So long Christopher Hitchens, and thanks for all you said. by AURaptor

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

So long Christopher Hitchens, and thanks for all you said.

POSTED BY: AURAPTOR
UPDATED: Saturday, December 17, 2011 12:20
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 4370
PAGE 1 of 1

Friday, December 16, 2011 2:42 AM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
(CNN) -- "My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends," wrote Christopher Hitchens in June before his death Friday from complications of esophageal cancer at the age of 62.
Now, friends and peers of the British-American author have eulogized Hitchens on Twitter.

He will be missed.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 3:05 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Yes he will.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 3:38 AM

CANTTAKESKY

A neocon Marxist will be missed by all. :)

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 3:43 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

I always stopped channel surfing if he was on - brilliant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16212418

"The publication of his 2007 book God Is Not Great made him a major celebrity in his adopted homeland of the United States, and he happily took on the role of the country's best-known atheist.

He maintained his devout atheism after being diagnosed with cancer, telling one interviewer: "No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises."

The author and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins described him as the "finest orator of our time" and a "valiant fighter against all tyrants including God."

God as a tyrant - hadn't heard that one before.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 5:50 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
God as a tyrant - hadn't heard that one before.

God as tyrant is as old as Zeus.
"
Some gods are tyrants. Some gods are touchy feely sentient "friends" or "forces" or uberconsciousness or whatnot.

I understood he identified himself more as an anti-theist than an atheist. I think the term is more honest. Good for him.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 8:18 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
A neocon Marxist will be missed by all. :)

He was a reformed Trotskyist, as I understand.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 10:35 AM

CUDA77

Like woman, I am a mystery.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-dead_n
_1153109.html

Quote:
On news of his death, Christopher Hitchens began trending worldwide as tributes poured in.

However, as with his life, controversy followed Hitchens into death. The hash tag #GodIsNotGreat also began trending, which was followed by a storm of protests by the religious, many unaware that the hash tag was a tribute to the author's passing.

Twitter reportedly removed the topic from the trending lists following threats of violence towards the creators of the hash tag. The irony that Hitchens book, one that makes stark the link between religion and violence, had stirred the religious to then threaten violence was not lost on the twitterati.

Beautiful.

Socialist and unashamed about it.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 10:54 AM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:

A neocon Marxist will be missed by all. :)

Who knew AIDS comes from deepthroat?

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 6:30 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Not a fan, I have to say. But I guess he started some conversations.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 16, 2011 6:36 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
A neocon Marxist will be missed by all. :)

He was a reformed Trotskyist, as I understand.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

CTS probably had it more correct. He was all over the shop. My husband refers to him as a 'professional contrarist'.

From wiki - Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don’t think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."[64]

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist".[65] In a June 2010 interview with The New York Times, he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist".[66] In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was.[67] Hitchens was an admirer of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs."[68] However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.[69]

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men,[70][71] and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia.[28][35] In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".[28]

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 17, 2011 12:20 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Quote:
(CNN) -- "My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends," wrote Christopher Hitchens in June before his death Friday from complications of esophageal cancer at the age of 62.
Now, friends and peers of the British-American author have eulogized Hitchens on Twitter.

He will be missed.

Even with all the "baggage" of his "revolutionary Marxist" upbringing?

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

YOUR OPTIONS

SHARE THREAD

NEW POSTS TODAY

USER	POST DATE

USER

POST DATE