Piatak on Hitchens

I am less bothered by the evil of Christopher Hitchens, whom I refuse to read no matter how many of his articles people send me, than I am by the fact that he is seen as a respectable, mainstream figure—a regular on talking heads tv, his articles widely published not only in liberal publications but in so called conservative ones as well, something that would have been inconceivable in the past. But evil Hitchens certainly is. Some people call him a buffoon and a drunkard. I don’t see him that way. The concentrated hatred that mobilizes his personality and radiates off him is not the sort of emotion one associates with a buffoon. Thomas Piatak, a Christian man, has had the intestinal fortitude to wade through Hitchens’s book on religion and Christianity and tell us something about it. As Piatak shows, the book is astonishingly empty of knowledge of its subject, even as the author blames everything bad in the universe on Christianity. With Hitchens’ book added to the recent slew of anti-Christian hate books, something new seems to be appearing in the world—an anti-Christianity which, in its all-consuming effect on the psyches of those who harbor it, is not unlike anti-Semitism.

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James W. writes:

I like Hitchens. Occasionally he shows great talent, humor, or insight. I suspect, Lawrence, even if all those things were true, you cannot stand him for his considerable lapses. Precision, consistency, and character are your gods, and that is no criticism—far from it. [LA replies: I would say this does not represent my position accurately. I do not shun Hitchens merely because he falls short in in consistency or character or anything else; I shun him because he is evil and expresses attitudes that in a decent society would relegate him to the shadows.]

I have always instinctively detested the nostrum that it takes all kinds. There is some truth to it, just enough to be annoying. It is more true that we have all kinds, and therefore must deal with this. It is by dealing with it that we arrive at an aphorism that is more sustainable: What doesn’t kill us will make us stronger! [LA: That Nietzsche quote jumped the shark when Roseanne Barr used it on her tv show; it should be retired for a few decades.]

You will not deny it is the bad will and bad intentions of our enemies that has, to no inconsiderable extent, formed you into what you are. Hitchens may be especially annoying because he is occasionally right. I cannot say that about many who torment the best of Western Civilization.

It strikes me that Hitchens is best understood in this observatioin of William Hazlitt—The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

The founders, including the skeptics, saw God as a means of separating man from his immediate love of himself, and used this to determine our power as derived from God to Man to Government, and not Government to Man. Hitchens cannot inconvenience himself with a larger gorilla in the room.

I will never completely get over my embarassment at voting once for Jimmy Carter. Nor should I. There are things we need to be reminded of, and for the best of reasons.

Hitchens passes off his support for the historic evil of Marxism, as do so many former lefties, as a right of passage for the intelligent and compassionate. That speaks to a lack of character.

Perhaps I’ve only proven your point, but I still think about an old Jew who once told me he knew very well Wagner was wonderful and important music, but that he was unable to listen to it. I have the same problem with Streissand.

But we must pick our poison, because there is so much of it. Bottoms up.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2007 12:12 AM | Send