterate the flimsily constructed, maudlin objections that are deluged with 21st century hyper-pluralism.

"What would Hitchens have us do?" one reader whines. The answer is simple: be OUTRAGED. If more of us, particularly on the left, could muster one-tenth of the ferocity and wrath for murdering Islamic extremists as, say, Al Gonzalez, Hitchens might not have to scream so loudly.

It is obvious that Hitchens is fed up the hyper-sensitivity that prevents people, organizations, and media outlets from publicly and vehemently condemning the implicit and growing totalitarianism of Islamic fundamentalism. Hitchens wasn't saying the police should have stormed the bakery without a proper warrant; he was asking why it took so LONG to do so and was chastising a police force that had elected to toe-the-line of political correctness for YEARS and did nothing.

Sixty Minutes, every couple of years or so, has an exclusive on some trailer-trash white supremacist group that has 185 members nation-wide. Islamic Radicalism is a deadly serious and growing threat, yet networks eschew reporting on it facets and characteristics. This is done out of fear, but not fear of some Van Gough style retaliation. It is the fear of appearing racist, xenophobic, and religiously intolerant.

Hitchens is asking if we are prepared to stand by Reason in this Second Enlightenment. The opponent then was the Church. Today it is the Ayatollahs and Imams who spew forth dogma and intolerance for nonbelievers, and use our liberal institutions and values against us.

That is my two cents. I am sure Mr. Hitchens will offer a much more artful (and biting) defense of his positions. I can hardly wait...I almost feel sorry for Mr. Anderson.

Being outraged isn't an action, and therefore is not an honest answer to the question, "What would Hitchens have us do?"

What action do you suggest that our being outraged should lead to?

...of straw-men and non-sequitur doesn't have much place in the new Enlightenment these days, even if he's identified some reasonable causes to raise the sword against. Artful? Sometimes. Logical? Not so much. He's just fliimsy and maudlin wrapped up in a belligerent shell.

To Geoff: nice essay, but bad form. (And here you are checkmarking responses, sheesh.) Also, I disagree with your opening thrust. Ideologies swallowed whole cause indigestion. It's one matter coming to aspects of one through observation and weighing and so forth, but most people don't feel they have to eat everything on the plate just because it's served to them. Just the loud people.

Just as I thought I would turn away from this and get on with the return of sunshine here, I read this:

Hitchens is asking if we are prepared to stand by Reason in this Second Enlightenment. The opponent then was the Church. Today it is the Ayatollahs and Imams who spew forth dogma and intolerance for nonbelievers, and use our liberal institutions and values against us.

The bolding is mine; please confirm this is NOT in initial caps in deference to some proposed movement or fantasy of Christopher Lord Hitchens of Bailliol. >>FYI--I deleted my own "De Profundis,..." posting, as I considered it rude even for me. I waited long enough to think he may have read it while I was sailing at the weekend.

His Second Enlightenment will align more with the Latter Day Saints than Thomas Jefferson. It will be just as economic and paranoid, if not so quietly so. Reason?

For the poster, please research the first Enlightenment. It had to do with ownership and control of means of production and property, and also nationalism, colonialism, and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire from its own internal breakup after Charles V. It had a lot to do with Switzerland and Calvin and Zwingli, and with the French, who were falling sick at the feet of their overleveraged shareholder class. It had little to do with reason, not even in the US, where it was a revolution driven by property holders and taxpayers.

Some good ideas came out of this period, but if Mr Hitchens is teaching you that the Church's defence of God had anything to do with it, you are mislead. Also, please note that Ayatollahs and Imams are not organised as a large, property-holding institution like the Vatican. Mr Hitchens should be interviewing King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (not Jordan's US guy) and Sheik al-Sabah of Kuwait to obtain some more relevant insights on when the next Enlightenment may come. It will be when they decide to stop financing America.

Firstly, I believe Hitchens wants us to get our our heads out of our collective a$$es and start calling a spade a "spade". From his account the police had plenty of reason to investigate this organization but were reluctant because they knew that it would open a Pandora's box of accusations of racism or religious discrimination. Our call to action is to make our elected officials, including the police, enforce the law -- however inconvient. We can do this by voting, by protest and political and community action, but no, it's more cool to sit around and criticize the present administration and preach tolerence of a population that ultimately wants to obliterate Western civilization from the planet.

Being outraged is an action, demanding that unreasonable and hateful bigots cease their abhorrent actions is an action. It seems to my mind silly to look at a man who is inditing hatred, genocide, and oppression and say well what should we do? The answer is simple; do not tolerate it.

He's not a politician or a policy maker and it is silly to hold him to such standards. He is in fact a journalist and a commentator, a pundit. His role is to criticize and to inform, why attack him for doing that very thing?

It's like asking someone who calls 911 well what would you have us do? It's ridiculous.

issuing a warrent is an action, and as hitchens shows, there were plenty of reasons why it should have been done long before the murders he discussed took place. this is crystal clear in his article. The actions he wants are the actions that would be carried out against a white christian organisation. its called equality under the law, which, dispite what this article suggests, is a very liberal trait.

