I'll have to admit, Christopher Hitchens was not my cup of tea in many ways--I was repelled by his militant atheism, sexual libertinism, attraction to socialist Third World despots like Ho-Chi-Minh--but he definitely was clear-sighted on one important subject, the West's need to stand and fight resurgent Islam. And he _was_ erudite, not in the superficial way that so many pseudo-intellectuals pretend to be, i.e., by memorizing a few "proof texts" from Marx, Lenin, Derrida, Marcuse, etc., then blending them with whatever current-event tropes on from whatever is trendy in academia: anthropogenic global warming, redistributionist economics, queer theory, feminism, etc. Hitchens was the real thing, a polymath of truly deep as well as broad knowledge of many fields. And, much to his credit, as the embedded video of Scaramouche's post shows, he was unwilling to fawn on either "gatekeeper" media personalities like Maher or on their attendant rabble.
Oh well, he does have a surviving brother, Peter, a conservative and religious believer who is consequently and unfortunately much undervalued by the British chattering classes, but who is every bit as erudite as Christopher was, if not as telegenic and generally charismatic. His columns for the _Mail on Sunday_ are worth the read.
OA lot about him drove me crazy, too (so crazy that I couldn't finish his autobio, HITCH22). One thing I did admire about him, though--he was absolutely fearless.
I'll have to admit, Christopher Hitchens was not my cup of tea in many ways--I was repelled by his militant atheism, sexual libertinism, attraction to socialist Third World despots like Ho-Chi-Minh--but he definitely was clear-sighted on one important subject, the West's need to stand and fight resurgent Islam. And he _was_ erudite, not in the superficial way that so many pseudo-intellectuals pretend to be, i.e., by memorizing a few "proof texts" from Marx, Lenin, Derrida, Marcuse, etc., then blending them with whatever current-event tropes on from whatever is trendy in academia: anthropogenic global warming, redistributionist economics, queer theory, feminism, etc. Hitchens was the real thing, a polymath of truly deep as well as broad knowledge of many fields. And, much to his credit, as the embedded video of Scaramouche's post shows, he was unwilling to fawn on either "gatekeeper" media personalities like Maher or on their attendant rabble.
ReplyDeleteOh well, he does have a surviving brother, Peter, a conservative and religious believer who is consequently and unfortunately much undervalued by the British chattering classes, but who is every bit as erudite as Christopher was, if not as telegenic and generally charismatic. His columns for the _Mail on Sunday_ are worth the read.
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ReplyDeleteOA lot about him drove me crazy, too (so crazy that I couldn't finish his autobio, HITCH22). One thing I did admire about him, though--he was absolutely fearless.
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