The Myth

I had just mentioned Hitchens in my blog, because I swear I heard him say that there is nothing he does which is moral that has anything to do with God. He also said, I think, that people are born with an innate sense of right and wrong. Huh? I agree with you that the myth is perpetrated by wannabes. Thanks for the very clear and stinging smackdown. SOO tired of Hitchens!

I have a few questions about your presenting old Bertrand as a defensible intellectual; and i have found value in Ayers only as a foil when attempting to understand behavioral psychologists and modernist pscho philosophers and theologians.

This is not to say that you do not have a basis for what you write. My reservations stem from witnessing the corrupting effects of old Bertrand in the philosophic and theologic wars of the 1960's. He was ever present at Sather Gate and The Village and Boston Commons. Then when I sat on his favorite bench in Russell Square, i realized that the man was a walking plague for the young minds who gathered about him, especially the women and men of weak intellectual character and questionable emotional stability.

I agree emphatically with your assessment of Hitchens. I was summarily dismissed from the Telegraph blog when i attempted to score some of his more obvious duplicities. You see, The Telegraph editors seemed mesmerized by him; and, of course, he made big money for them in the colonies.

I respect your scholarship and welcome the raising of the bar.

Happy Trails.

However misguided and wrong he was on a whole slew of things, he was a genuine intellectual. He had the credentials, his arguments were valid even if his conclusions were wrong and they were not filled with ad hominems. And, if nothing else, he was not a hypocrite. I really think he would have flunked a Hitchens type in class.

Thanks Klem!!

Glad I'm not alone. Although I suspect there are a lot of us out there that feel the same way about him