Hitchens vs Hedges

[JayB]

"Visualize this spectacle: a debate between a neocon and a progressive. The subject is religion. One of them is there to defend religion, to praise God, to cheerlead for even the most devout. The other -- his opponent -- is an atheist. He skewers deities and those who follow deities. He calls them evil. Toxic. Childish. He mocks doctrine. Railing that the devout want to kill us and control the world, he is on a mission, as it were, to vanquish missions. You'd expect the liberal to be the atheist and the neocon to vouch for the devout. No-brainer, right? Well, no."

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/52449/

 

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[Off_White]

It's journalistic hyperbole to characterize Hitchens as a neo-con. Sure, he had a falling out with his colleagues over at The Nation over his embrace of broad anti-terror warfare, but he is self described as a contrarian. Just as my pro-drug legalization opinion does not make me a libertarian, neither does his pro war stance make him a full fledged neo-con. Hitchens has long been an anti-religion sort, he's the guy who called Mother Theresa a "twisted Albanian dwarf."

[JayB]

True enough, but it was amusing to envision the moral and intellectual game of twister that the choosing sides in this rhetorical contest must have forced the average denizen of Berkeley into playing. If you read the summary from "Alternet," it seems to capture this tension quite well.

 

For me the spectacle of Hitchens deftly eviscerating a limpdick "progressive" who excoriates the likes of Jerry Falwell yet gets misty eyed while composing compound apologetics for both the ruthless barbarism of the suicide bomber and the dank, sub-medieval religious fanaticism that both inspires and sanctifies it was quite a treat. The clip below captures Hitchens at his most devastating. The moral and intellectual ass-whupping on display here makes the average UFC highlight-reel look like pairs figure skating.

 

"I ask you: You pick that kind of relativism, you'll also find you're dealing with a very surreptitious form of absolutism, which is only capable of describing as fascistic relatively comical forces (who I've denounced up- and downhill all my life in the United States), but cannot use the word totalitarianism about the religion that actually conducts jihad, actually organizes totalitarianism, actually inflicts misery, pain, unemployment, and despair upon millions of people, and then claims what it has done as the license for suicide and murder. A perfect picture [gesturing towards Chris Hedges] has been given to you of the cretinous relationship between sloppy moral relativism, half-baked religious absolutism, and the journalism that lies in between."

 

Swap "Hedges" for "American 'Progressives'" and you have a concise summary of what's become of the political block that Hithchens once considered himself a part of.

 

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