As I posted earlier, Christopher Hitchens, a leader of the "new atheists" and a remarkable journalist in his own right, has come down with esophageal cancer. In this new interview, Hewett asks him how he feels about people praying for him ("touching to be thought of in that way") and a lot of other questions besides. I found it a fascinating interview. On Saddam Hussein's Iraq, for example, Hitchen says:
I say in my chapter on Iraq in the book that a horrible realization came to me one day after I’d been visiting the country for a while during the Saddam era that the Iraqi police are always hunting down misfits and psychopaths and child molesters, not in order to imprison them, but in order to employ them. And that’s one of the definitions of a fascist system. It gives privileges and rewards to people who are potentially or actual torturers and sadists, and then puts them in charge of things. Yeah, and it’s not, it’s depressingly easy, unfortunately, to recruit a force of that kind.
Hitchens' advice on drinking:
“Don’t drink on an empty stomach. The main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don’t drink if you have the blues. It’s a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It’s not true that you shouldn’t drink alone. These can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can’t properly remember last night. Avoid all narcotics. These will make you boring rather than less, and are not designed, as are the grape and the grain, to enliven company.”
Me: Note also David Horowitz's reflections on Hitchens to which I called attention earlier.