. Glenn Greenwald, considering Christopher Hitchens and George Packer and aiming the gun at his own head. Is it really “a sign of decency” to refuse to view any political ideas as not merely wrong in some abstract intellectual sense, but as a reflection of the person’s character? Obviously, there are many political disagreements — most — […]
Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald, and the War of Ideas
John Cook of Gawker writes of Christopher Hitchens that he “loathed sentiment, welcomed combat, and delighted in inflicting hard truths.” Cook undoubtedly means “sentimentality,” which masquerades everywhere as sentiment, in which case he is indisputably right about Hitchens, who would have begrudged those now attacking him only the regrettable spectacle (he surely would have believed) […]
The Hitchens Post
. In the end, no one will be remembered, a monumental few for a very long time. Others, favored by fortune still, and the riches of their own beings – big, big people – leave a hole when they depart. The air is sucked out of the room, which subsides into a banal kind of […]
Slaying the Tyrant
. Qaddafi is dead. Now there is the period of questioning and examination, of the circumstances and of ourselves, and self-examination is always a good thing. There are areas of our social and political life – whole political parties – in which smug certitude reigns and the death of even the hapless is cheered. In […]
9/11/11: Chomsky Nation
. (Eleventh in a series) On October 18, 2001, five weeks after the 9/11 attack, Noam Chomsky gave a talk at MIT, still available on the web in video and transcript form, entitled “The New War against Terror.” He employed the same slippery rhetorical constructs and argumentative ploys as were on display in his half-hearted […]