The Elite Mr. Hitchens
Yesterday brought the news that Christopher Hitchens has cancer. Of course, the Christian response to that news is prayer for Hitchens' recovery and conversion, just as it would be to the news of anyone's serious illness. But I wanted to highlight some of the gushing tributes to Hitchens that continue to pour forth, such as today's David Brooks column in the New York Times and yesterday's exceedingly pompous and dull review of Hitchens' memoirs in The New Criterion. What these reviews show, despite all the talk of Hitchens' iconoclasm, is that Hitchens is something far different from an iconoclast. He is instead a harbinger of elite opinion, representing opinions our elites hold or are coming to hold but are as yet wary of fully expressing. Far from harming Hitchens in any way, his hatred of religion has won him the admiration of our elites, who see in it something similar to their own views, even if Hitchens' hatred is still fiercer and more bold.
Real iconoclasts don't get mash notes published to them in the New York Times.
Entries(RSS)
It is apparent the elites strife to be always politically correct.
That is their stand.
Prayers for Christopher Hitchens.
While strife does come, the right word in previous comment
would be strive.
He ought to follow the path of his younger, wiser brother.
Uh, David Brooks himself is something of a contrarian.
I get that he writes for the New York Times, a mainstream publication that does indeed look down upon non-politically correct viewpoints and carries the core ideas of the current ruling parties.
But Brooks himself? He is neither much of a "left-wing" person nor a "right-wing" person. He is neither fierce defender of old tradition nor a fighter for progressive reform.
What Brooks does is look on like an amused observer from the sidelines, subtly mocking both Tea Party protesters and the old New Left protesters, both mainstream media and fringe media, both the religious and the non-religious. His convictions on many matters are not as strong as theirs, and he acknowledges that his job is mainly to get access to info from Beltway insiders and make a living out of it.
He is hardly elite.
I think people overestimate how monolithic the opinion in mainstream media is. If mainstream media did not even allow a tiny dissent in opinion, then how does Patrick Buchanan become an MSNBC political analyst?
Hitchens was an intellectual joke but a decent writer at times. He was so damned mad at the world, like so many modernists who come to see life as a dirty rotten trick. I hope the sisters from Mother Theresa's Missionarys Of Charity might assist him in his last hours so he might know that "one thing necessary" before he spends his eternity in a rage.
Mr Sanjay #4
Yes, I agree with you about Brooks. In a happier age he would have been recognized as neither hot nor cold and therefore, vomited forth from any type of serious debate. Unfortunately this managerial attitude is quite popular today --even when lying and cheating on national news, as he is evidently paid to do, involves the lives of our own countrymen and the future of our beloved homes and people. Brooks is a crook if selling snake oil in medicine bottles is still a crime.
People who know Brooks--and I do not, having only corresponded with him--regard him as a mental lightweight without fixed principles. He apparently turned to the GOP and lite conservatism in quest of a safe niche. I have nothing against him, myself. He seems to me to exemplify what is wrong with American journalism: He has no fund of knowledge, does write well, and has nothing but the most predictable opinions. The Times, NPR, etc like him because he never challenges leftist orthodoxy and make the right look feeble.
Whenever I think of Hitchens I must first fight my non-Christian impulse that wishes I could extend to him a little wall-to-wall counseling; fortunately, I instead pray not only for his conversion but that his transformation mirror that of some of the great converts -I'm thinking of Arnold Lunn particularly - whose conversion unleashes their formidable talents in defense of the faith. Now with his sickness let's pray he takes that road to Damascus toute de suite.
Dr. Fleming's description of Brooks is instructive; that piece in the NYT should be placed in a picture dictionary next to the words "puerile" and "vapid."
Special thanks to Mr. Piatak for actually reading through the entire New Criterion piece -thus sparing the rest of us from having to wade through such tripe! The author must be getting paid by the syllable.
Brooks is just another neoconservative member of the elite. You don't get your own column in the New York Times if you haven't been aproved by the elite. Mr. Hitchens is also a long term Trotskyite and has a lot of neoconservative friends. I too think he has a lot of talent, that has been used in evil ways. He seems to have a lot of rage in him. May God have mercy on his soul. The cancer he has can be quite virolent.
Mr. Colin,
I couldn't made it through the entire New Criterion piece, it was that bad. I tried, though.
I had no idea what the New Criterion piece was rambling about.
