Hitchens worship tires me. I’ve read similar pieces from this same author over at Quillette, which clearly sees itself as the keeper of the Hitchens flame.
I’m a big fan of both Quillette and FAIR.
But there’s no need to cite the Great Man to promote what are after all rather basic tenets of liberal thought. The idea that only Hitchens got…
Hitchens worship tires me. I’ve read similar pieces from this same author over at Quillette, which clearly sees itself as the keeper of the Hitchens flame.
I’m a big fan of both Quillette and FAIR.
But there’s no need to cite the Great Man to promote what are after all rather basic tenets of liberal thought. The idea that only Hitchens got it right in his skewering of absurdities from various sides is nonsense.
And he got a lot wrong — the Iraq War, for instance, and his simplistic attacks on religious faith. And he went into battle for his wrong ideas with a poison pen and contemptuous disregard for the actual arguments of his opponents. In that sense, he actually bears some (small) portion of responsibility for the state of political and intellectual discourse in this country. Which makes him a bad choice for a FAIR poster boy.
I certainly could enjoy a nasty quip, an elegant turn of phrase, or a surprising insight from Hitchens. But he did not walk on water.
Hitchens worship tires me. I’ve read similar pieces from this same author over at Quillette, which clearly sees itself as the keeper of the Hitchens flame.
I’m a big fan of both Quillette and FAIR.
But there’s no need to cite the Great Man to promote what are after all rather basic tenets of liberal thought. The idea that only Hitchens got it right in his skewering of absurdities from various sides is nonsense.
And he got a lot wrong — the Iraq War, for instance, and his simplistic attacks on religious faith. And he went into battle for his wrong ideas with a poison pen and contemptuous disregard for the actual arguments of his opponents. In that sense, he actually bears some (small) portion of responsibility for the state of political and intellectual discourse in this country. Which makes him a bad choice for a FAIR poster boy.
I certainly could enjoy a nasty quip, an elegant turn of phrase, or a surprising insight from Hitchens. But he did not walk on water.