Christopher Hitchens interview on Thomas Jefferson and more (2005)

Christopher Hitchens is here he is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine also writes a monthly column for The Atlantic Monthly he has written a dozen books including a long short war and why Orwell matters his new book is called Thomas Jefferson author of America I am pleased to welcome Christopher back to this table and it is a pleasure for me and I just want to know you did not want to be the only pan this is your words you did not want to be the only author in America who'd never written about Thomas Jefferson that's right if you have to write a book about Thomas Jefferson if you quote for any position in society yeah or you'll never be a net or Academie Francaise will never accept you if you never written well never have dared propose myself for this book yeah but when an editor called and said what I'd like to do it I read I couldn't refuse because if you write about America which is the great subject yeah you're always watching TJ you he's in all of our conversations but it's time I made my own self what is it about Americans you think in the founding fathers they're just interesting people it's a remarkable remarkable as a cheap easy it's a extraord it's not worthy to the extraordinary fact there were a couple of occasions in history I suppose 5th century Athens is one a group of people who were brought together to compose the King James Bible very decent book ever written by a committee is another and those who convened in Philadelphia in a city the first city in the new world to be a city of the enlightenment of science and medicine and reason comparable to the French Phyllis off it's all new and it's already and they have added whole continent to practice it on and Franklin and Madison and emmab Jefferson and Hamilton is these lines Thomas epic my personal favorite actually Thomas Paine a child off and fighter for the English revolution British enlightenment coming wafting across the Atlantic with a letter just carrying a letter from Grant Franklin saying be nice to the sky all of them getting the Benjamin Rush Joseph Priestley's low-oxygen like a nice name is the power of his ideas a bit because a power of his 10 colleagues EE well he's my model for Englishmen in America Oh fantastic pan and because he shows that age of reason and rights of man of the same thing you can't have rights a man without major reason and because I think he's the first person to use the word Democratic as a compliment John Adams used the word general practical as an insult most people did Edmund Burke Jed Payne says no Democrat isn't this a good word Thomas Jefferson you've written more books in Thomas Jefferson ever wrote this great writer no it's true Jefferson never wrote a book the one I think one well no he wrote a great deal and we're still all right build things but mostly letters yes it's one book as far as I know um I guess well I think maybe we could say three - well notes on the state of Virginia wonderful but rather worrying book about yeah Ghana means Society imagine his own autobiography and his own version of the New Testament the Jefferson Bible he snipped out all the ludicrous bits in that good is his own autobiography it's not very good at all Harry no I mean I it's it's it's a thing you have to encounter when you're dealing with him this is a very cold guy in some ways rather solitary almost no sense of humor very ruthless very simple mind you excuse him for not having a sense of humor it's very hard to do he thought he thought Stern's tristram shandy was a funny novel and you couldn't believe read aloud to his wife and would laugh with him and I think that really I mean it's a really big scene not without wit but without humor also forbidding figures you also suggest he's a great compromiser yes at everything yes but not just of his own self-interest no not a great triangulation for the for the country he wonders if he if he thought it would enlarge the power and reach of the United States there's nothing he wouldn't do in other words he really believed one should always consult Congress on major matters especially if they withhold spending but he committed them without knowing without telling them to remove the pirate slave states from North Africa and send the flea to finish them off and he cheated them he'd be on the the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Louisiana Purchase by basically trying to raise the money privately fantastically unconstitutional we will need the money to bribe the French we'll need the money to finesse expedition will smuggle it through Congress under another name and people will when they realize what we've done they'll approve it what did you like most about him his contempt for religion I think something you share yes his scornfully his scorn for faith and for what he would call superstition and for organized religion and his but his respect for it in that he said everyone must be allowed to practice any form of it that they wish but they that must not involve the government they must not try involve state power for the spreading of yeah did he Virginia's tragedy because freedom is the foundation of the First Amendment okay but wait it's one thing they want to see a separation of State and church it's another thing to have contempt for church so dense he had contempt for church you didn't believe it chef influence on state you know what is to be secular you don't have to be an agnostic no let alone atheist or anti theist was he anybody I'm impressed by the father for his time he was unusually scornful and skeptical of religions claims he didn't really believe them he he faced his own death very sternly and surgeon I'm I'm approaching it with I with neither hope nor fear music on should be no quit strain that agnostic yeah may have been a deist of some kind flirted with Unitarianism really despised the Presbyterians particularly response to them they were who the strongest faction in Virginia because I really just really got any and all that predestiny stuff yes because of the cruel Calvinist theology and because of their greed their desire to be maintained