This is Why I Still Cherish Christopher Hitchens

Got my Johnny Walker Black at the ready. We’ll take it from here, Hitch.

Feel free to check out by reflection on The Hitch:
http://www.watchtowerandawakening.com

The next time a believer tells me I celebrate CHRISTmas, I will say yes…yes I do. I celebrate the very REAL life and death of CHRISTopher Hitchens and others like him…this is our one REAL life, make the most of it.

Hitchens was one I first started reading in the aftermath of 9/11. He made a lot of sense except for that Atheism stuff. Well, uhm, yeah. He won that one, too.

I was going to post an angry reply to this. Then I went back and reread it, and now I want to post a FURIOUS response.

Hitchens was an asshole who was bad for both atheism and the world in general. He abandoned his own principles to support a war — apparently because it got him media attention — despite the fact that that war was obviously going to be a disaster in every way to anyone with any sense. Then he refused to admit fault, and spent the last years of his life refusing to even discuss the main issue and siding with the original wrongdoers on related matters.

He managed to overturn and trample quite thoroughly on the principles the writer of this mush-headed encomium claims to esteem so much, and materially aided a bunch of thugs who not only helped re-entrench militant Islam — Iraq was more secular than most of its neighbors before we invaded and helped springboard the rise of religious rule, and the example of what happened to Iraq has spurred on Islamic fundamentalists around the world — but also destroyed several western secular economies to do it. Furthermore, he did so when even a basic high-school-level understanding of history would have let him know that his position was entirely foolish and self-defeating.

You can’t claim he was wise, because he spent nearly a decade doubling down on a stupid position; he not only rooted for the war but also was a cheerleader for the pointless, costly, intrusive security state which now (inevitably and obviously) has turned out to be worse for us than for our enemies.

You can’t claim he was benevolent, because that position was one which maximized the amount of harm he could possibly do. His cheerleading for the right wing, depending on whether you believe public opinion might have actually stopped the Bush administration from declaring a war they really wanted, might easily have done enough harm to the world at large to outweigh everything else he did in his entire career.

You can’t claim he was honest, because that position was not merely wrong from the start — and obviously so — but was, by the time of his death, so obviously wrong that his fellow-travelers had repudiated it, and yet he refused to do so.

You can’t even claim he stood by his own principles as quoted in this posting, because he certainly didn’t try to investigate motives — his own or others — or to seek the truth. He blatantly pandered to the right-wing in exchange for media exposure, and never showed even the slightest sign of having done any introspection on the subject.

If you were wise, you’d never mention his name again, and hope that people would forget this idiot was ever associated with atheism.

you and i are of the same opinion. but it’s good to see it debated here. if this were a web post devoted to some “great Christian” or believer type, i doubt that minority voices like ours were be expressed or allowed. we can, in part, thank him for that.

You beat me to it; well done.

Hitchens was a stirring polemicist, but his descent into neoconservative delirium was tragic. It lent credence from the left to the folly of the Bush administration’s military adventurism and the disastrous policy of pre-emptive warfare. I don’t think his support was cynical, however. He was a genuinely implacable opponent of radical Islam.

I dunno, I think he realized that actual violence done in the name of Islam over rode some of the other things for a while.

Thanks, Vicar. It’s really nice to see someone in this particular space addressing these matters with open eyes and honesty.

Hitchens’ unwavering support of war in the Middle East was inexcusably reprehensible. Nevertheless, there are many, many people in atheist circles who are willing to look past this because they see his words as so crucial in the genesis of the current atheist movement.

Human beings do this. They defend their beloved leaders, right or wrong. This serves to illustrate that atheists are no less flawed than anyone else.

Hitchens beat back at the leftist dogma that nonviolence is always the best solution. Its hard to know when to fight, and if you pick the wrong time to fight back, you are eternally a villain. When you pick the right time to bloody the nose of someone, you defeat Hitler and get to be called ‘The Greatest Generation”.

Hitchens wasn’t afraid to say that sometimes a mad dog needs to be put down. We are still a violent primate species, denying it will just make you a victim.

Almost completely off topic, I recently wrote about Nelson Mandela. Many have lauded him as a modern day saint, while others focus on his violent past. I pointed out that what made him a relevant figure was his transition from one to the other. Anyone can talk peace, but when someone lives the life of the violent revolutionary and can transition to a peacemaker who welcomes his jailers into his home, that is a man who deserves to be listened to.

You thought it would be a good idea to “nuke the ‘little sheet heads'”? Really? Then you were — and apparently still are, if the rest of your post is any evidence — a fool.

“If he had that kind of influence, then why are the xtians still in power in the USA????”

Did you ever read about World War II, by any chance? When the Nazis conquered a country, they would set up a government consisting of turncoat natives. There was Quisling in Norway (who let the Norwegians develop nutritional deficiencies in order to supply the Nazis with meat) and of course the Vichy government in France. (And they tried to demoralize the British with William Joyce’s radio broadcasts.)

They did this because they know what you apparently overlook: if you can find people to agree with you within a particular group, it becomes vastly more difficult for that group to unify against you, and permits people sitting on the fence to assume that that group does, in fact, support you. Hitchens made it look to the undiscerning like atheists are right-wing idiots and hypocrites who back foolish policy.

(To say nothing of the fact that every group of any size inevitably contains some members whose interest is purely tribal. There is almost certainly somebody out there who would not otherwise have been in favor of the war, but came to be so because Hitchens’ support was trumpeted on TV.)

Hitchens and his supporters ought to be happy that he is merely facing verbal abuse. The Nazi collaborators were executed whenever found; Quisling was shot, if I recall correctly, and Joyce was hung. What percentage of the momentum towards war in Iraq can be attributed to Hitchens? A hundredth of a percent? A thousandth? With over a million dead by current estimates, that still makes him responsible for at least one death.

Before I had read Hitichens book on the that fraud Mother Teresa, I was almost thrown out of a dinner party because from news reports I had read about her I spoke my mind. A couple of people came to me and said that it took some guts to criticize her.

My favorite speech by Hitchens is in his debate on free speech at Toronto.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&feature=related

You stopped listening because….
Let’s see how that process works out….
Chemist says mixing these two things makes BIG BOMB!
But I was not listening because it was shown that he was wrong about something else.
Ya makes lots of sense.

On Youtube see “Hitchens on the Origin of the Koran” and “Hitchens on Islam”.

the debate that this came from, where he was debating Tony Blair, was the best of his video debates I have seen – as a debate – because both he and Blair were responding to each other’s arguments, rather than talking at / over each other with set talking points, sticking to a script and not engaging with what the other is saying, which I saw in most of the other debates.

As several people have said, he wasn’t perfect and some of his opinons were ones I strongly disagree with, but… people are fallible and imperfect after all. I still respect him a great deal despite it.

I miss him.