Peter Robinson remembers Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens died two years ago this December and to remember my old friend we're going to present a few excerpts from interviews with Christopher over the years Christopher and I last spent a reasonable piece of time with each other on New Year's Day 2011 he had come to California and was clearly saying goodbye to his friends we spent the afternoon with a bottle of whiskey I'm not embarrassed to say talking about everything we talked about over our long friendship politics we disagreed about half of the time literature we were always in agreement his literary judgments and he was extremely widely read I always found flawless and then it came to matters of religion in which we disagreed completely I believe Christopher was incorrect to argue that a man could only be free without God at the same time though I granted that freedom the individual independence of the mind and the spirit was what always remained his central concern just as I was about to leave somehow GK Chesterton a writer we both admired came up and Christopher astonishingly to me recited Chesterton's long poem Lepanto by heart the poem is about the great sea battle in 1571 in which Don Juan of Austria Chesterton calls him Don John in which Don Juan of Austria gathers the forces and defeats the Ottoman fleet saving christened him strong Gong's groaning as the guns boom far Don John of Austria is going to war torchlight crimson on the copper kettledrums than the Tuck 'its then the trumpets then the cannon and he comes Don John laughing in the brave beard curled spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world holding his head up for a flag of all the free Don John of Austria is riding to the see christopher hitchens night and troubadour who so loved going to the wars and who held his head up for a flag of all the free and now a few excerpts of interviews with Christopher Hitchens during which I'm sure you will see why his many friends two years later still miss him I was a dedicated Marxist I was a member of an organization that was actually cast right organization if you wish to my personal history you have to get some secretary minutiae I in it was a Luxembourgish Trotskyist organization and we sent a delegation of people to see whether or not the Cuban Revolution was as advertised a break with the Soviet model a new start and all of that and this was remembered shortly after the death of the much controverted Ernesto Che Guevara and it was a very interesting trying to be there because I was there during the invasion of Czechoslovakia so search was certain the point of which it became evident the Castro is and was not going to live up to the advertised hopes so very it was a you were how old Christopher I was then 1919 and you were in Oxford at that time I was the end of my first year in Oxford right now what I'm interested in is to the extent to which your thinking was in some way representative of the thinking of your generation that is to say those protesters in Chicago those people planting beans in Cuba were you an outlier were you especially ideological or was there was there a hard ideological core but we felt in our little corner of the left that the great thing about 96 J was exactly that both of the Cold War camps were undergoing a convulsion and our great hope was which was disappointed was were convergence between those two things your great hope as it as a member of this small organ is the Trotskyite organization or your great hope is your generations great hope well I think it was this was held in common by a lot of people who were completely new to politics and quite naive about it the war in Vietnam you oppose it on moral and ideological grounds is aggressive and imperialist yes now so my question is you really believed that you thought that the United States was the the United States was the offending party I would affirm Lee now in fact with greater knowledge and infinitely evidence of draw upon that the Chinese the Soviets supplying the North Vietnamese were the good guys in this one I think the hardest employer to get people to remember now even though they must remember it at the time or should is that the official reason given for intervention in there now well there was several and they kept changing but one of them was that it was to stop Chinese expansionism into the indo-chinese Peninsula that's now considered so ridiculous and it's so self-evidently untrue that it's hard to remember that that was one of the official alibis all right what did you make of the civil rights matter well I couldn't phrase it better than you did I mean it seemed to me that it was the some are really especially dr. King's leadership of what it was to take part in the movement that we call the 60s and I think probably the crucial amendment for me I remember very well was when dr. King and his address at Riverside Church said that despite enormous lectures from the black establishment and the white liberal establishment too he was no longer going to remain silent by the Vietnam War because and here's my third point about that war as well as about the movement all the energy that should have gone to the repair of legal racism and poverty and South legally enforceable poverty and racism it was going on the woman that Johnson emulated his Great Society for that war and the connection between the two seemed so strong and self-evident this to be well with me still Lyndon Johnson broke his hump getting the civil rights bill sent to Congress nobody broke his hump during that process him for a broke his heart and other bits of his anatomy and other people's as well in