The Usual Abuse - Part Two in a Series

What is the left-wing version of the traditional caricature of the puce-faced, spluttering retired army officer of Tunbridge Wells, scribbling explosively about the outrages of the modern age? Why, it’s the puce-faced, spluttering ‘Guardian’ reviewer, close to apoplexy when confronted with any opinion different to his own, jabbing his delicate fingers onto the keys of his Apple Mac as he rages against the very existence of conservatives.

You’ve got to laugh.

Not long after the Observer’s error-packed attack on my book, here comes its sister  the Guardian with a (website only) howl of rage against my book that is so empurpled it’s actually incoherent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/26/war-never-fought-peter-hitchens-review?newsfeed=true

Needless to say, it’s not  really a review, but the usual  caricature,  interspersed with astonishment that anybody might possibly fail to share the reviewer’s opinions. It pays little attention to what I actually say, and responds to the awkward (for the reviewer) comparison between the general attitude towards dangerous cannabis and the general attitude towards dangerous tobacco, and the comparison between the  apologists for both substances,  by having a  sort of brainstorm.  Do check it out. As far as I can make it, it runs thus. Tobacco, which was, alas, on legal sale for centuries, and was later found to be a deadly danger, is now being reasonably successfully restricted by the intervention of the law. So the ‘obvious inference’ is that we should legalise cannabis too, despite the growing evidence that its use is correlated with severe mental illness. I believe this person is some sort of philosopher. I should be interested to discuss the use of the word ‘obvious’ with him.

And then of course there is the standard-issue fact-free wail about ‘prohibition’. As it happens, I point out (on page 55, Mr Ree)  that US alcohol prohibition, by failing to ban possession and use, was rather similar to the current arrangements for cannabis in this country, and that this is one of the many reasons why it failed.  So I do not call for ‘exactly the same’ approach to cannabis.  But why bother with what’s in the book, when you can attack the author?

If he has evidence that my central argument (accurately described by him as ‘the law against cannabis and other stupefying narcotics is now "so feebly enforced that it might as well not exist".’), he does not produce it. Yet he treats the proposition as if it is in some way self-evidently false.
 
Jonathan Ree, the reviewer in question ( did I run his cat over too?), writes of me  ‘His own instincts strike him as so self-evident that anyone who does not share them has to be dismissed with total contempt’ .  How very, very funny.