by the public purse I think that when he was towards the end of his life and he died Ray Lewis said no priest anywhere near the bedside nothing on the headstone no this is quite quite extraordinary who was there Sally Hemings was there yes she was well she was his wife's half-sister remember you know I mean the extraordinary thing a lot of people don't know it but I mean Sally Hemings had the same father as Martha Jefferson so we already know some of what's going on on the old plantation and she comes to him as a gift from his his deceased father in law and she's a she's a privileged house servant already thanks God the Father is also John to perish with him had she seen was went to Paris to bring his daughter over yeah where and slavery wasn't legal on French soil that's where they met properly when I started whatever relationship they had or I believe so yes I think it must have don't know 15 I'm sorry to say I mean borderline from what we would think of as legitimate but grown and we've grown enough to be given charge of his daughter to cross the Atlantic on her own with a child where are you in terms of American foreign policy supported military action in Kosovo supported military action in Iraq you seem to believe have come to this not because of Iraq and not because of new conserve neoconservatives and all that they have written about regime change and everything else and and and the promotion of democracy you seem to have come from this because of a hatred of dictators what should be inputted very friendly to me now how would you put it well that's better I would know I wanted I would and that's what I wish people would conclude I mean I decided if the cold war was over we thought maybe we now can start to dismantle the weapons and spend some more money on the third world and all of that remember the pieced average dividend and the lasted four if you count before the Berlin Wars November 89 last year about 120 days the solution so then Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait sobered a Milosevic invades Bosnia right ruins our new scheme of course how could I be so naive cooperation with coexistence with totalitarian and expansionist one man state one god state ideologies is impossible and that's good because it's not desirable it's also them it'll be them even more truth also about is what's the little song is amount we can't we actually there isn't enough room on the planet for than them and so they think that with us what they think and say and they're right they what they being there's a linkage between all of these people or they just worship the same area there is a linkage oddly enough for example Sabinas well Swenson a saying was slaughtering the Muslim which Saddam Hussein super-slow Gamal ostrich was slaughtering the Muslims of kasnia yeah he had support and weapons from Saddam Hussein the alleged leader of Muslim feeling well but it was simply a mercenary act rather than a and it will say they put actually their militaries had also both had a parasitic relationship with the old Soviet Union as it happens they were they both welcome the over the attempted overthrow of course off remember that coup when it look true was of course offers done both of artists and the Serbian socialists but applauded that there is a subconscious connection it's bonded by untie mechanism and has that in common of course with jihad in his purest form the monotonous Taliban lot and with the post Stalinism the sort of you raised Kimmel son is at world what's the solution to the fact that this regime has nuclear weapons and may do a nuclear test in the near future and and is unlikely to stop their program all three of the axis of evil countries will guess this evilly I guess this evening came on he's now joined me as a second point of been to all three to Iran North Korea yet the all three of them have tried the Hardaway's not reject their their failed States their failed regimes and their discredited ideologies they've tried to postpone the reckoning of this by buying themselves insurance through weapons of mass destruction one way or another one of them's now being disarmed I know a lot of people complain about this and say he was disarmed already but in fact we didn't know he was disarmed till he was removed and I think both things were good to certify we're standing herb added to going and there and the strength it of the insurgency and all of that well knowing how about the enemy is isn't in undermining of my position I mean nothing has clouded you can see officer man jihadism linked arms doing indiscriminate mass murder and sabotage I mean do you think that proves me wrong I think you proved proof show you that we would have to say that this was a necessary confrontation what are we to do now walk away from that know the which was the alliance of Bacchus and then jihadism and don't let anyone tell you but it but is the other side is that is that Alliance because we weren't there or was that lions that there came as a resisting mr. czaka we was in Iraq long before the invasion and come from Afghanistan from the next camp over to us ominous is leader he's not an Iraqi I I know Iraq well enough to tell you this much in those days no one of that importance could get into the country or out of it without permission of leadership or was he at that time very he was well the Saudis if you remember how he was a scientist for the Saudis and the Pakistanis were expelling people like him even the Saudis and the Pakistanis in that way after 9/11 Iraq was inviting them in what does that tell you as it had done the man mr. Yasiin who'd blown up the World Trade Center in 1993 who still we're still looking for on Iraqi soil which where he weighs been for 12 years after trying to destroy our downtown come on you have been all your life engaged in dis petition yes Oxford you know you you come to moral before I was okay you come to America and and you know and had been written writing about culture and or series of s lots of essays about culture including that thing was forward to the I guess was the 50th anniversary of Olga March was that mean you wrote about that and a lot of other things and and