Opinion of Christopher Hitchens

[Thunderbird is the word]

Generally a well intentioned FF in my book even though his support of the Iraq War was a massive moral blind spot.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible HORRIBLE. On everything. A truly vile person and his views on everything were such horrible jokes.

HAR HAR CHRISTIANS SUCK LOLZ THERE IS NO GOD HAHA!
HAR HAR BOMB IRAQ!
HAR HAR I LOVE TORTURE!

I rank him on about the same level as Ayn Rand.

[RINO Tom]

Annoying, and no better than his "enemies" on the other side of the spectrum, regardless of issue.  He engages in one of my biggest pet peeves: eliminating the VAST center in any debate.  To him, you're either an atheist who's so confident that the Universe spontaneously created itself without any higher consciousness being involved or you're an intolerant, dumb, hateful Biblical literalist who refuses to consider other views.  There are TONS of people - including great minds who know a heck of a lot more about science than he does - who are in the sensible middle.

HP.

[Thunderbird is the word]

Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible HORRIBLE. On everything. A truly vile person and his views on everything were such horrible jokes.

HAR HAR CHRISTIANS SUCK LOLZ THERE IS NO GOD HAHA!
HAR HAR BOMB IRAQ!
HAR HAR I LOVE TORTURE!

I rank him on about the same level as Ayn Rand.

He was actually against torture.

[free my dawg]

[Cory]

Overall FF.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

HP, but BRTD overstates the case.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

A brilliant and courageous man. I can't help but like him, as much of a fool he was sometimes.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I didn't even know he posted here

[memphis]

He is a FF in the most literal of senses as he fights against the psychological tyranny of organized religion.

[Phony Moderate]

I didn't even know he posted here

How could you not? It's common knowledge that Christopher Hitchens, William F. Buckley and Ayn Rand are all prominent posters here.

[Antonio the Sixth]

HP, but BRTD overstates the case.

[politicus]

I didn't even know he posted here

How could you not? It's common knowledge that Christopher Hitchens, William F. Buckley and Ayn Rand are all prominent posters here.

Lenin also throlls the place from time to time.

[afleitch]

I didn't even know he posted here

How could you not? It's common knowledge that Christopher Hitchens, William F. Buckley and Ayn Rand are all prominent posters here.

Lenin also throlls the place from time to time.

And hipster Jesus

[DC Al Fine]

Overrated

[Türkisblau]

Huge HP.

It feels dirty to agree with BRTD.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

He is a FF in the most literal of senses as he fights against the psychological tyranny of organized religion.

Ayn Rand = FF?

[Mr. Smith]

Huge HP.

It feels dirty to agree with BRTD.

[Oakvale]

Not sure why this is on this board, but clear FF, one of the greatest of all time. A huge loss.

I particularly miss his consistent and considered defence of international intervention, whether it was popular or not among his friends on the left.

[Lurker]

Not sure why this is on this board, but clear FF, one of the greatest of all time. A huge loss.

I particularly miss his consistent and considered defence of international intervention, whether it was popular or not among his friends on the left.

I'm not sure how consistent it was (unless this only refers to the post-9/11 years). He clearly opposed US intervention during the 1990-91 Gulf War, for instance.

[TNF]

Major HP.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

One of the most inspriational people I've ever listened to.  Gives religiouses a good spanking!

Mega mega mega FF.  Actually.  The FF of FFs.  He is above all in my book.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An extremely skilled polemicist. But that's more or less all he is. He's not as clever, profound or intellectually interesting as he likes to think. Far too frequently (and on a bewildering range of subjects) he has taken the position of the bigot and the bully; anyone who has the temerity to hold a view opposed to Hitchens or (heaven forbid!) to actively disagree with him is at best an idiot and is usually attacked as being utterly malign. Of course that's a fairly common trait of those who passed through youthful Trotskyism of one kind or another, but that doesn't actually excuse that sort of behavior.

That said, he's vastly superior to his brother who has all of his faults (though they manifest themselves differently, of course) and a few more on top. And is basically an out-and-out fascist.

I will add that since his death it has become clear that he is mostly remembered as A Character rather than for anything that he actually wrote. I suspect that he will slowly fade from public consciousness, ala Arthur Koestler.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Insisting that one has to hold your own position on religious issues in order to be properly good or smart or enlightened or whatever is 'intellectually tyrannical' regardless of what that position is exactly, and by that standard Hitchens's views constituted 'intellectual tyranny', albeit of a benign kind compared to the kind that he (sometimes rightly) inveighed against because he had neither the power nor the desire to actually force them on anybody. A hypothetical Hitchens in a position of power would, I guess, have been a tolerant ruler, but I can't imagine he would have been one with a particularly pluralistic or collegial way about him (which are things I value highly).

I could get into how pointlessly insulting it is to imply that those of us who derive community and meaning from religious organizations only feel that way because we've been 'intellectually tyrannized' into it, but the person who introduced that concept to this thread was Memphis the Mendacious and he actively doesn't care about what religious people actually experience except when it suits his preconceptions so I won't.

[King]

Comedy gold.