Syntax the tangled up.

Whether it's breathing the sermons of Rev. Graham and the Pope, or breathing the air wafting from the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, Christopher Hitchens is definitely worked up about air quality and Muslim personal hygiene:

It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger.

Mr. Hitchens likes to call other people bigots a bit too freely and thinks that "faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species."

On the latter point, we don't see why the excesses of faith by someone, somewhere, or at some time negate the whole faith enterprise. A world without, say, Christianity doesn't sound like an improved world to the Colonel, whose faith is, not to put too fine a point on it, nonexistent. What has been offered up by tame, militant, or fanatic secularism is rarely free of the taint often ascribed to faith. As Alexander Pope said, "Of all those ills that mortal men endure how few are those the law can cause or cure." Mere secularism is not the answer.

The Colonel puts his, uh, faith in a densely populated, colorful menagerie of competing, imperfect, nonviolent factions, sects, churches, parties, clubs, teams, and families, each contributing a little, pointing out the inanities and excesses of the others.

Otherwise, we applaud Mr. Hitchens's ripping the U.S. State Department for caving in to the rioters and thugs. And we liked this part especially:

The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough precautions? On Saturday, I appeared on CNN, which was so terrified of reprisal that it "pixilated" the very cartoons that its viewers needed to see. And this ignoble fear in Atlanta, Ga., arose because of an illustration in a small Scandinavian newspaper of which nobody had ever heard before! Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.

"Cartoon Debate. The case for mocking religion." By Christopher Hitchens, 2/4/06.