you have been in the forefront of sort of supporting the administration in terms of Iraq and in terms of the regimes like Saddam Hussein what's the operative philosophy because you have said some interesting things about the globalization which is about production needs to be matched in terms of a certain kind of standard of decency and behavior it helped me understand the you had the ideological or intellectual underpinnings and the architecture for how you make decisions about policy well you you promise you won't think it's opportunist of me because because I have a book coming out on this but if the word jeffersonian wouldn't be too bad for this in other words the Russian Revolution is over it's no longer a model for anybody and the Chinese were a passive no longer model for anybody may the Cuban Revolution is about the change prevalent revive its were only by mutating into its opposite and metamorphosing new cuban revolution is dead in the water i wouldn't say that the ideas of 1789 in france would work by any means gone but jefferson helped to write the universal declaration lara influenced by the american it effect therefore the only revolution internet which has a chance of being worth emulation worth studying from other countries with pluralism religious freedom separation secular separation and the right of anyone to try and make a living their own way of worship there and god it's not may not sound very grandiose but it's not bad and will serve and most of the countries I have been to in the past few years would all be taking a step up if they moved in that direction and most of them know it so to discover that after it's all shaken out that the American Revolution still has some life and purpose and meat and muscle in it is I think a rather inspiring thing for someone of my age I don't think I'd have another chance to take part in a revolution and now in fact the United States is involved in it you know combat but is Jeffersonian around around the world but there's interesting sports probably tried everything what you articulate a lot of people I mean you know you see a whole range of people who are intelligent and come to this show a lot people like Ignatieff people like it comes less but David Reath and a whole range of people you know who engaged by Sarajevo and engaged by Bosnia and Kosovo and had been engaged coming and splitting on the question of Iraq sure they were almost in unity on Bosnia and Kosovo and Michael would not have certainly for a while at least so in Iraq I'm not sure what his position now is I think his vision didn't I think his position is didn't go as the way he thought he wanted it to go but he believed but I think he's still you know the way I wanted it to either of us but the principle is this the they thought it was optional they also said that I thought it was optional it was it was a war of choice right I thought but they both those points were mistaken we were in fact responsible for Iraq already it was broken and we had inherited it and it did belong to us yeah are you having more fun with politics today or more driven to write about politician you're about our culture and well literature I'd still rather write about literature and culture because I think this is a war about civilization it may not be a clash you know why other civilizations but it's a clash about civilization and so if and it's a clash with people who think you only need one book okay but define me with the clash is per made one more time even though we talked around it all day this is a war it's a civil war within the Muslim world where the those who believe in the restoration of the Islamic caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law and the reading of only one book it felt a memorizing of only one book as a matter want to enslave their Muslim brothers and sisters and make them all that's their fighting and that's not all right no no because they would we might conceivably want to be neutral about this though I don't think we could be for long but those who want the jihadist Sharia victory have decided that they'll make their point we're exporting the war to our soil which they have dramatically done and so we now have I think are consuming ly strong interest in making certain that the civil war within Islam that sure there's more than one but the the civil wars within Islam are not one no one knows are not one of the central criticisms and one of the central criticisms is that you know for the lack of a better word I wish there was a better word those who that civil war one side has not done a very good job of fighting its war that is the site of fighting against the fundamentalist and the radicals they have not done a good job in making their battle no they have not so-called moderates they have not though there are forces who put up a pretty brave fight I mean them the Kurdish militia in northern Iraq for example are all Sunni but they've been resisting jihadism as well as baathism for a long time they won't live on they'll never agree to live under we've been possible to subdue them I'm gonna go there are numerous secular forces in in the rest of the region and their people we haven't heard about yet who will find their voice and I think even if they didn't want to say thank you they'll have to admit that the United States intervention was to help to them a human Amos best friends isn't all my best phrase my only friend yeah I have though only acquaintances want to be friends no I'm fascinated by just define it for me then why is it different someone who I really love and would you know consider laying down the life form doesn't come along very often someone who knows everything about you who understands everything you say I agree you're asking because we had a quarrel over Stalin no I'm really asking because I like him a lot like he was very good that's why will you classmates or not no we weren't we didn't meet so we were in London in the early 70s yeah whole group I bet him it also briefly but he was a year behind me in fact Christopher Hitchens Thomas Jefferson thank you for joining us see you next

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016