Saturday, June 26, 2010

Un-Hitchen the Wagon from the Socialist Crazy Train?

American Thinker's condescendingly titled "Christopher Hitchens Evolves" brings up some interesting factoids about the iconoclastic writer (if I might ironically turn a droll turn of phrase).

Hitchens, once a Trotskyist, is a cerebral and intricate writer cut from the cloth of the "clever socialist" George Orwell, and as such has always garnered my respect, and at times, admiration.

As such, Jeff Riggenbach's "The Brilliant but Confused Radicalism of George Orwell," another short biographic sketch, makes an excellent companion piece. Ideologically, Hitchens is the prodigy that may indeed have surpassed the old master.

4 comments:

Richard said...

I also like Hitchens.

Reaganx said...

I know little about him but his strong atheist and pro-Enlightenment (i.e. rational) views are worthy of admiration.

Reaganx said...

=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.=
(from Wikipedia)

I also noted this bizarre aspect of the Communist Manifesto - it seems Marx loathed capitalism in the "odi et amo" (hate and love) style - he sensed the sheer beauty and perfection of the capitalist idea but rejected because of his moral and philosophical weakness.

Reaganx said...

One thing I like about him is his PASSION (in this case anti-religious - sometimes it's a bit too extreme but still). The postmodernist mainstream is so bland, pragmatic, noncommittal. But Hitchens has REAL CONVICTIONS.