I agree that being outraged gets pretty close to where we ought to be about all this, and once people are outraged and not worried about being overly politically correct and tolerant towards all muslims "just because some of them are crazy", I think the "whatever shall we do?" question will answer itself. And, no, I am not saying the answer will ever be to commit genocide or imprison or detain people based solely on their religion.

Also, for what it's worth, I don't think I would want to be living in the type of pluralistic and "multicultural" society I believe Mr. Anderson imagines, where, taken to its logical extreme, in lieu of outrage, we have tolerance and acceptance towards a culture filled with violent, brutish, and ignorant people that would happily destroy us if they were able to.

I could not disagree more with your assertion that the Age of Enlightment was primarily about property rights, class, commercialism, the collapse of the HRE, etc. It was the consequence of a disillusioned Europe that had been ravaged for centuries by religious wars. Thinkers like Rosseau, Montaigne, Voltaire, Paine, and Diderot began to question the theory that the primacy source of knowledge was derived from mysticism and revelation. These men began to question and challenge the authority of the church (and the state--e.g. "The Divine Right of Kings"). It sought to replace religious dogma with natural philosophy and human Reason.

Our alliances (if they can be called that) with Saudi Arabia and Jordan are nothing more than realpolitick dimplomacy. Sometimes you choose allies that might be distasteful because you need them.

I am aware that Ayatollahs and Imams are not an organized institution. They are merely peddlers of a dangerous and dogmatic doctrine that is hostile to a secular West that has successfully (for the most part) balanced its secular institutions with religious freedom, expression, and tolerance.

The advocates of Islamic fundamentalism are not, in my opinion, interested in religious freedom or tolerance. Mr. Hitchens understands this.

You are seriously wrong about your understanding of the period of history that began fully with the end of the Huindred Years' war and ended with Napoléon's conquest of Europe. Monarchies were far from mystical. Papal power, arguably little different today, was about managing a real estate empire that was designed to be the ribbon that held the whole European enterprise together. This enterprise was changing with the settling of your side of the world. Parallels to globalisation? Perhaps.

Forgive me for being simplistic here; no doubt I may rethink this "illustration". I think it best to quit here.

Paine's relevance was less here than there. Hobbes would be a good Englishman on your list.

Obviously, you have a passion for Mr Hitchens that escapes me. Fortunately.

Actually, I think the police were investigating them for general bullying, suspicion of vandalizing of local liquor stores etc and in fact, the resulting search is what unexpectedly turned up the gun used to kill the journalist.

Your pie may be hot, but it's a moose turd pie, nonetheless.

Periodically, a collection of paranoid dumbshits gets a wild hare up their ass about some perceived threat that never materializes.

In antebellum times, it was radical abolitionists that Southern slaveowners feared would cause a slave rebellion. What they got was John Brown hanged.

Then, it was the anarchists who were going to overthrow capitalism and create chaos. They were under every bed, in every union. What they got was the Molly McGuires and the Haymarket martyrs hanged.

Then it was the commies. They were going to invite Red hordes into Times Square and give away China (as if we ever had it to begin with). All they got was Nixon elected president.

But now we're supposed to have a fit about "radical Islamists."

Uh huh. For me, I'm ten thousand times more likely to be accidentally shot in an exchange between the Gangster disciples and the Latin Kings-- neither of whom have any affiliations with Islam.

But I guess you have too much time on your hands and too little real things to worry about. Just can the arrogant assertion that you know something everyone else doesn't. You're just a skittish thing that nobody need pay mind to. You and Hitchens.

If I read it right, Hitchens wants:

A pluralistic society that does not allow an aggrieved, religious minority to bully the secular (or secularish) majority. That means a government that is truly 'colorblind' when it comes to religion, a foreign policy that hopes to punish political movements that don't allow women free rights or music to be played, and a healthy cosmopolitanism that fights back against the parochial.

Hitchens has written plenty that I disagree with, but I thought that GA's post was retarded. I think it's pretty simple to sum up what Hitchens would have us do. And I'm in favor of it.

Good Heavens. I have a sneaking suspicion that you just finished Western History 101 and your professor was one of those Marxist historians (I've had plenty of them) that teaches his class that all of history is defined by class warfare, materialism, and social struggle.

I hate to burst your neat little bubble lad, but the Age of Enlightenment had much more to do with a rejection of religious mysticism (that embraced empirical reasoning) than with "managing a real estate empire." You display ignorance of an embarassing degree.

The reconstruction of papal order was a consequence of this rejection, not the catalyst.

I think it's pretty simple to sum up what Hitchens would have us do. And I'm in favor of it.

Get serious. Hitchens advocates sending the most destructive and indiscriminate killing machine in history over to a nation that has nothing more to do with being a bullying religious minority than the Carmelite nuns and wreak unbelievable havoc on them and their society. The United States military, with a budget that is more than the combined budgets of almost every other nation on earth, including the Chinese, Russians and EU.

Oh, but he's against bullying. Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.