Looking for a Brawl with Fascism

Christopher Hitchens, the inimitable atheist, elegant writer, and principled gadfly, among other superlatives, has esophageal cancer. I am not going to pretend as if I know the man, but after reading his delightful and erudite attack on religion, God is Not Great, and watching him excoriate the deceased Jerry Falwell in front of men very sympathetic to Falwell, I can say that hearing of Hitchens' illness brought me uncontrived sadness.

As a critic recently said of Hitchens, "if (he) did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." His writing sets out to shock you and challenge your convictions. He rightly argues that cruel rituals such as genital mutilation and the taking of child brides would scarcely be tolerated if stripped of their religious pretext. And his indictment of religion certainly isn't scant on historical detail or exegesis of scripture. Hitchens has gladly debated scholars of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in many a public fora.

Mr. Hitchens does not see a contradiction in being at once a freewheeling drinker, a dispenser of insults and also a person of great character. He, like his hero George Orwell, sees the fight against fascism and its present day derivatives as the final test of someone's morality. At the age of 59, he welcomed a beating from a fascist militia in Beirut when he defaced one of its swastika-stamped posters. Hitchens later matter-of-factly told a media outlet, "My attitude to posters with swastikas on them has always been the same. They should be ripped down."

David Brooks sees Hitchens as unique in the field of American journalism in that he underpins his opinions with a literary perspective that values "psychology, context, courage, and virtue - important things that are hard to talk about in policy jargon or journalese." This is precisely why, in a field so sorely in need of resolve, it will be necessary to revive and reinvent Christopher Hitchens as time passes.