Indochina and destroyed what had been going to be the great they are the avatar's Great Society now we talk about lawlessness and the rest of it right so the contempt for law what we only suspected there has been amply demonstrated since that there was really quite high level collusion with crime and disorder and subversion and provocation by those who were sworn to uphold it either roger ebert kennedy listen yes absolutely but bugging by planting a tional provocateur by stirring up incidents of violence by circulating false racist propaganda and in mississippi all the files have not has been published of how the state authorities themselves colluded in in murder and kidnapping and lynch so Bush is making a terrible mistake terrible mistake you know so journalism cannot be countenanced religious sectarianism is the worst poison that can ever affect society we are helping to empower it at the center even as we are I will say helping to defeat it on the periphery this is a contradiction that can't go on for very much longer I Debra Lee the president understands it for a second President Bush once again here's his rash one of the rationales he puts forward for remaining in Iraq we fight quote we fight for the possibility that decent men and women across the broader Middle East can realize their destiny and raise up societies based on freedom and justice and personal dignity close quote how do you respond to that well um initially after the liberation of doubt in the first place liberation right at this big there were very positive responses from the people of Lebanon for example the Virgen in a majority to get rid of Syrian occupation and reversion to power something like a multi-confessional Democratic coalition since been a terrible counter stroke to that from Hezbollah and it's Syrian and Iranian back there's nonetheless it was a example worth having who started a very lively argument about democratization and reform in Egypt the crucial country in the region and even in Saudi Arabia Egypt is crucial why because it's so big 60 million someone once said I forget who it was now so that all the Egypt is the only real country nation all the rest of those tribes with flags it's a really it's an ancient ruling civilization a large population list it's the crossroads country low nile there it's got real settings listen in depth got it alright well you see I mean just on the Clinton thing if I may yes application becomes president he's the first man to take the earth office after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the Soviet Union it's all over he's have got wonderful opportunity to redo foreign policy of which he makes almost nothing and by the way he said he would help the Bosnians during the election company let that run for two years had to intervene when it was nearly disaster nothing will ever face the shame of what he refused to do even give an advice of what was going to happen in Rwanda my dad and I don't hear the most of the most of the Senate and congressional Republican Party was opposed to the rescue operation in Bosnia as it was in Kosovo that deserves to be said I think so it was absolutely in favor of doing nothing about Rwanda and a large chunk of the right-wing still think that the war on terror is a war for Israel or a war for liberalism I call something that America should stay out of so there's not a left-right question I think this is more understanding on my part the reaction of a lot of Democrats and liberals to the September 11th events was obviously in common with everyone else revulsion disgust hatred so when it when they consider politically I think a lot of them couldn't say this but they thought that's the end of our agenda for a little while we're not people not nearly talking very much about welfare and gay marriage and starting to be living in law and order times now the instinct is to think well that that must favor the right-wing surely that creates a climate for the Conservatives law and order and warfare and mobilization support in fact the Second World War probably was a tremendous asset to the Democratic Left presumably where the right was so opposed to going into it because they they know there's a relationship between social mobilization warfare but the left is too dumb to see this in this case and then some of them are cracked potted enough to think that if it comes out like that maybe it was all fixed to come out like this oh then totally is go back but we got a cultural hero made out of someone like Michael was willing to deal in that kind of talk and more than willing to do it in a parent man who might be would have made a perfectly good brown shirt actually does make a perfectly good brother Marxism takes its point of departure from the study of real forces of production conflict reinforce the relationship reduction study of capitalism this kind of thing other people like to look for hidden financial conspiracies and so forth that's the other socialism for The Wall Street Journal and the Hoover Institution I'm Peter Robinson

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 42,466

Rating: 4.9453416 out of 5

Keywords: Marxism, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, Great Society, Iraq, Middle East, terrorism

Id: jJKf8wpmOXc

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2014

Reddit Comments

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While he may have clear personal opinions that sometimes come out, I really like Peter Robinson as an unbiased interviewer. He has the potential to be a good debate moderator.

His interviews of Thomas Sowell are really good, especially if you are interested in economic liberalism.