To permit this gross new revelation to fade, or be forgiven, would be to devalue our most essential standard of what constitutes the unpardonable. And for what? For the reputation of a man who turns out to be not even a Holocaust denier but a Holocaust affirmer. There has to be a moral limit, and either this has to be it or we must cease pretending to ourselves that we observe one.
Christopher HitchensMots clés morality holocaust 2010 henry-kissinger nixon-library-and-museum the-holocaust-denial
Lefever describes his financing plan with modesty:
"'Our detailed budget is realistic, but does not take into account the inflation that may occur before September 1983. The one place it could cut or reduce is item 7, the simultaneous interpreter services, if these services could be provided gratis by the U.S. government.'"
"In other words, the only way to make a saving on a U.S.-subsidized project is to take money out of another U.S.-subsidized column.
Mots clés united-states inflation budgets 1983 ernest-w-lefever ethics-and-public-center
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
Christopher HitchensMots clés morality evil liberalism united-states george-w-bush iraq sudan anti-war iraq-war rwanda bill-clinton united-nations leftism democratic-party-united-states ba-ath-party saddam-hussein rwandan-genocide peace-movement madeleine-albright presidency-of-bill-clinton absolutism al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory moral-absolutism moral-relativism opposition-to-the-iraq-war presidency-of-george-w-bush
You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor.
Christopher HitchensMots clés george-w-bush communism iraq anti-war socialism iraq-war leftism middle-east democratic-party-united-states ba-ath-party saddam-hussein invasion-of-kuwait kuwait baghdad kurdish-people peace-movement republican-party-united-states opposition-to-the-iraq-war al-anfal-campaign iran-iraq-war iraqi-communist-party iraqi-kurdistan labour-movement
Some peaceniks clear their throats by saying that, of course, they oppose Saddam Hussein as much as anybody, though not enough to support doing anything about him.
Christopher HitchensMots clés iraq iraq-war saddam-hussein antiwar-movement interventionism
Obviously, there must be some connection between the subordination of actual individuals and the grotesque exaltation of symbolic ones like Kim Il Sung.
Christopher HitchensMots clés psychology dictatorship cults north-korea kim-il-sung subordination
It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse.
Christopher HitchensMots clés morality death humour cancer
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
Christopher HitchensMots clés women children religion atheism hell feminism sexism child-abuse women-and-religion rhetorical-questions religion-and-children
And I'll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people, I learned, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilisation, and has to be fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic Jihad. Daniel Pearl's revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college, the chair of the Islamic Students' Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people are being reported from all over Europe today as I'm talking, and we can only expect this to get worse, and we must make sure our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this—this pest, by its right name; to make unceasing resistance to it, knowing all the time that it's probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment, and resolving (some of the time, at any rate) to do a bit more to deserve it. Thank you.
Christopher HitchensMots clés murder war tyranny christmas civilisation fascism islam racism jews europe london speeches jihad detroit pogroms ahmed-omar-saeed-sheikh anti-semitism daniel-pearl northwest-airlines-flight-253 umar-farouk-abdulmutallab
Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.
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