I possess a film of “Mother Teresa” making her homage to “Mother Albania”—as well as to its patron, the pitiless thug Enver Hoxha—and it invites the … - Christopher Hitchens

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor? Isn't it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what's fit to be passed and what isn't, is the man most likely to become debauched? Did you hear any speaker of the opposition to this motion – eloquent as one of them was – to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you? Relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear? Do you know anyone? Hands up, do you know anyone to whom you'd give this job? Does anyone have a nominee?

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

I know quite well that I can appear insufferable and annoying. Worse than that, I know that I can appear insufferable and annoying without intending to do so. (An old definition of a gentleman: someone who is never rude except on purpose.)