Christopher Hitchens Can't Save the Left

I take issue with the argument that liberal misinterpretation of the history and values of the Enlightenment, including the primacy of individual autonomy led to the rise of global plutocrats and the attendant collapse of middle class society. Bezos, Musk and their ilk aren’t the first plutocrats we’ve seen; and their historical predecessors thrived under conditions of far less concern for individual rights and autonomy.

Nonetheless, I’m in agreement with the author about many of Hitchens’ flaws. But the implied conclusion that because he supported the invasion of Iraq that his vision of the secular society is therefore flawed, is unsupported.

I’ve never read an author who liked his own writing as much as this fellow. I had a couple of issues with it.

- You have to accept that the concept of “the left” is in deep trouble and the root of this trouble is that it has a strict definition of itself that doesn’t include well-meaning folks like conservative religious folks.

- That a figure like Hitchens registers on the scale of “moving political systems”. I personally don’t care if a philosopher who writes mostly about religion believes in the invasion of Iraq.

It read like a lot of words to get to “secular liberal governments are actually bad and we need to embrace conservative values because rust belt”. If I missed some crucial point let me know.

> Even when he was wrong, he was almost always smart, funny, and interesting – except when he was talking about religion, a subject that turned him into a tiresome and obstreperous hack.

Thanks to this article, I now have a new way to describe religion: "Tiresome and obstreperous"

How the heck is this post not flagged for “standard left/right political junk?”

Like the author, I also find it disturbing that "leftists" who claim great values are available for the worst crimes.

In Christopher Hitchens' case, it was the cruel US/NATO wars. Trotsky, an early hero of Hitchens, was not Stalin, but his role in the Civil War is also doubtful (in the war against Poland I think he was one of the more reasonable).

And I agree with the author: values should not be used too abstractly and unhistorically especially for warfare.