I am unsure at several points in your communication whether you are expressing your own view or attempting to paraphrase Sartre. Obviously, you are entitled to your views, and we can debate them as such. But if your post is intended as a paraphrase of Sartre, then I think you err at a couple points.

VM: [a letter opener] has no ‘essence’
“Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its essence [l'essence]– that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence” -- existentialism is a Humanism

VM: [the human being’s] nature is determined by the material from which he is made, the environment and evolution that produced him.
J: No, for Sartre, there is no human nature, certainly not one determined by material. (I may have used the word “nature” when I should have said “essence,” though many writers have treated the terms essence and nature as synonyms.) When you refer to material, environment and evolution, you may be thinking of the human condition.

As i suggested, that syllogism was only an attempt on my part to reconstruct Buckley's argument: I suspected it was irrelevant to Hitchens' reply because, as we both said, it contains no undistributed middle.

I would appreciate any conjectures from folks as to what exactly was the argument from Buckley that Hitchens called fallacious.

I just wanted to find the source of the quote out of sheer curiosity -- or maybe i wanted to quote it in something i was writing, i forget. As for the issues, I've read BGE and GM

Ah. So it's Kauffman. Thanks to you all for your work!

In Copi, we find this exercise: 'In While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (2006), Bruce Bawer argues that “by appeasing a totalitarian [Muslim] ideology Europe is “imperiling its liberty.” Political correctness, he writes, is keeping Europeans from defending themselves, resulting in “its self-destructive passivity, softness toward tyranny, its reflexive inclination to appease.” A review of the book in The Economist observes that Mr. Bawer “weakens his argument by casting too wide a net,” and another reviewer, Imam Fatih Alev, says of Bawer’s view that “it is a constructed idea that there is this very severe difference between Western values and Muslim values.” ' -- and we're supposed to identify which fallacy of relevance it exhibits. the first question is whether we are being asked about the whole passage or just about what Bawer wrote. In either case I see no fallacy. What fallacy lurks here?

Yes, of course it doesn't have to be verbatim since it's a translation; i'd be grateful to get a citation for the passage that was the source of what i read. Thanks

In practice, we adhere to NEITHER of the following principles.
1. the burden of proof rests on the positive statement
2. the burden of proof rests on the claim
Imagine a few people sitting at a table in a restaurant. There is a large window such that the diners can see that it is raining outside. A woman enters the restaurant with wet hair. For some reason, one of the persons at the table says, “Her hair got wet in the rain.”
Someone else at the table says, “That’s not true.”
I think everyone would feel that the burden of proof rests on the second speaker, though the first speaker has made a positive claim.
I am afraid that in practice we feel that the burden of proof rests with the statement that is farthest from common sense. Since common sense is demonstrably defective, this criterion is sloppy, sheeplike, and depressing. Can we come up with a good workable criterion for the burden of proof?

To be compared to Mozart is to be praised.
Here is an example of a valid argument in Aquinas (ST 1.2.3)

1. A thing cannot be simultaneously in potentiality and in actuality in the same respect. (Premise)
2. To move, a thing must be actual in a certain respect. (Premise)
3. To be moved, a thing must be potential in that respect. (Premise)
4. Therefore, a thing cannot move itself. (1, 2, 3)

To support your charge that Aquinas is a sophist, please supply an example of an invalid argument in Thomas.

Pacem's response is one of the shallowest yet offered by humanity. Are you seriously saying that if a serial killer is operating, there is no evil and therefore he is doing no evil and therefore we should not try to stop him?