RIP Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

Christopher Hitchens has died from cancer. All there is to say about his life, Hitchens has already said himself. His facility at expression was such that it is presumptuous to try and add to his account. Nevertheless, he would probably appreciate being remembered by those who knew him; and I did slightly. Even the most modest of people like to think the world has shifted, even ever so slightly, because they lived, spoke and wrote.

And Hitchens lived, and spoke and wrote.

We might quarrel about the extent to which he or anyone has made a difference. But in one matter we are agreed; and he will surely pass over any differences if I raise a glass in his memory. As he explained to an Arab waiter once in Beirut about the virtues of whiskey, “all you have to do is pour it. My problem is to drink it.” Perhaps he was talking about life as much as Johnny Walker. So for those who are so inclined, please raise a glass of whatever you please, and down one for Christopher Hitchens.


Well alright, Christopher. One is not enough. Maybe two is better.

[Valin]

Geee

 

I loved him...and he often drove me right up the wall! How could a person be so right on some things

 

 

and so wrong on others.

 

 

Well he now knows whether or not he was right.....and I suspect he was rather shocked.

[Geee]

I also had a love-hate attitude on Christopher Hitchens. Thanks for the clips.

[Valin]

Trial of the Will

Reviewing familiar principles and maxims in the face of mortal illness, Christopher Hitchens has found one of them increasingly ridiculous: “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Oh, really? Take the case of the philosopher to whom that line is usually attributed, Friedrich Nietzsche, who lost his mind to what was probably syphilis. Or America’s homegrown philosopher Sidney Hook, who survived a stroke and wished he hadn’t. Or, indeed, the author, viciously weakened by the very medicine that is keeping him alive.

Christopher Hitchens

January 2012

 

Death has this much to be said for it:

You don’t have to get out of bed for it.

Wherever you happen to be

They bring it to you—free.

—Kingsley Amis

 

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying.

—Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

 

When it came to it, and old Kingsley suffered from a demoralizing and disorienting fall, he did take to his bed and eventually turned his face to the wall. It wasn’t all reclining and waiting for hospital room service after that—“Kill me, you f%#%@#$ fool!” he once alarmingly exclaimed to his son Philip—but essentially he waited passively for the end. It duly came, without much fuss and with no charge.

 

Mr. Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, has had at least one very close encounter with death, more than one update and revision of his relationship with the Almighty and the Four Last Things, and looks set to go on demonstrating that there are many different ways of proving that one is alive. After all, considering the alternatives …

 

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

 

In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound. It is usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker. In German it reads and sounds more like poetry, which is why it seems probable to me that Nietzsche borrowed it from Goethe, who was writing a century earlier. But does the rhyme suggest a reason? Perhaps it does, or can, in matters of the emotions. I can remember thinking, of testing moments involving love and hate, that I had, so to speak, come out of them ahead, with some strength accrued from the experience that I couldn’t have acquired any other way. And then once or twice, walking away from a car wreck or a close encounter with mayhem while doing foreign reporting, I experienced a rather fatuous feeling of having been toughened by the encounter. But really, that’s to say no more than “There but for the grace of god go I,” which in turn is to say no more than “The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man.”

 

(Snip)

 

These are progressive weaknesses that in a more “normal” life might have taken decades to catch up with me. But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise? Just as I was beginning to reflect along these lines, I came across an article on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. We now know, from dearly bought experience, much more about this malady than we used to. Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

 

I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.

[Geee]

The death of Christopher Hitchens hits like the 2008 death of Tim Russert. Both were men you really wanted to hear from during a looming presidential election.

The word being tossed about in reference to the passing of Hitchens is “contrarian,” and that strikes me as a little unfair. Hitchens could be infuriating and even wrong, but there was nothing dishonest or insincere about the man. Though it’s not the perfect definition of contrarian, I don’t believe for a second that Hitchens ever once took a stand simply to be provocative or contrary.

