Remembering Christopher Hitchens

A  Comment by Doug Draper

 He was one of my favourite fellow atheists, not to mention one of the most brilliant and provocative journalists and essay writers of our age.

 Christopher Hitchens – award winning writer and best-selling book author, born in England and later a citizen of a United States he both admired and courageously criticized – died following a noble fight with cancer this December 16. He was only 62.

 To say that we humans – all of us who are fortunate to share this planet just for a little while – have suffered a loss of one of the few left among us who kept intelligent and challenging discourse alive in an age of bumper sticker slogans and two-sentence tweets is to say the least.

 Christopher Hitchens, a prolific writer, was an author of many a great essay and book from ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’, ‘No One Left to Lie Too: The Triangulations of William Jefferson’, to his more recent best-selling memoir ‘Hitch-22’ and last but not least ‘God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’.

Hitchens, if you have been fortunate enough to read his writings over the past 30 or so years, was a fearless contrarian. He exemplified a motto Norman Mailer, another great late writer, lived by; “What is the use of being a writer if you can’t irritate a great many people.” And that he most certainly did.

 The once long-time contributor to The Nation, one of America’s few truly progressive magazines, got under the skin of many, including this more inferior writer, when he who burst forth as a left-wing activist, protesting against the War in Vietnam during his years at Oxford University in the 1960s, supported the U.S. Bush’s administration’s invasion of Iraq nine years ago. For that he and the Nation agreed to part company and some who opposed the Iraq War publicly condemned him for parted ways with his longtime relationship as a columnist for giving the Bush administration a chance to say in so many words; ‘You see, even an intellectual voice for the left like Christopher Hitchens believes we are doing the right thing.’

 I am among many others in remaining profoundly disappointed in the stance Hitchens took on Iraq, but one thing is for sure. The guy could never be pigeon-holed and you could never predict where his commentary on our times would go next. Even when someone sounded as though they agreed with him, as did one right-wing talking head defending the military actions in Iraq on Fox News at one point, Hitchens responded; “You give me the awful impression, and I hate to have to say it, of someone who has never read any of the arguments against your position – EVER.”

 He was particular fearless in his attack on religion, particularly on those believers who so self-righteously insist on imposing their brand of what is right and wrong on everyone else in the name of whatever god they worship. He was perfectly willing to say that there are good people who go to church and there are good people don’t, and there are bad people, capable of doing some pretty despicable things to others, that fall into both groups too. What angered him most are the kind of believers that badger and harass others in front of planned parenthood clinics, and rant and rave about the right to life of fetuses, then go out and support politicians who support capital punishment and start wars that destroy the lives of countless numbers of people. He had the courage to ignore old adages we’ve grown up with like don’t ever get into an argument with people about topics like religion. How are we ever going to advance human thought, he would ask, if we don’t engage in those arguments?

Hitchens great service to humankind was the powerful way he went about making those of us who dared to read and listen to what he had to say think and rethink some of our views on life and the important issues of the day.

 On his CBC radio program ‘Sunday Morning’ this December 18, Michael Enright said Hitchens once summed up his life philosophy this way; “Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.”

 Enright concluded his on-air tribute to Hitchens by saying; “With his death, the world has become a little bit less interesting.”  I share his fear that it is.

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