Christopher Hitchens has used some space on Slate to put a spotlight on an interesting new book about the blighted nation of North Korea, run by the ridiculous and brutal overlord Kim Jong-il. In his article, “A Nation of Racist Dwarfs,” Hitchens shares ideas from B.R. Myers’ book, The Cleanest Race: How North Americans See Themselves and Why It Matters. Myers looks not only at how arrogant delusions about racial superiority drive North Koreans but how it has stunted their growth–figuratively and literally. An excerpt from the Slate article:

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.•