Hitchens was a truth-teller. Whether it was the war in Iraq, Mother Teresa, or Bill Maher’s trained seal audience, Hitchens always told what he believed to be the truth.

It was never as simple as opinion with Hitchens. What he was for or against rose above opinion. Again, he wasn’t always right (especially when it came to Mother Teresa), but his arguments never failed to be so beautifully designed that even when he was wrong, you had to respect the fact that so much study and thought and reasoning went into them.

Hitchens was incapable of lying and of insincerity, which is more complicated than being a contrarian, and that’s why I both admired and respected him.

Besides his battle with cancer, during his final years, Hitchens became most famous for his atheism; going so far as to take the act on the road with a series of highly publicized and very engaging debates. There was something different about Hitchens’ atheism, though. His lack of belief wasn’t a pose, but at the same time I always felt that his being so open and public and willing to engage on the subject said something more. It wasn’t so much that Hitchens was trying to prove believers wrong as much as he wanted believers to prove him wrong.

‘Seek and you will find.”

In his own incomparable way, Hitchens did seek. And if he was wrong about the existence of God (and I believe and hope he was), I’m guessing that counted for something and that we haven’t heard the last from him.

 

 

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-flips-off-bill-mahers-audience-none-of-you-is-smarter-than-george-w-bush/

[Valin]

The death of Christopher Hitchens hits like the 2008 death of Tim Russert. Both were men you really wanted to hear from during a looming presidential election.

The word being tossed about in reference to the passing of Hitchens is “contrarian,” and that strikes me as a little unfair. Hitchens could be infuriating and even wrong, but there was nothing dishonest or insincere about the man. Though it’s not the perfect definition of contrarian, I don’t believe for a second that Hitchens ever once took a stand simply to be provocative or contrary.

Hitchens was a truth-teller. Whether it was the war in Iraq, Mother Teresa, or Bill Maher’s trained seal audience, Hitchens always told what he believed to be the truth.

It was never as simple as opinion with Hitchens. What he was for or against rose above opinion. Again, he wasn’t always right (especially when it came to Mother Teresa), but his arguments never failed to be so beautifully designed that even when he was wrong, you had to respect the fact that so much study and thought and reasoning went into them.

Hitchens was incapable of lying and of insincerity, which is more complicated than being a contrarian, and that’s why I both admired and respected him.

Besides his battle with cancer, during his final years, Hitchens became most famous for his atheism; going so far as to take the act on the road with a series of highly publicized and very engaging debates. There was something different about Hitchens’ atheism, though. His lack of belief wasn’t a pose, but at the same time I always felt that his being so open and public and willing to engage on the subject said something more. It wasn’t so much that Hitchens was trying to prove believers wrong as much as he wanted believers to prove him wrong.

‘Seek and you will find.”

In his own incomparable way, Hitchens did seek. And if he was wrong about the existence of God (and I believe and hope he was), I’m guessing that counted for something and that we haven’t heard the last from him.

 

 

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-flips-off-bill-mahers-audience-none-of-you-is-smarter-than-george-w-bush/

Two points...

A. Christopher was a much nicer person than I would be in those kind of situations. I know when I see people like Bill Maher...well lets just say it would make the evening news "Bill Maher left a bloody mess".

B. I believe he was called contrarian is he thought things out, came to his own conclusions and damn what other people thought.

 

I would also say that while being serious about ideas, he relished the combat, and often went out of his way to provoke people (in this respect he reminds me of someone who has talent on loan from God), That and he was having waaay to much fun at the expense of lesser intellects.

[pollyannaish]

 

I was so very fond of him. Brilliant man.

[saveliberty]

The Anchoress

Christopher Hitchens: A Singular Voice Silenced – UPDATED

 

Dec 16th, 2011 by Elizabeth Scalia

 

The dreadful day is upon us.

 

A while back, I wrote:

 

It will be a dreadful day when this singular voice can no longer reach us via any media but memory.

 

And now, Vanity Fair announced that Christopher Hitchens is dead.

