A skeptical left-liberal's blog, including skepticism about left-liberalism, but even more about other issues of politics. A skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more. And me? I am who I am... more later...

December 16, 2011

RIP Christopher Hitchens

I, along with many other atheists, secularists, freethinkers, and ... writers of all stripes, too, saw the news just moments ago.

Christopher Hitchens, one of the leaders of New Atheism, an oftimes lion of literary style, critic, pundit, political commentator, analyst and more, has lost his battle to cancer at age 62.

I and other liberals eventually lost a fair amount of political faith with him over Iraq; I and other non-Gnu Atheists occasionally took issue with his pronouncements there, though he was less the bastion of white European privilege than Richardup the drinking with whatever gusto he still had.

But, he was who he was, and for that, he'll be missed indeed.

Read "God is Not Great" or his "Atheist Reader," or "Arguably," his latest collection of essays. Or his book on the Clintons, or on Kissenger, both of which are even better, overall, than his Mother Theresa book.

That said, as I have hinted above, Hitch was no secular saint. Encomiums he gets above the fold, but more critique below it.

I noted there was something of the James Dean in him, even if his rebellions, on te the surface, seemed to have a cause. His "Islamophobia," while overblown, goes back to the Rushdie fatwa. That said, on that, he, like Sam Harris, stereotyped liberals and left-liberals, claiming they were all