Christopher Hitchens's new commandments

Front of dust jacket

Standing at the counter in UNC's undergraduate library last week, waiting to pick up the book I was told was being held for me, I could see across the way the relatively few books there for pick-up. One stood out, its broad spine in bright yellow (as in most libraries, the dust jacket had been removed). Must be four inches wide, I said to myself. I hope that isn't it. I was already carrying the book I'd commuted with that day and I was hoping for this new book to be of normal size.
    But the yellow book it was: Christopher Hitchens's most recent collection of essays, Arguably, which was listed in Sunday's New York Times Book Review as one of the five best non-fiction books of 2011. Of the book the Times says:

Our intellectual omnivore's latest collection could be his last (he's dying of esophageal cancer [note: Hitchens has insisted that he's living with it, not dying of it]). The book is almost 800 pages, contains more than 100 essays, and addresses a ridiculously wide range of topics, including Afghanistan, Harry Potter, Thomas Jefferson, waterboarding, Henry VIII, Saul Bellow, and the Ten Commandments, which Hitchens helpfully revises.

"Ridiculously wide range" is admiringly ironic, of course. The first two essays I read were about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ezra Pound.
    The third was about the Ten Commandments. Hitchens begins this essay by trying to identify just which commandments the Ten are, "since the giving of the divine Law by Moses appears in three or four wildly different scriptural versions." [p. 414] Having settled on the "first and most famous set...in Exodus 20," which "ends with Moses himself smashing the supposedly most sacred artifacts known to man," Hitchens proceeds to review each.
    For example, Commandment VI, Thou shalt not kill.

We can be fairly sure that the "original intent" is not in any way pacifistic, because immediately after he breaks the original tablets in a fit of rage, Moses summons the Levite faction and says (Exodus 32:27-28):

Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

The whole book of Exodus is...littered with other fierce orders to slay people for numberless minor offenses (including violations of the Sabbath) and also includes the sinister, ominous verse "Thou shalt not suffer [permit] [Hitchens's comment] a witch to live," which was taken as a divine instruction by Christians until relatively recently in human history. Some work is obviously needed here: What is a first-degree or third-degree killing and what isn't? Distinguishing killing from murder is not a job easily left to mortals: What are we to do if God himself can't tell the difference? [p. 417]

Hitchens concludes the essay with a quiet statement of some ethical principles for today:

It's difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words "Thou shalt not." But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihad-ists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form. [pp. 421-422]

    Here endeth the reading for today.
    And reading that concluding paragraph makes me wish that I could have written my own New Ten Commandments so flowingly well. Not even numbered! And I feel no compunction to count them.

Oh, one more thing. The book isn't four inches thick. It's only two and three-eighths. It must be that bright yellow spine.
    What essay shall I read next? Maybe the one in which Hitchens describes being waterboarded for the purpose of journalistic research.