 

I like the picture Pat Archbold used In his piece, and so I am stealing it, and I agree with much that Pat has written:

 

 

Christopher Hitchens now knows the truth of it. . . . Hitchens may have been most famous for his outspoken atheism. A year and a half ago when Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I wrote that even if he thought it was stupid, I was praying for him. I still am.

[saveliberty]

A link from The Anchoress:

 

UPDATE I:

Don’t miss Peter Hitchens’ lovely and sad column

[saveliberty]

A great summary, from Cliff May:

It was more fun to argue with Christopher than to agree with a dozen people.

 

The whole post is a wonderful story about what it was like to spend time with Christopher Hitchens.

[righteousmomma]

I agree with most of the sentiments about Christopher expressed here. Have read him for years and followed him on tv etc - until he entered the area of "religion".

 

He was a brilliant elocutionist who could express himself eloquently in word and prose. He was also an opinionated secular humanist who cared nothing about what other people thought of him and so let it all out.The down side of that is lack of charity and consideration for others' beliefs (like his own brother's). The total lack of "graciousness" is the only word I can think of.

 

Once again I am amazed at how 2 brothers reared exactly the same and in same environment could have such 180 degrees spiritual understandings.

His brother's tribute praises Christopher's courage and he had it - no doubt - in humanistic terms that is. But in the end- the different kind of courage that brother Peter has chosen is a Gift that transforms the human soul and spirit.

 

Christopher's terrible dying without Love, Peace or Joy makes me sad beyond measure. It was his choice though to live strictly on the self plain of body and soul (mind, emotion, will).

 

I will miss him and grieve for him.

[Valin]

I agree with most of the sentiments about Christopher expressed here. Have read him for years and followed him on tv etc - until he entered the area of "religion".

 

He was a brilliant elocutionist who could express himself eloquently in word and prose. He was also an opinionated secular humanist who cared nothing about what other people thought of him and so let it all out.The down side of that is lack of charity and consideration for others' beliefs (like his own brother's). The total lack of "graciousness" is the only word I can think of.

 

Once again I am amazed at how 2 brothers reared exactly the same and in same environment could have such 180 degrees spiritual understandings.

His brother's tribute praises Christopher's courage and he had it - no doubt - in humanistic terms that is. But in the end- the different kind of courage that brother Peter has chosen is a Gift that transforms the human soul and spirit.

 

Christopher's terrible dying without Love, Peace or Joy makes me sad beyond measure. It was his choice though to live strictly on the self plain of body and soul (mind, emotion, will).

 

I will miss him and grieve for him.

 

Lack of graciousness? I think often it was more a case of responding in kind.

Examples

You Tube: Christopher Hitchens Debates God w/ David Allen White

 

&

 

You Tube: Christopher Hitchens Debates Mark Roberts

 

And yes it is very sad that he died without knowing Gods love. Of course it must be noted that A. We don't know that, & B God is gracious and full of mercy...so...?

OTOH it also needs to be said God does not send us to hell...we do.

[Evad]

He was, shall we say, "worthwhile".

Coming from me that's quite a compliment since I consider the bulk of journalists to be totally useless.

[righteousmomma]

Lack of graciousness? I think often it was more a case of responding in kind.

 

Depends upon your definiiton of "graciousness". I stand by my opinion.

[Valin]

Lack of graciousness? I think often it was more a case of responding in kind.

 

Depends upon your definiiton of "graciousness". I stand by my opinion.

 

 

How would you define it?

 

righteousmomma

 

I am listening to the Christopher Hitchens Mark Roberts debate, and had a light bulb moment. People like Hitchens, Dawkins are absolutely wonderful at setting up a straw man and then knocking it down. at putting forth a proposition...taking it to its illogical extreme then demanding it be defended.

ie...many schizophrenics have religious experiences, therefore how can you not say someone who has had a religious experience is not schizophrenic....religious experiences are a mental disorder, of course discounting the idea that A. not all religious experiences are equal, & B. some religious experiences may in fact be real.

