Hitchens' Sincerity
Despite my general misgivings about him I feel fairly sure that the views that Christopher Hitchens expresses in the book God is Not Good are sincere.
In my annual checkup with my doctor, there was a Newsweek magazine in the office with a picture of Bush and the caption: "Bush: Determined or Delusional?" I told my doctor that I'm inclined to think Bush is the latter. The doctor said, "Well, at least Bush is sincere." I said, "The choice isn't between lies and sincerity but lies and truth," to which my doctor agreed.
Hitchens' sincerity is meaningless as to the truth content of the book. But I will make the observation that Hitchens has wrongly (in my opinion) embraced the most towering ethical issue of our time-- America's war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror. And now that the march of time has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt his rhetorical neo-conservative foolishness, Hitchens now wants to change the subject by taking cheap shots against organized religion.
Hitchens' sincerity is not so much in question as his credability.
I've come to wonder if maybe Hitchens isn't striving to become the modern day Mencken. Saying this, though, I'd say Hitchens has an uphill battle. Mencken was truly "one of a kind." His skill as a wordsmith places him beyond the reach of most every would-be imitator.
It's easy to get intoxicated by Mencken's prose. But I would encourage you to attempt to read more that Bryan and Mencken than just what they wrote in the last year of Bryan's life. Both Bryan and Mencken left a rich heritage in stating where they stood on the issues of the day. Rather focusing on just the Scopes trial, how about looking more broadly at where Bryan and Mencken stood on other policy questions as well as issues that reflect their personal ethics?
1. Woman's rights.
2. The labor movement
3. Totaliterianism. (Bryan was dead by the time Hitler's intentions were known, but Mencken's admiration for Hitlerism is well established.)
4. Civil rights generally, but more specifically to blacks, Jews, Catholics, and other minorities,
5. Farmers and small town merchants
You may be right. Hitchens may be striving to be a modern day equivalent to Mencken-- a professional know-nothing bigot.
That you apparently find Mencken's influence limited to the Scopes Trial is absurd. He was one of the most well known and influential literary figures of the '20s, as a social and cultural critic of mordant wit and extraordinarily powerful literary skill.
I certainly agree thay Mencken's influence extended well beyond the Scopes trial, hitting the apex in the roaring 20s but waning during the Great Depression and in the context of his support for Hitlerism. Of the books he wrote, my favorite is his autobiography "Happy Days." Mencken was the darling of sophomores across the nation, who delighted in his elitism, his vulgarity, his pugnacity, his prose. In my view, the journalism that most resembles him today can be found in the conservative rags "National Review" and "Spectator" magazines.
As Wikpedia notes, one of "the disadvantages of slashing satire is that it does only that: slash. Alfred Kazin called Mencken's criticisms impotent since "Every Babbitt read him gleefully and pronounced his neighbor a Babbitt" -- they permitted a circular firing squad of self-righteous viciousness. ... Mencken tended to go too far as matter-of-course; consequently he was the first to say what needed to be said in his criticisms of lynching, World War I-era civil liberties abuses, and especially the dismally moral and philistine American arts. On the other hand, this extremism left him with a body of work filled with unsubtle reviews of the subtle and scores of openly vicious statements about all ethnicities."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
Now Bryan, in the '20s, was a paid huckster for Florida real estate, a fundie promoter, and a professional "hit-man" battling the theory of evolution. He was, like most of his ilk, a dinosaur; an agrarian utopian, a nostalgic dreamer, who couldn't fathom the transition of America into the industrial age.
Everything you say is true. But his story doesn't end there. Bryan was also a progressive who denounced the annexation of the Phillipines and imperialism, called for the dissolving of trusts, and promoted woman's suffarage. Today, he would be known as a liberal, which for you and other reactionaries is perhaps a species of dinosaur. The irony is that Bryan and Mencken both shared a gift for words and their careers were shaped by World War I. For Menken and his collegiate amen chorus, the results was cynicism and a contempt for democracy, the working class, and religion. Bryan looked for the roots of the war elsewhere, as Wikpedia states, in social darwinism.
"This attitude changed when the horrors of the First World War convinced Bryan that Darwinism was not only a potential threat, but had in fact undermined morality. Before World War I, Bryan had been an optimist who believed that moral progress could achieve equality at home and, in the international field, peace between all the nations of the world. World War I convinced him that this optimism was misplaced and that moral progress seemed to have ground to a complete halt.
In concluding that Darwinism was responsible for the immorality of the present age, Bryan was heavily influenced by two books: the first was Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in Belgium and France by Vernon Kellogg (1917), which forwarded that most German military leaders were committed Darwinists who were skeptical of Christianity. The second was The Science of Power by Benjamin Kidd (1918), which argued that German nationalism, materialism, and militarism could be attributed to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, which in turn was the logical outworking of the Darwinian hypothesis."
With the hindsight of the history of the holocaust, Bryan turned out to be be right and Mencken was wrong on an issue for more serious and far-reaching than the Scopes sideshow. Nietzchism did indeed inform the dogma of the fascists, and the result was indeed was the mass degredation of human rights. Bryan was far from perfect and indeed shared in Mencken's racism. But to portrary him as the one-dimensional Inheit the Wind character that you have chosen to do defies the facts and makes me think that it is you who is the unprincipled hit-man.
