Arguably one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the 20th and early 21st centuries has died. Where ever you are Christopher, if there is anywhere after death, rest in peace.
One of our greatest minds, extinguished far too soon.
Like when George Carlin died, the average IQ of the human race has dropped a few digits with his passing.
People are all too ready to overlook the disturbing flaws in Christopher Hitchens' personality.
He was the one who coined the term "fascism with an Islamic face", giving birth and significant impetus to the modern far-right islamophobe movement, although probably not willingly so. He was very sympathetic of Paul Wolfowitz's version of foreign policy, which I regard as criminal.
He supported the war on terror, stooping very low in being frankly verbally abusive towards Noam Chomsky when they debated the subject in print, and accusing those who did not support the war on terror of being in league with Islamist terrorists.
He was an avid and vocal supporter of the Iraq war, calling it "justified" and "legal".
He supported George W. Bush in the 2004 elections, which is unforgivable.
He was equally intolerant as religious fanatics are, because he viewed any sort of religious belief as a totalitarian structure. He did not recognize the freedom of conscience, which is what bothers me in many so-called atheists: they are missionary. I detest missionaries.
That is not to say that Hitchens wasn't right on many subjects - Ronald Reagan, for instance, or his very vocal attacks on the use of torture. However, I'm not willing to eulogize this man. I see two completely different Christopher Htichens - a very intelligent and sympathetic thinker before the 1989 fatwa on Salman Rushdie (no saint himself), and an increasingly belligerent and paranoid conservative after.
Hitchens was lessened by rather dark contrarian impulses and that bent to evangelical atheism. He was fiercely intelligent, unusually prolific and possessed a quick and devastating wit, but he was more master rhetorician than great thinker really. He was overrated I think as both a public intellectual and a touchstone of popular culture. His legacy is a mixed one, but at 62 he was much too young to be leaving a final legacy at all. These things are always sad.