[righteousmomma]

Valin, being "gracious" is an inner character trait that in old fashioned times would be called being Godly or "Christian".

That is one acts with compassion and mercy and consideration and good manners toward others. True pardon, forgiveness, charity (love), mercifulness are gifts from God.

 

It would take far more faith than I am capable of to believe that all we see, all we are, all we do is from some accident. It would take more faith and give no answers to believe that all we experience in the realm of mind, emotions, feelings etc are just manifested outworkings of an accidental complex brain that is itself part of the universal accident.

[Valin]

Valin, being "gracious" is an inner character trait that in old fashioned times would be called being Godly or "Christian".

That is one acts with compassion and mercy and consideration and good manners toward others. True pardon, forgiveness, charity (love), mercifulness are gifts from God.

 

Something I've noticed is, if he is approached civilly he responds in kind, how be it with passion in defense of his position, if not....? The thing is he often put himself in places and situations where civility (graciousness?) were not placed in high premium. If you watch any of the two debates I posted I think you'll see what I mean.

 

It would take far more faith than I am capable of to believe that all we see, all we are, all we do is from some accident. It would take more faith and give no answers to believe that all we experience in the realm of mind, emotions, feelings etc are just manifested outworkings of an accidental complex brain that is itself part of the universal accident.

 

 

Agree. Like you I don't have anywhere near enough faith to believe all this just happened. Given the state of society today I wish I did, as it would make life a whole lot easier.....but then God never promised us an easy life. Although I must admit with some of our Brothers & Sisters in Christ, I wish along with salvation he also threw in a little wisdom (?) intelligence(?)....ie A Clue.

[saveliberty]

What we saw on stage was a lot of what he was like off stage, but maybe there was something more, Righteousmomma and Valin. Here is a story in which he showed kindness to someone he didn't know. He invited him to his home, entertained him and made sure he was safely on his way.

 

(H/T Instapundit)

 

I am thinking of the Parable of the Talents.

 

Valin, you had made the point earlier that we send ourselves to hell. I have come to see that some people start early by making their own lives hell on earth.

 

Hitchens did that to a fair amount. Not believing in God, he had to believe that he was a random creation, as were his children. What parent does not want to believe that his or her children are special?

 

The other part of his hell on earth is this:

 

If all there is to life is what we see, then life is extremely unsatisfying

[Valin]

What we saw on stage was a lot of what he was like off stage, but maybe there was something more, Righteousmomma and Valin. Here is a story in which he showed kindness to someone he didn't know. He invited him to his home, entertained him and made sure he was safely on his way.

 

(H/T Instapundit)

 

I am thinking of the Parable of the Talents.

 

Valin, you had made the point earlier that we send ourselves to hell. I have come to see that some people start early by making their own lives hell on earth.

 

Hitchens did that to a fair amount. Not believing in God, he had to believe that he was a random creation, as were his children. What parent does not want to believe that his or her children are special?

 

The other part of his hell on earth is this:

 

If all there is to life is what we see, then life is extremely unsatisfying

 

 

No real disagreement here.

I never really understood the why of militant atheism....why their anger. What was it CS Lewis said...I was angry at God...for not existing...or words to that effect.

&

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and stratagems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous. --C.S. Lewis

That God Is!

 

 

 

Bold another good argument against atheism. Why Love...when Lust will do just as well to keep the species going?

[saveliberty]

Good points, Valin!

[saveliberty]

I am still catching up on memoria for Christopher Hitchens. Here is one from Ron Radosh that I wanted to share:

 

Pajamas Media

On the Death of Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011. R.I.P.

December 16, 2011 - 8:50 am - by Ron Radosh

 

My friend Christopher Hitchens passed away yesterday of pneumonia, a complication of the esophageal cancer he had been valiantly fighting for the past few years. The thorough obituary in today’s New York Times gives one a good overview of his life and his passions.

