RIP Christopher Hitchens
I just heard that Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. I met him once, I think it was at the National Press Club. It was right after the war against terror began and he’d just been fired from The Nation for supporting President Bush’s policy of pre-emptive war. He and I discussed the sad state of journalism when it seemed that the entire profession opposed the war just because it was a Republican who initiated it. He later sent me a signed copy of his book, “Why Orwell Matters”.
He debated Noam Chomsky, George Galloway and Scott Ritter with vigor and wit. He was a soldier in the war against terror in the rhetorical battle of ideas.
He was an unapologetic communist, but an important ally when it came to our national security. I admired his writing talent despite the fact that he was rabidly anti-religion and admired Lenin and Trotsky.
I’ll miss his columns and subtle wit. Iowahawk wrote what I wish I had written about Hitchens: Farewell to the best writer of the post-9/11 age.
Category: Blue Skies
It seemed that I agreed or disagreed with him in equal measure, but he was always a fascinating read. The state of journalism is much the worse for his passing.
One of the few liberals who nailed it when it came to Clinton. I still have my copy of, “No One Left To Lie To” around the bookshelf.
We are all the poorer for his passing. He represented what journalism was before the majority whored themselves out to the DNC and whatever seemed “kewl” at the time.
Like him or not, he always came prepared, and his articles were not just well-written, but also well thought out.
RIP Hitch.
Here, Here…
RIP, Mr. Hitchens…
He’s not an atheist anymore.
And I hope he wasn’t when he died.
He also debated Christian pastor and author Doug Wilson. Some snippets of Hitch and Wilson’s debates and friendship were captured in the 2009 documentary Collision.
Being an admitted communist if an unpardonable sin. He and his have been responsible for more pain, suffering, death and destruction than any other belief system in the history of man. Communists/socialists (two sides of the same coin) were responsible for all the genocides but one in the last century, the other, the Armenian genocide, being committed by Muslim fundamentalists. So I won’t get on this particular band wagon just because he made one moral decision and supported the overthrow of Sadam.
Marine 83,
Communism is the unpardonable sin?
Hmm, that’s not what my Bible says.
Interesting how the temporal — politics, ideology, nationality — so often supplants things eternal.
Now if you’d said, “Being an admitted Communist is something that I cannot forgive,” well then …
Eagle, your bible ain’t mine, so I will stand by what I said.
I also don’t agree with Hitchens on many things, but in the last decade he was a staunch defender of the U. S. Military and I love this comment “Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone (Michael Moore) who actually embodies all of those qualities. “.
I do not care that he lived. I do not care that he died.
#7 “Being an admitted communist if an unpardonable sin. ” I tend to lean toward your position. He wrote a book about God not being great and had a hard on about GHW Bush and Reagan over Iran-Contra. He was also an affliate of the Fabian Society, the protosocialists that founded the labour party in Britain. His causes were sometimes the same but I’d hardly call him an ally. His brother Peter Hitchens is a conservative columnist in the UK.
Mrs. Keeper reminded me that Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded, in order to prove that it didn’t constitute torture.
He changed his mind.
“[I]f waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”
Recently, someone here decried a commenter’s use of the term Islamic fascism, dismissing its user as a moron or something equally disparaging. Guess who is credited with popularizing the term? Right you are, the late, Oxford-educated, renowned esssayist Christopher Hitchins.
2-17 (14),
Sometimes Oxford-educated, renowned essayists are right, but sometimes they’re wrong.
And as re. the term “Islamic fascist,” I consider Hitch wrong. I think another renowned essayist (though not Oxford educated) hits the mark:
“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’ The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
~ George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
Submitted for your consideration:
Christopher Hitchens: Death of a Wasted Wordsmith by Gary North