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The other Hitchens

Sunday, 9th November 2008

Obama hasn't even taken office yet, and already Christopher's brother is reading the last rites for western civilization. Although I don't have a problem with his reluctance to clamber onto the bandwagon, his latest column makes very unattractive reading. Skip past the dismissive lines about the acceptance speech (a sad flop, in his opinion) and you plunge into a bilious account of a trek through the DC jungle:

There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy. They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war...
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique... And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World.

Phew. Just as well the Mail on Sunday is still on hand to carry the torch of reason.