 

Of course Christopher did this himself in his own memoir, Hitch-22, a dazzling combination of remembrance, literary excursions, and reportage, all written in his own incomparable style. My own review of it can be found here.

 

I first met Christopher soon after he came to the United States, in the offices of The Nation magazine, for which he had a regular column. A firm man of the political Left at the time, he had been hired by Victor Navasky soon after coming to the U.S. from London. Soon after, I had lunch with him in Washington, D.C., where I was writing something for The New Republic, to which he had paid a visit while I was at their office. We walked into a nearby small French bistro, where the other solitary diner, an attractive woman in her 20s, was reading The Nation. “Did you set this up?” I asked Hitch. He looked over, thoroughly amused, and rushed over to the woman: “Hello, I’m Christopher Hitchens,” he told her. “I write a regular column for this magazine.” It could have been a scene from a movie.

 

Read the whole thing.

Edited December 18, 2011 by saveliberty

[saveliberty]

Also, this one from Zombie of Pajamas Media:

 

Christopher Hitchens at His Best: Rare Video of Hitch Disemboweling the American Left

 

Obituaries for Christopher Hitchens are now popping up all over the Web from former classmates, friends, rivals and seemingly anyone who ever chatted with him at a cocktail party. Me, I never met the guy personally, but one night in 2007 I did have the pleasure of witnessing him utterly destroy leftist hero Chris Hedges and a hostile audience of far-left Berkeley radicals. “Destroy” is metaphorical in this context, of course: Hitchens didn’t need a knife to gut his opponents — he just needed a few well-chosen words and a rapier-like mind that was sharper than any knife.

 

 

(Here’s an exact transcript:)

 

Hitchens: The decline — not to say the moral eclipse — of the secular left has just been illustrated on this very platform by someone, who makes excuses for suicide murder and tries to trace them to a second-rate sociology.

 

…

 

Hitchens: But, to what I think is the hidden agenda of the question: ‘Is George Bush on a Christian crusade in Iraq and Afghanistan?’ Obviously not, obviously not. Anyone who’s studied what’s happening in either of those countries now knows that the whole of American policy — and by the way a lot of your own future, ladies and gentlemen — is staked on the hope that federal secular democrats can emerge from this terrible combat. We can protect them and offer them help while they do so. We know that they’re there, that we are — I’ve met them, I love them, they’re our friends.

Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know, but these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers — and you have to live with the shame of having done that — these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not.

And they’re also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.

 

Hedges: I feel like I should be reading Kipling’s

White Man’s Burden

.

 

Audience: Laughter.

 

Hitchens: What you mean is you wish you had read it.

 

…

 

Hitchens: It’s exact equivalent of

the evil nonsense taught by Hedges and friends of his, who say the suicide bombers in Palestine are driven to it by despair.

Have you read the manifestos of these suicide bombers? Have you seen the videos they make? Have you seen the manifestos they put out? The propaganda that they generate?

These are not people in despair. These are people in a state of religious

exultation

. Who are promised everything. Who are in a state of hope. Who are in a state of

adoration

for their evil mullahs. And for their filthy religion. It’s this that makes them think they have the right to kill others while taking their own lives.

If despair among Palestinians was enough to create psychopathic criminal behavior, there’s been enough despair for a long time, and enough misery to go around.

It is to excuse the vicious, filthy forces of Islamic jihad to offer any other explanation but that it is their own evil preaching, their own vile religion, their own racism, their own apocalyptic ideology that makes them think they have the right to kill everyone in this room, and go to paradise as a reward. I won’t listen, nor should you, to anyone who euphemizes or excuses this evil wicked thing.

 

…

 

Religion consists now, we find, no longer of moral absolutes. It used to be, when I debated with religious types, they would say, ‘Yes, circumcision is good; masturbation is bad. We know this, because God tells us so. Hacking of the genitals of a child with a sharp stone is divine; touching them with a hand — not so great.’ We know — so we knew where we were. We were absolute.

