Christopher Hitchens -- a critic, author, journalist and habitual slayer of sacred cows -- died Thursday at the age of 62 from cancer. Hitchens' polarizing presence in public debate has spurred a cascade of tributes around the web.
author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes left and right
Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane
Hitchens was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction — half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully non-believing; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and targets of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.
don't forget Hitchens' love of war
He was a militant humanist who believed in pluralism and racial justice and freedom of speech, big cities and fine art and the willingness to stand the consequences.
“But those who view the history of North America as a narrative of genocide and slavery are, it seems to me, hopelessly stuck on this reactionary position. They can think of the Western expansion of the United States only in terms of plague blankets, bootleg booze and dead buffalo, never in terms of the medicine chest, the wheel and the railway . . . But it does happen to be the way that history is made, and to complain about it is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.”
“But those who view the history of North America as a narrative of genocide and slavery are, it seems to me, hopelessly stuck on this reactionary position. They can think of the Western expansion of the United States only in terms of plague blankets, bootleg booze and dead buffalo, never in terms of the medicine chest, the wheel and the railway . . . But it does happen to be the way that history is made, and to complain about it is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.”
Slate
No comments:
Post a Comment