Kicking Nuns for Fun and Profit

Posted by $ MikeMarotta 12 years, 1 month ago to Culture
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Hitchens always was a Trotskyist. Make no mistake about that. Yet, when you consider the man qua man who was Hitchens qua Hitchens, I have to grant him the respect that he is due. Right now, I have "No One Left to Lie To" his book about Bill Clinton. Hitchens supported the war against Saddam Hussein for reasons that are hard to argue, though granted that the demise of Saddam Hussein has done little to make life better in Iraq. Be all that as it may ... Mother Teresa was the greatest confidence artist in the 20th century.

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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 12 years ago in reply to this comment.
    "When I was a Marxist..." page 151 in "god is not Great."

    I evaluated Hitchens by his writings as I discovered them. I stand by that. He was not an advocate of the free market because he was an advocate of the free mind. That settled all other issues for him.

    He clearly went through an intellectual journey, but he was guided by a precise and accurate moral compass.

    In the topic thread on "Hitchens Destroys Rand," I go into more detail on my experience with his works.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 12 years, 1 month ago in reply to this comment.
    As I said above, he called himself a Trotskyist. He said that his assignment from the Socialist Workers Party was to infiltrate Labour to provide it with his intellect in the fight against reaction and also to keep pulling Labour to the Left. Asked directly at a Q&A he denigrated Ayn Rand and the Virtue of Selfishness. I still find objectivism (lower-case o) in his work: he is a realist, rational and empirical; his writings reveal a cogent individualist; he admired not only Thomas Jefferson, but even John Adams and James Madison, and of course, Benjamin Franklin, all as thinkers and doers of the Enlightenment.

    Reading Hitchens I found someone whose primary virtue was their choice to use their mind, even from an early age.

    (More on Hitchens later.)
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  • Posted by EconomicFreedom 12 years, 1 month ago
    [Mother Teresa was the greatest confidence artist in the 20th century.]

    Why?
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