Now

[gesturing towards Chris Hedges]

it’s all relative. Now it’s all completely relative. It’s made up a la carte and cherry-picked by mediocre pseudo-intellectuals

who want you to believe that the following thing that would have happened — in the year, in the month of the year that the liberation of Iraq took place, that finally, after an endless thesaurus of United Nations resolutions condemning every aspect of its regime, that Iraq was free from the proprietorship of Saddam Hussein — that was March, 2003 — do you know what would have happened in April, 2003? Iraq was going to be the chair of the United Nations Special Committee on Disarmament. Some people think that would have been a better outcome. More humane, more legal, less troubling, altogether more dealable with. Just as Iran and Libya have just been re-elected to that very Committee on Disarmament at the United Nations. I

ask you: You pick that kind of relativism, you’ll also find you’re dealing with a very surreptitious form of absolutism, which is only capable of describing as fascistic relatively comical forces (who I’ve denounced up- and downhill all my life in the United States), but cannot use the word totalitarianism about the religion that

actually

conducts jihad,

actually

organizes totalitarianism,

actually

inflicts misery, pain, unemployment, and despair upon millions of people, and then claims what it has done as the license for suicide and murder. A perfect picture [gesturing towards Chris Hedges] has been given to you of the cretinous relationship between sloppy moral relativism, half-baked religious absolutism, and the journalism that lies in between.

 

Thank you.

 

Moderator: Chris Hedges? [inviting him to respond.]

 

Hedges: [Waves his hand, to indicate 'No more.']

[saveliberty]

All I can say is that we do not know what happened in his mind at his death. We can guess at the physical pain; we have no idea about the process or what may have crossed his mind.

 

What we can say is that he had qualities that appealed to God: standing up to bullies, being kind to others, even if he disagreed vehemently, standing up against terrorism, even if it meant being ostracized, supporting the idea that life begins at conception.

 

Ron Radosh summed up well:

Christopher was a bundle of contradictions, a “contrarian” for life as he put it himself, a man who was charming, witty, a wonderful guest and raconteur, and a man who simply could not put up with hypocrisy and tyranny. I miss him greatly, and like so many others who knew him only from his writing, mourn his loss. R.I.P. And if you meet St. Peter and he asks you why you were not a believer, like the late Sidney Hook, you can tell him: “You didn’t give me enough evidence.”

[Valin]

All I can say is that we do not know what happened in his mind at his death. We can guess at the physical pain; we have no idea about the process or what may have crossed his mind.

 

What we can say is that he had qualities that appealed to God: standing up to bullies, being kind to others, even if he disagreed vehemently, standing up against terrorism, even if it meant being ostracized, supporting the idea that life begins at conception.

 

Ron Radosh summed up well:

Christopher was a bundle of contradictions, a “contrarian” for life as he put it himself, a man who was charming, witty, a wonderful guest and raconteur, and a man who simply could not put up with hypocrisy and tyranny. I miss him greatly, and like so many others who knew him only from his writing, mourn his loss. R.I.P. And if you meet St. Peter and he asks you why you were not a believer, like the late Sidney Hook, you can tell him: “You didn’t give me enough evidence.”

 

Ron IMO puts it well. As for his loathing of hypocrisy, another way of putting this is loathing of Human Beings as hypocritical behavior can be found in everyone...at least everyone I've ever gotten to know...Myself included (OTHO I get a great deal of comfort from St Paul calling himself the "Chief Of Sinners"). As the old saying goes..."Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue". I also wonder if any hypocritical behavior behavior could be found in his life, and did he ever bring his wit and intellect to bear on it?

As for tyranny, well there are tyrants and then there are tyrants.

 

At his best he was a seeker, and someone who really did speak truth to power (at least as he saw it), at his worst he was a bitter angry man lashing out at a world that didn't do what he wanted it to do.

 

 

I will say this The world is a less interesting and grayer place without him in it.