United Liberty

In this C-SPAN interview, Christopher Hitchens reflects how it feels to be six decades old and wiser. This fantastic interview ranges from his writing approach to waterboarding.

Wow, I never realized how much I have in common with Christopher Hitchens. I also wanted to be an actor (or an artist) as a child but ended up tossing that aside. I took Drama classes in high school but writing quickly overtook my life, becoming my primary focus above girls, school, music and exercise.

Writing chooses you. A writer has an affinity for the written word and actually gets pleasure out of simply reading and even more pleasure out of reading his own finished work. He reads so much that writing comes about naturally, as he has read nearly as (and sometimes just as) frequently as he speaks.

It’s somewhat surprising that Hitchens suggested so many novels, being a man who shaped his career on writing non-fiction. It’s also worth noting that he accidentally makes the same case that many make for theism, which is that men create art so beautiful that it seems beyond the capabilities of simple human beings. Maybe Hitchens will have to re-evaluate his thesis.

On Real Time with Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens (with the aid of Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie, in the odd situation of being on the same side as Hitchens) takes apart Mos Def’s “arguments” (though that may be a generous description).

Famed provocateur Christopher Hitchens made a bad move while in Lebanon:

However, when the controversial author, journalist and broadcaster defaced a political poster on a visit to Beirut last week, he found himself at the wrong end of a bruising encounter that has left him walking with a limp and nursing cuts and bruises.

Hitchens had been drinking on Beirut’s main boulevard, Hamra Street, on Saturday afternoon with two other western journalists after attending a rally to commemorate the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. They spotted a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a far-right group whose logo bears an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika, and Hitchens decided to act.

Following is a clip of Morning Joe on MSNBC, wherein Joe Scarborough has on two of my favorite political commentators: Christopher Hitchens and Pat Buchanan. Hitchens takes apart the idiotic US anti-drug policy in regards to how it is applied in Afghanistan. He later goes on to criticize Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s use of sex appeal.

Neo-conservative and Iraq war architect William Kristol has had a regular spot as a columnist in the New York Times op-ed page for a few months now. Announced in late 2007, it got alot of people on the Left angry. His latest column, “Will Russia Get Away With It?” suggests that he would like the US to put its resources into putting Russia in its place.

Each time I see Kristol’s name in the Times, I have to wonder why he’s there. If the New York Times noticed that it was becoming the journal of choice for Moveon.org members, then they could picked from numerous conservatives with ideas that are based on destruction. Here’s a short list:

Patrick J. Buchanan - MSNBC has made him a regular commentator, so Buchanan knows how to work in left-wing environments. Buchanan already writes regular columns, so it wouldn’t be hard. They could just republish those.