Wizblog

Hitchens Interview

Fans of Christopher Hitchens will enjoy this interview he does with Jamie Glazov of Front Page Magazine. He talks about his break with the left, which became "news" after 9/11/01, but was in motion years earlier, when conservatives put principle over politics in backing Clinton in his belated support for Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosovic in 1998. Later on he was impressed with the clarity shown by conservatives on the issue of Iraq, and in dealing with the Trent Lott fiasco:

The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihadism when most people were half-asleep.

And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not “perception.” I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility.

In Part Two he takes Israel apart, sounding like his late friend Edward Said, in discussing the Israeli-Palestinian issue. This guy's brain operates at a level way above my feeble mind. I'm always awed by his intellect, especially when I find a part of my "worldview" under attack. It's humbling, but somehow invigorating to have my assumptions challenged and my biases confronted by someone whose knowledge and reasoning I've come to respect.