It is not humanly possible for anyone with less than Tom Piatak's powers of endurance to read that New Criterion gobbet of what Samuel Johnson called "unresisting imbecility". I stopped attempting to peruse said gobbet when the author moved (temporarily) from rhapsodizing about Hitch to rhapsodizing about Philip Larkin. That The New Criterion should find qualities of moral strength in Larkin - the part-time poetaster and, as we now know from even his most sympathetic biographers, full-time onanist - tells us everything we need to know about the ethical principles of modern neocons.
Christians' obligation to pray for the cancer-stricken Hitch is not, and should not be, accompanied by any belief on their part that Hitch innately deserves such prayers, or any particular enthusiasm for the prayerful task involved. Even if, mirabile dictu, Hitch were to undergo a change of heart that derived from more than simple cowardice, he would need to do ferocious public penance for his past intellectual crimes, this penance consisting, among other things, of being decently silent.
Samuel Johnson called “unresisting imbecility”.
Rob,
Is this one of the milder forms of invincible ignorance or a genetic capacity exaggerated by trauma in ones childhood? I am always amused by your thoughtful but too rare posts. Please keep them coming when you have the time and desire because they often serve as an actual grace for me --and I am sure for others as well.
Of course, the Christian response to that news is prayer for Hitchens’ recovery and conversion,...
Dear Mr. Piatak. When I read this, I was immediately reminded of Dr. John Zmirak's great observation: (paraphrase) Saying to another, I'll pray for you, is the Christian way of telling someone to go to hell.
Of course, I know that is not your intent but when I read news about a scandalous hateful atheist like Hitchens I either think of Apocalypse 6:10 or I invoke the Universal Secular Summation of Life - whatever.
What never makes sense to me is to pray for someone like Hitchens who has heretofore refused to cooperate with Grace sufficient unto salvation.
If The Holy Ghost can't get his attention...
Let the dead bury their dead, as far as I am concerned.
Mr. Stove @ 12:
You are exactly right.
I can discribe atheism in three sentences. We come from nothing. We are here for no reason. We are going nowhere.
Alias Spartacus,
"What never makes sense to me is to pray for someone like Hitchens who has heretofore refused to cooperate with Grace sufficient unto salvation.
If The Holy Ghost can’t get his attention…"
I must admit I actually did pray for the poor fool this morning at Mass --the Feast of Doubting Thomas who,As St. Gregory The Great described, could not believe in God, Who is pure Spirit, without putting his hand in the wounds of the flesh. The observations of Mr. Zmirak are real. It is the answer often given by Christians when one really does not know what else to say or do --which in truth is at least most of the time. So the problem, you see, is not the offer to pray for someone but the reality that we rarely keep our promises. I am pleased with myself that at least this morning I did pray for the little, miserable, wretched and angry neo-modernist. And that of course can lead to other problems such as the ever present need to remind myself that if there is any good that comes from such feeble prayers, it is most certainly from God and not from folks like me and The Hitch, who wrongly believe that the world would be so much better off with us running things rather than God.
Mr. Marino.
If I were a religious man, I could respond with this.
Where we come from is as completely unknown and as infinitely complicated as the Creator who made us.
Why we are here is as completely unknown and as infinitely complicated as the Creator who made us.
Where we are going as completely unknown and as infinitely complicated as the Creator who made us.
Now, while I am not an atheist (too extreme a word), but rather a simple non-believer who was never raised religious, I will say this: matters of time and space and man's position within it are too complicated to be within our epistemological grasp. The rift between mind and matter has not fully been bridged and might never be bridged, and hence we would be premature in saying anything about those three questions.
A deeply religious Calvinist man I know online would only say the same things.
"I will say this: matters of time and space and man’s position within it are too complicated to be within our epistemological grasp. The rift between mind and matter has not fully been bridged and might never be bridged, and hence ... ."
Mr. Sanjay,
With respect to the Eastern traditions I cannot say, but in the West when the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us, there was a bridge that restored (some say redeemed) body and soul as had been promised since Adam and Eve. And although it will be considered shocking to our scientific mind, contemporary physiology only encourages this mystery
This all reminds me of our cuurent educational practices described by an Englishman as follows: "We learn about reformers without knowing what they had to reform, about rebels without a notion of what they rebelled against, of memorials that are no longer connected to any memories and attempts to restore things that had never before existed.
In this case we have a rational sceptic acting sceptical of a once obvious but now obscure religious doctrine. Oh modernity!!That doctrine which teaches us to love mankind but not men, to respect all persons (even Christians) but not Christ, and the only truth we can know for certain is that we can never really know the truth.
Sanjay written like a true agnostic: You have no answers. It is funny that Peter Hitchens Chris' brother is now a believing Christian. He was a fervent atheist when younger. He has been doing a series of articles in the Daily Mail about Pat Buchanan's Book about Churchill Hitler and the Unnecessary War. His articles have been highly complementary of Pat's book. Praying for the soul Chris Hitchens is the Christian thing to do. God loves a person who repents his sins even at the end of life. Hitchens has been a troubled person all his life. His alcoholism, communism, and the fact that his mother was a messy suicide all have affected him. Lets hope the reality of his mortality will focus his mind.
Regarding #20. Does faith provide answers? Or does faith simply provide strength to support the foundation that strains and cracks with uncertainty and fear?
Thanks to Tom Piatak and to robert II for their comments. The phrase "unresisting imbecility" first occurs, not in a theological context, but in a literary one: Samuel Johnson's hatchet-job upon Shakespeare's Cymbeline. Johnson's complete sentence is: "To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation."
I should note, since nobody else has done so on this thread, that Hitch's cancer is located in his esophagus. Cancer of the esophagus is a terrifying, rackingly painful condition, frequent among chain-smokers and alcoholics. It remains 100% fatal, unlike many other cancers in 2010 (where chemotherapy has lately so improved as to be more or less tolerable, and can sometimes delay death by as much as a decade).
Moreover, it is the same condition from which my father David Stove suffered. It would have killed him very swiftly anyhow, even if he had not pre-empted this fate by suicide. The last time I visited Professor Stove in hospital I found him, to my complete amazement, reading a small bedside Gideon Bible. Given that he was a militant non-Christian (if incomparably more civilized about his non-Christianity than Hitch), I voiced surprise at this. He fixed on me the largest, most protuberant, most frightened, and most frightening pair of eyes I have ever seen: "I'll try anything now."
Years later, I discovered - and was absolutely pole-axed by - the following passage in Bernard Shaw's Too True To Be Good, in which an old pagan, very obviously speaking for Shaw himself, sums up what I am convinced was my father's attitude near the end. The passage runs:
"The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshipers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith."
Let us hope that Hitch, in what is almost certainly the very limited time left to him, arrives at a similar wisdom to what Shaw voiced here. He will not, unfortunately, be helped to do so by Michael Weiss's drivel, whose misrepresentation of Hitch's pornographic attacks on Mother Teresa (to go no further) bespeaks a pathological dishonesty that would have done credit to The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
"Does faith provide answers?"
I guess it depends on who you ask. St. Augustine taught that faith was a kind of knowledge. St Paul that it was evidence of things unseen. I must admit that for me faith is like poetry that describes truths that we can know or the mind can grasp as in a glass darkly but at the same time do not lend themselves to easy prose to describe. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy as the fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom. The only thing we Christians have left is our tattered Tradition, which consists of the teachings of Christ as handed down by His Church, after the death of the last Apostle. I say tattered because Boethius described lady philosophy in tattered gaments because so many of her followers were statisfied with a piece of her garment and then leave her to explore other human endeavors such as the seven deadly sins. If sin or evil is a kind of emptiness or absence of what is good --- something less than the fullness of truth. Then yes, I would say that our age is living in a real absence of faith and therefore our understanding of what faith is has been lost and replaced by a variety of psychology,positive thinking or hypnosis that can help one push on against the adversity of life and if used properly,maybe even help one earn a million bucks. Reading the testimony of the saints seems to indicate it is something more valuable: a pearl of great price, the one thing necessary, the tranquil harbor not found on the maps of this earthly sea and a perpetual light which will shine at the end of this, our brief, dark, night. If this kind of knowledge is lacking in the growing babble who can converse only with the question,"Who is to say?" while the enemy says; then yes, I think faith is something more than psychological support for the sick, lame and lazy.
I am not sure if this is relevant, but about the Trotskyism of the Hitchens brothers:
In a discussion with a communist, I once remarke that it is possible that a neoconservative like James Burnham never stopped being a Trotskyite. To prove this, I simply pointed to a letter written by James Burnham which was titled "For A Revolutionary Socialist Party". The complaint of many revolutionary socialists was that the working people were content with pursuing labour laws and welfare and needed little else.
It was hard for these highly well read philosophers, like Burnham, to explain to such workers that labour laws and welfare are not what socialism is about. It was about overthrowing capitalist bourgeoisie power, and labour laws and welfare only protected the elite class of rulers, in their opinion.
Burnham suggested that they go along with the Labour Party model anyway. They would fight for labour laws and welfare. When it would fail, they would preach their own model of revolutionary socialism.
If such dualism was part of achieving socialism, one can't discount the possibility of the neoconservative movement being a pure socialist front under the guise of a "right-wing" movement. To use military force to spread democracy only seems like a means to a revolutionary movement.
The communist man told me that it's not that neoconservatism was communism in disguise. He explained it was Trotskyism and neoconservatism are the same things. What he explained was that just about anybody who starts out as a Trotskyite ends up a neoconservative, one way or another. That many ex-Trotskyites became neoconservatives is something that happened all independent of each other. In his view, Trotsky was "not a real communist, but an idealist".
Christopher Hitchens went down this path that happened just like Burnham, Krystol, and others.
Mr. Sanjay - I suggest that you read E.F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed. It might provide some useful insights.
The book sounds too highbrow for my tastes.
Rob,
Thank you for this post at #22 and this quote from Shaw.
"The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshipers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.”
A Benedictine community I am familiar with recently lost one of their young monks -- a former officer in the French Navy and follower of St. Benedicts rule for the last 15 years. He died of brain cancer and as sub-prior was a tremendous loss for the community. I asked my friend how things were going after the loss of their sub-prior and he said," You know this is when being a monk makes the most sense." Without some awareness of the Supernatural I really believe that Job's wife anticipated modernism with her counsel to Job in his agony to simply "curse God and die!!"
#17 Dear Robert, you are a better man than I.
At Mass this morning, I actually did think of Mr. Hitchens but in context of the men who rejected the message of the 72 sent by Jesus and told to shake the dust from their feet if their message was rejected.
And then I read Mr. Stove's #22 comments and learned about esophageal cancer and his poor Father. Lord have Mercy.
When my Dad died peacefully, I was sitting on his death bed holding his hand and speaking about my love for him, etc.
The one good thing about Hitchens' situation is that, flat on his back, he is at least finally rightly oriented, facing up.
Acts 1:7 Who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?
Maybe Hitchens will repent and, experience something similar to what Kathryn Tynan wrote;
THE GREAT MERCY
Betwixt the saddle and the ground
Was mercy sought and mercy found.
Yea, in the twinkling of an eye,
He cried; and Thou hast heard his cry.
Between the bullet and its mark
Thy face made morning in his dark.
And while the shell sang on its path
Thou hast run, Thou hast run, preventing death.
Thou hast run before and reached the goal,
Gathered to Thee the unhoused soul.
Thou art not bound by Time or Space:
So fast Death runs : Thou hast won the race.
Thou hast said to beaten Death: Go tell
Of victories thou once hadst. All's well!
Death, here none die but thee and Sin
Now the great days of Life begin.
And to the Soul: This day I rise
And thee with Me to Paradise.
Betwixt the saddle and the ground
Was Mercy sought and Mercy found.
If anyone has been in perpetual war for as long as I can remember, it has been Mr, Hitchens
Thanks Not Sparticus. The modern scientist now say what monks have praciticed for centuries, the hearing is usually the last sensory power left available before a natural death. An old monk once told me to go ahead and whisper in their ear ones love and affection even if they seem not to recognize it because even after paralysis of the other senses they still might hear final words of encouragement. It is good you were near your father. Sometimes it comes so quick such opportunities are lost. I was reading yesterday that Mother Theresa had been given two packs of nice cigarettes one morning by a wealthy man and later found a maggot ridden beggar on the street that afternoon. She and her sisters got him cleaned up and medicated for the excrutiating pain he was enduring and he then rallied one last time to thank them and request a cigarette to which she was able to glady comply from the rich man's charity. God is good and his mercy endures forever. Hitch was a mean man towards Roman Catholics but he was not a completely stupid man. He will probably be sorry for his sins before it is all over, I have found that most people are, since the fact that we are created for something much more is wriiten on every heart. But enough about him, like Pappa Hemmingway
"he was no hero, what he had was dare,
A confidence of zero, multiplied by fear."
