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Christopher Hitchens dies aged 62. Celebrated journalist, writer and unshakeable secularist has died from complications of oesophageal cancer:
https://www.guardian.co.uk/books/201...62?INTCMP=SRCH
Below, Hitchens in Youtube video powerfully tearing into the routine practice of circumcision:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4yS...yer_embedded#!
And:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq_gmiJtJLA&feature=player_embedded
While Hitchens could turn a great phrase and was a prolific commentator, he was also a warmonger and had many other serious faults. I knew he was ill, so the news over a year ago of his cancer was more shocking than the news of his demise.
His role in the leadup to the Iraq invasion was one that lost him many admirers, including me:
https://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/whe...ong/singleton/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12...0jVWt.facebook
While I am equally dismayed with his substantial shortcomings as a warmonger, etc, he still deserves recognition for his good deeds. But how are we to judge his good deeds since we all have different values, such as on the issues of religion or circumcision?
There are few people in the world who deserve only praises or deserve only retribution. Few folks, if any, are pure evil (and Hitchens certainly was not pure evil) and few folks are pure good. If you are person who believes in god or circumcision then Hitchens was a very bad person (or misguided and misinformed). Faith, circumcision, war, so on, are just some examples that can reflect an individual's personal values. There are lots of Americans (not just Republicans) who supported our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. I have demonstrated and protested publicly many times through the years against the same wars that Hitchens supported.
But no one (or very few people) are all good or all bad. And Hitchens was neither all good nor all bad. I tip my hat to Hitchens despite his considerable character deficiencies. We all have character deficiencies and Hitchens, a human being like the rest of us, had them just like the rest of us do and had them in abundance.
Hitchens fought for good things and bad things. He fought his entire life as an atheist in a believer's world. As an atheist, I know what that experience is like but Hitchens achieved much more than I did in his fight against a world ruled by those who believe in spirits and ghosts, pies in the sky and the old, 'punishment and rewards system' of religion. A person does not have to be religious in order to be good and Hitchens, despite his misgivings, provided an example of this.
I specifically exalted in Hitchens what I value to be just two of his positive contributions to the world while he walked on it for 62 years: his struggle against ignorance and religious dogma and his struggle against the barbaric practice of routine and systematic circumcision of baby boys.
Edward
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Posted in reply to the post by "Mad" Miles:
Hitchens: bleah! Journalism has so many exemplary writers of greater talent, and many millions of human beings with greater fortitude and integrity. He may have spoken and written from his heart on some issues, and in well supported advocacy, but he foolishly gave some who condemn atheism more fodder for their christian cannons: support for an illegal, immoral attack on a sovereign nation. His support for the Cheney-Bush-Blair charade was especially misdirected and ignominious given that he knew as well as most that the evidence for Iraq's development and possession of "weapons of mass destruction" was a lie used to justify American-British imperialism. Moreover, if he were so concerned with WMDs, why not turn his wrath on the greatest producer and dispenser of the means by which to shred the earth? In my opinion, he was a self-aggrandizing, increasingly delusional opportunist who delighted in the cult of personality while scorning the values of humanity, let alone ignoring the naked truth. Perhaps his alcoholism played a part in his misery, and that's the limit of my willingness to forgive his betrayal of journalistic integrity.
More from Alexander Cockburn: https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12...rewell-to-c-h/
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Posted in reply to the post by Edward Mendoza: