I first read Christopher Hitchens in the Nation back in the early eighties. He was a cool drink of angry liberal water in a desert of happy kowtowing to the amazing Reagan. I was a new student at University of Texas, having spent some time doing other things in the "real world" before sprinting to the oasis of academia. In the liberal cosmic cowboy capital of Texas the Young Republicans were breeding like cucarachas on a crumb filled counter top in a college kid's apartment. Suits were everywhere. And Hitch gave me a voice to power and I knew that I wasn't alone.
I was a history major who got lost in the philosophy department for an extended journey that led me all over the spectrum of human thought; both of the East and the West.
Like any good intellectual miscreant, I thrived on Existentialism and without any planned posturing, sponged up the Nietzsche.
I ran across this article on my interwebs travel last week and was thinking about all of this stuff; everything I have related and the the places we have all been since. I disagreed and thought, that he had, like Nietzsche, lost his mind with regard to the invasion of Iraq, but at least he made his case with logic and force instead of smoky mirrors reflecting lies. He was as passionate wrong as he was right.
Hitchens, true to form, arguing with Nietzsche about Death.
http://www.vanityfair.com/...
Then came the news of his passing.
I was reminded of the last line from Sam Peckinpah's movie "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", the story of a drifter who discovers water in the middle of the desert.
The unapologetic atheist would certainly appreciate the final words spoken at the main character's funeral:
" Lord, as the day draws towards evening, this life grows to the end of us all, we say "Adieu" to our friend. Take him, Lord, but knowing Cable, I suggest you do not take him lightly. Amen."
Amen.