re: #83 martinsmithy

I used to loathe Hitchens in the old days, when he was an unreconstructed leftist who hated Israel.

The events of the past few years have put him in quite a different light. I no longer loathe him - I respect him, even if I disagree with some of his positions.

When looking at Hitchens, it is clear that his guiding light is - unrepentant, pure atheism. He despises religion and people with religious views, and he truly hates religious zealots.

His weak spot is that he clearly equates all religous zealots as the same - thus when he says:

the contorted, glaring, fanatical face is a horror show, a vision from hell. It’s like looking down a wobbling gun barrel, or into the eyes of a torturer. I can see it still.

- I believe that he would say the same thing if he were confronted by a Hebron settler, or an American anti-abortion protester. He doesn’t see any difference among religious fanatics, although he would certainly admit that there are fewer Christian and Jewish fanatics than exist in the Muslim world.

He doesn’t see Islam as uniquely destructive when compared to other major religions, which is where his ideology fails me.

You must not have read the article.

Excerpt:

Officially removed from that soil, Syria continues to manipulate by proxies and by surrogates. One of its projections of power is the S.S.N.P., the Christian Orthodox Fascist group with which I tangled (and which is thought to have provided the muscle in some of the abovementioned assassinations).

Sal: Yep, that’s right; the Lebanazis who attacked Hitchens weren’t Muslim; they were Christian. Just like the vast majority of the original Nazis were.

christianhistorytimeline.com