As one of the student organizers of the Hitchens/Parenti debate, I would like to thank the editorial board of the Argus for the kind remarks they printed in last Tuesday’s issue. However, in explaining the philosophical underpinnings that drove Christopher Hitchens’ arguments, they were quick to note that he “is far from a neoconservative.” Such a statement is categorically false. Actually, Hitchens represents the neo-conservative ideology in its purest form, and it was for this reason we were so eager to bring him to our campus.
Many students and friends have approached me since the debate to ask me how I thought it went and who I thought had won. Most have been quick to follow their questions with statements that, in one way or another, express surprise at how much more convincing they found the pro-war speaker to be.
Although I was disappointed to find Dr. Parenti to be a less than persuasive advocate of the position I personally hold, I nevertheless feel that his inability to win over a student population so ready to agree with his message, is symptomatic of the enormous problem facing the left in this country.
Concerning matters of international affairs and geo-politics, the left has become irrelevant.
Its irrelevancy has been a result not only of its inability to put forward a rational and original critique of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, but in its failure to come to a basic understanding as to the forces that have come together in designing that policy.
The aforementioned remark by the editorial board of this paper is a priceless example. Although they were correct in noting that one can simultaneously be pro-war and pro choice, they should have also added that one can be both a neoconservative and a student of Karl Marx.
Hitchens does not actually define himself as a liberal, but as an ex-Trotskyite–huge difference. Hitchens was once as devoted a radical as any student to have ever been enrolled in this university, and his conversion to neo-con might hold some small hint as to why the left has failed to really grasp who these people are, and how to out–maneuver them.
Today we find ourselves in a much different world than the one in which U.S. foreign policy was marked by Kissinger, Détente, and an emphasis on regional stability. As such, our understanding of what it means to be considered of the opposition can not be derived from that era.
Our old slogans are based on a battlefield that has been re-arraigned several times since they were first written. The world is a very different place from the one in which our old heroes fought and died.
It might be time to say that Che is dead, and so is his relevance.
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