In my annual checkup with my doctor, there was a Newsweek magazine in the office with a picture of Bush and the caption: "Bush: Determined or Delusional?" I told my doctor that I'm inclined to think Bush is the latter. The doctor said, "Well, at least Bush is sincere." I said, "The choice isn't between lies and sincerity but lies and truth," to which my doctor agreed.
Hitchens' sincerity is meaningless as to the truth content of the book. But I will make the observation that Hitchens has wrongly (in my opinion) embraced the most towering ethical issue of our time-- America's war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror. And now that the march of time has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt his rhetorical neo-conservative foolishness, Hitchens now wants to change the subject by taking cheap shots against organized religion.
Hitchens' sincerity is not so much in question as his credability.
I've come to wonder if maybe Hitchens isn't striving to become the modern day Mencken. Saying this, though, I'd say Hitchens has an uphill battle. Mencken was truly "one of a kind." His skill as a wordsmith places him beyond the reach of most every would-be imitator.
It's easy to get intoxicated by Mencken's prose. But I would encourage you to attempt to read more that Bryan and Mencken than just what they wrote in the last year of Bryan's life. Both Bryan and Mencken left a rich heritage in stating where they stood on the issues of the day. Rather focusing on just the Scopes trial, how about looking more broadly at where Bryan and Mencken stood on other policy questions as well as issues that reflect their personal ethics?
1. Woman's rights.
2. The labor movement
3. Totaliterianism. (Bryan was dead by the time Hitler's intentions were known, but Mencken's admiration for Hitlerism is well established.)
4. Civil rights generally, but more specifically to blacks, Jews, Catholics, and other minorities,
5. Farmers and small town merchants
You may be right. Hitchens may be striving to be a modern day equivalent to Mencken-- a professional know-nothing bigot.
That you apparently find Mencken's influence limited to the Scopes Trial is absurd. He was one of the most well known and influential literary figures of the '20s, as a social and cultural critic of mordant wit and extraordinarily powerful literary skill.
I certainly agree thay Mencken's influence extended well beyond the Scopes trial, hitting the apex in the roaring 20s but waning during the Great Depression and in the context of his support for Hitlerism. Of the books he wrote, my favorite is his autobiography "Happy Days." Mencken was the darling of sophomores across the nation, who delighted in his elitism, his vulgarity, his pugnacity, his prose. In my view, the journalism that most resembles him today can be found in the conservative rags "National Review" and "Spectator" magazines.
As Wikpedia notes, one of "the disadvantages of slashing satire is that it does only that: slash. Alfred Kazin called Mencken's criticisms impotent since "Every Babbitt read him gleefully and pronounced his neighbor a Babbitt" -- they permitted a circular firing squad of self-righteous viciousness. ... Mencken tended to go too far as matter-of-course; consequently he was the first to say what needed to be said in his criticisms of lynching, World War I-era civil liberties abuses, and especially the dismally moral and philistine American arts. On the other hand, this extremism left him with a body of work filled with unsubtle reviews of the subtle and scores of openly vicious statements about all ethnicities."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
Now Bryan, in the '20s, was a paid huckster for Florida real estate, a fundie promoter, and a professional "hit-man" battling the theory of evolution. He was, like most of his ilk, a dinosaur; an agrarian utopian, a nostalgic dreamer, who couldn't fathom the transition of America into the industrial age.
Everything you say is true. But his story doesn't end there. Bryan was also a progressive who denounced the annexation of the Phillipines and imperialism, called for the dissolving of trusts, and promoted woman's suffarage. Today, he would be known as a liberal, which for you and other reactionaries is perhaps a species of dinosaur. The irony is that Bryan and Mencken both shared a gift for words and their careers were shaped by World War I. For Menken and his collegiate amen chorus, the results was cynicism and a contempt for democracy, the working class, and religion. Bryan looked for the roots of the war elsewhere, as Wikpedia states, in social darwinism.
"This attitude changed when the horrors of the First World War convinced Bryan that Darwinism was not only a potential threat, but had in fact undermined morality. Before World War I, Bryan had been an optimist who believed that moral progress could achieve equality at home and, in the international field, peace between all the nations of the world. World War I convinced him that this optimism was misplaced and that moral progress seemed to have ground to a complete halt.
In concluding that Darwinism was responsible for the immorality of the present age, Bryan was heavily influenced by two books: the first was Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in Belgium and France by Vernon Kellogg (1917), which forwarded that most German military leaders were committed Darwinists who were skeptical of Christianity. The second was The Science of Power by Benjamin Kidd (1918), which argued that German nationalism, materialism, and militarism could be attributed to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, which in turn was the logical outworking of the Darwinian hypothesis."
With the hindsight of the history of the holocaust, Bryan turned out to be be right and Mencken was wrong on an issue for more serious and far-reaching than the Scopes sideshow. Nietzchism did indeed inform the dogma of the fascists, and the result was indeed was the mass degredation of human rights. Bryan was far from perfect and indeed shared in Mencken's racism. But to portrary him as the one-dimensional Inheit the Wind character that you have chosen to do defies the facts and makes me think that it is you who is the unprincipled hit-man.
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