I want to go back to the days when Christopher Hitchens and I were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. When his cherished enemy was Ronald Reagan, not his own fellow travellers. I want to return to the days when the Democratic Party weren't utter fruitcakes -- American politics is too important to leave the country as a one-party system, where the sole opposition party is being led by raving fascists. The Democratic Party owes the voters a real, meaningful opposition, and they have utterly betrayed the US by metastacising into something that even a principled leftist like Hitchens finds utterly unpalatable.

My Marxist training tells me things don't remain the same. Reactionary-left positions won't hold for long; they will metamorphose into reactionary-right ones. [Michael Moore] says he considers the Iraqi resistance—the beheaders and kidnappers and rapists, the people who throw petrol and explosives into the mosques of rival Muslims, among other things—the equivalents of the Minutemen of the American Revolution. This is the statement of a flat-out brown shirt. It has to be described as such. And all the people who thought that was a great movie to rock the vote, they should be f**king ashamed. There is no room for compromising on a thing like this. He's a lying, fascist, thug.

I don't agree with Hitchens. I see facism very much as a leftist phenomenon, and I think history is demonstrating this quite well again. I have come to see Reagan as more of a hero than a villain. I don't think socialism works. I probably don't embrace any of his economic beliefs. I would be ashamed to ever cite something like my "Marxist training", if I had one.

So why the hell are we suddenly on the same side?

This is sheer idiocy.

Update: I mistakenly thought Hitchens hadn't changed his economic views. I'm wrong:

TR: You used the term "old leftist". I'm always curious about your journey and your journey. You used to write for The Nation magazine, considered to be a liberal intellectual, tell us about--

CH: When I was actually neither. (Russert laughs) Certainly not a liberal anyway. No, I was a Marxist.

TR: A Marxist.

CH: Oh, well, I still think like a Marxist. I believe in the materialist conception of history, certainly. I still use those categories of analysis. They work, too. They've never been improved upon. But I'm no longer a Socialist.