Posted on 03/25/2003 5:23:11 AM PST by JohnHuang2
I agree
The fact that so many "conservatives" now find him appealing says more about our movement's ideological drift than it does about him.
It says that we respect decent, honorable people, even when we disagree with them. Problem is, there are so few decent honorable people on the left anymore, if there ever were a lot.
Conversly, in his current stands, he may be maintaining that there is indeed a right and a wrong to the world. I am reminded that even such an old traditionalist as Russell Kirk expanded his understanding of the first principle of his conservatism to "a belief in an enduring Moral Order". His substitution of "transcendant" with "enduring" was (IMHO) for inclusion of such other Old Whigs as Heyek and Irving Kristol in his cosmos.
It is really as James Fenimore Cooper says in The American Democrat (a wonderful Conservative text):
The most important point that is proved by the condition of this country is the fact that religion can, and does, exist as well without as with the aid of government. The experiment has been tried here, for two centuries, and it is completely successful.While I hardly see a neocon Hitchens in our future, the punture of iconclastic views of his former allies in tribute to objective Truth is hardly something to lament. I find his writing of great interest and see nothing but good to come from a free-wheeling Hitchens, of the last year, so far.
Cockburn attacks Hitchens in the letter for his "increasing seclusion in fantasy". He speculates that Hitchens may be suffering from delusions like other advanced drinkers. He also attacks Hitchens for trying to get Sid Blumenthal "nailed by Congress on a perjury rap". It was this latter case which prompted the Judas reference.
As best I can tell, Hitchens saw Bill Clinton and the risk he posed to our nation, more clearly, regardless of state of inebriation, than any of our U.S. Senators, including the Republicans who allowed the trial to be just a charade.
Seriously, when did that transformation happen? Writing an excellent book exposing the communists for what they "really" were, is not synonymous with veering across the middle to the right. Unless of course the meaning of neo-con has radically altered.
Right; that does seem a bit much for a 'new' 'neo'. . .so to speak. 'Second Thoughts' is not an overnight reconsideration of a lifetime of idiological positions. Just glad he has had some, and is moving along with wiser minds.
No doubt. But I don't think this is necessarily noteworthy. Somehow, conservatives have convinced themselves (thanks in part to the ongoing dumbing down of the movement) that the Left is incapable of recognizing that there is "right" and "wrong" in the world. Now while this may be true of a certain species of American campus liberal and the entire French diplomatic corps, it is most certainly not true of the hard Left, whence Hitchens comes.
The hard Left is perfectly capable of acknowledging that right and wrong exist; the trouble is that they are essentially antinomian (like Milton's Satan, they "make evil my good.") Thus "organized religion" is evil. Infanticide is good. Sexual repression is evil. Libertinism is good. Etc. etc. etc. You get the picture.
As for Hitchens, let's not forget that, while he's skewering certain Leftists today, he's never too far from skewering, say, Mother Teresa, whom he apparently places just below Kissinger in his bizarre antinomian hagiography.
He likes the war on terror, (aka, the war on militant Islam) because he sees America not as the old Arsenal of Democracy, but as the Arsenal of Secularism, Materialism, and personal Liberation. In this respect, he is WAY ahead of his fellows on the Left, who are still caught up in Cold War paradigm that no longer applies. They'll catch up to him eventually, but Hitchens is just that much smarter than the rest.
Don't take all of this to mean that I don't like or respect Hitchens. On the contrary, I think he's a rip-snorting good writer, a genuine wit, and a paragon of intellectual honesty.
Believe me, I wish he were on our side. But he's not. And I daresay he never will be.
Yes, you're right. This is one of the truly great virtues of the Right.
Unfortunately, it's been sadly missing on FR of late. My hope is that we will return to form when the war is over, and that some the fratricidal infighting will abate.
We don't all have to be conservatives. This country functions best when we have two sides who honorably argue two different approaches to the same problem, but both with good intentions and with the best interests of the entire country at heart.
Lately, the left (democrats) have urged only the destruction of all this country stands for and pushes immorality and degradation as the norm.
In this is a letter from Amis to Hitchens. It is ten pages long. Here's a taste:
Comrade Hitchens! There is probably not that much in these pages that you don't already know. You already know, in that case, that Bolshevism presents a record of baseness and inanity that exhausts all dictionaries; indeed, heaven stops the nose at it. So it is still obscure to me why you wouldn't want to put more distance between yourself and these events than you do...
You must understand the process better than I do, because you have undergone it, or partly undergone it. Your restructuring remains incomplete. Why? An admiration for Lenin and Trotsky is meaningless without an admiration for terror. They would not want your admiration if it failed to incled an admiration for terror. Do you admire terror? I know you admire freedom.
The book is - quite literally - an attempt to lay certain ghosts to rest. I recommend it strongly.
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