Actually, I do think David Brooks has fixed principles. He is what I call an "ideological moderate." Meaning that unlike most moderates he does not arrive at his moderation from disinterest or lack of thought on the subject. He believes there is virtue in moderation per se and that extremes are inherently dangerous. Hence his constant hand-wringing about rising extremism, his parroting of conventional opinion, his snide and snarky dismissal of all things fringe, etc. He is the slightly right of center version/balancing act of slightly left of center David Broder, E.J. Dionne, etc.
http://conservativetimes.org/?p=5574
Mr. Sanjay - for an intelligent person, you display a lot of ignorance @18. You say you were not raised to be religious. You can take steps to correct that. The book I recommended is not "highbrow" at all. It is a concise explanation of why what you are dismissing as unimportant, is in fact of utmost importance. Where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going is of infinite importance and can be discovered by the inquiring mind.
not Sparticus @28 - I was at sea on a Navy destroyer when my father died. The only one with him was a nurse who saw him collapse while he was riding a bike on his way to the supermarket. I am happy for both you and your father that you were together during his last moments.
Mr. Van Sant, I will look into it, in that case. If it is as you say it is, it would be one of the most important things I need to do.
When considering Mr. Hitchens, I recall the opening lines of "The Great Gatsby". The Indians use to say that before criticizing another man, we should walk one mile in his moccasins. Although Mr. Hitchens is a crazed atheist, how many of us had to experience the unspeakable horror of our mother committing suicide. His attitude toward God saddens me. His anger and hatred of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churchs angers me. Nonetheless, Christ requires me to pray for him and feel pity for him.
Unlike many people on this website, I support the war in Iraq. What maddens me about it is that the US Government had to justify the war on the basis of preventing Saddam Hussein from getting nuclear weapons. We should have had as our primary war aim the liberation of Iraqi from the oppression and the terrible human rights violations of the the Baathist - Nazi regime. Mr.Hitchens, to his great credit, was a champion of the human rights of the Iraqi's, and willing to rick his own safety trying to help them. Remember the old latin saying. "Those who are silent in the face of injustice, are seen to connive in it."
"We should have had as our primary war aim the liberation of Iraqi from the oppression and the terrible human rights violations of the the Baathist – Nazi regime. Mr.Hitchens, to his great credit, was a champion of the human rights of the Iraqi’s, and willing to rick his own safety trying to help them."
Why not on to Sudan, down to South Africa, over to Malaysia, up to North Korea, over to Argentina, up through Mexico and back home ... to what??? 50,000 American troops in Iraq for the next two or three decades to referee civil unrest between ancient rivals, billions of dollars pouring out of our country into their country, while our military families do without, carry the burden and heavy lifting for idealogues in Wahsington D.C.? Mr. Hitchens has had nothing to do with anything important except his english accent. For Heavens sake, Matt!!!
Mr. Sanjay - Thank you for your gracious response to my rather ungracious invitation. You can obtain a copy of the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Perplexed-E-F-Schumacher/dp/0060906111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278368270&sr=1-1
Make no mistake, this book will not answer the questions
of where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going. It identifies problems and mysteries that we need to solve in order to answer those questions. It provides a map to follow. If after you read the book, you decide to "work out your salvation with diligence," I am sure that the hosts and supporters of this site will be able to help you or suggest effective ways for you to do that. It will require Faith, a gift from God; so I pray that He gives you that gift.
Fark headline:
"Noted atheist author suspends book tour to battle cancer. If only there was some divine being he could turn to for comfort"
Looks like Hitchens' prayers to Trotsky didn't work.
Mr. Piatak, thank you for highlighting the Brooks column. As I now am reading the Gordon Bowker biography of Orwell(I read the Michael Sheldon biography about ten years ago), it can be said that Brooks misunderstands aspects of Orwell's personality. Although Orwell appreciated traditions like English cookery, English rural life and fishing and despised left-wing fads like vegetarianism and feminism, he didn't appreciate what was considered traditonal morality. For instance, his marriage to Eileen Blair was an open one where he philandered as often as his health and opportunity allowed. Orwell was indifferent to the murder of priests by leftists in Catalonia. As for Orwell's political beliefs, it is difficult to ignore that the socialist project that Orwell and Hitchens is immoral in itself.