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c8ca592
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It is a tragic and potentially lethal irony that those who most despise science and the method of free inquiry should have been able to pilfer from it and annex its sophisticated products to their sick dreams.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9ba9ddd
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It is supposed to be an axiom of "Western" civilization that the individual, or the truth, may not be sacrificed to hypothetical benefits such as "order."
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Christopher Hitchens |
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55da9af
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New forms of the artistic register are one of the infallible signs of an authentic moment.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1efd466
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And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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e4ba136
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PATRIOTIC AND TRIBAL feelings belong to the squalling childhood of the human race, and become no more charming in their senescence.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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29e179c
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Did I ever think I might have been wrong? Yes, sometimes and briefly. But never because of the supposed majority against me.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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5a3122f
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And I wonder, therefore, how James Atlas can have been so indulgent in his recent essay 'The Changing World of New York Intellectuals.' This rather shallow piece appeared in the magazine, and took us over the usual jumps. Gone are the days of , Delmore Schwartz, Dwight MacDonald etc etc. No longer the tempest of debate over Trotsky, , Orwell, blah, blah. Today the assimilation of the Jewish American, the rise of rents in midtown Manhatt..
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anti-intellectualism
anti-semitism
authoritarianism
commentary-magazine
debate
delmore-schwartz
dwight-macdonald
james-atlas
jeane-kirkpatrick
leon-trotsky
neoconservativism
new-criterion
new-york-times
norman-podhoretz
obscurantism
partisan-review
ts-eliot
right-wing-politics
george-orwell
manhattan
intellectuals
fundamentalism
patriotism
power
jews
communism
cold-war
new-york
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Christopher Hitchens |
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997228d
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I feel upsettingly denatured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn't even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9542419
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There are times when it is conservative to be a revolutionary, when the world must be turned on its head in order to be stood on its feet.
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inspiring
revolutionary
conservative
revolution
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Christopher Hitchens |
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36dd53a
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I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b953b87
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Every day one reads meretricious babble about 'globalization' and the abolition of frontiers, most of it amounting to little more than celebration of the worldwide availability of .
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Christopher Hitchens |
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f67dd0b
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WHEN I DESCRIBED THE TUMOR IN MY ESOPHAGUS as a "blind, emotionless alien," I suppose that even I couldn't help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the pathetic fallacy (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living or..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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484ee30
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Thus , dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined--as I hope--I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. There are days when I miss my own convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.
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free-thinking
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Christopher Hitchens |
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db96693
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The suspicion that a calamity might also be a punishment is further useful in that it allows an infinity of speculation. After New Orleans, which suffered from a lethal combination of being built below sea level and neglected by the Bush administration, I learned from a senior rabbi in Israel that it was revenge for the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, and from the mayor of New Orleans (who had not performed his own job wi..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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60f27f4
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Even the great Thomas Paine, a friend to Franklin and Jefferson, repudiated the charge of atheism that he was not afraid to invite. Indeed, he set out to expose the crimes and horrors of the Old Testament, as well as the foolish myths of the New, as part of a vindication of god. No grand and noble deity, he asserted, should have such atrocities and stupidities laid to his charge. Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank ..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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c51a9f4
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The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the stead..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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65e956e
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Beware of identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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e9175c1
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A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itself by fear superimposed on ignorance, it has become one opinion among many. It is forced to compete in the free market of ideas and, even when it strives to retain the old advantage of inculcating its teachings into children (for reasons that are too obvious to need underlining), it has to stand up in open debate and submit to free inquiry.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1bd32a3
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Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and woman. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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653f19a
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When Dr. Samuel Johnson had completed the first real dictionary of the English language, he was visited by a delegation of respectable old ladies who wished to congratulate him for not including any indecent words. His response--which was that he was interested to see that the ladies had been looking them up--contains almost all that needs to be said on this point.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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06cc96c
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There is an old Belfast joke about the man stopped at a roadblock and asked his religion. When he replies that he is an atheist he is asked, "Protestant or Catholic atheist?"
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Christopher Hitchens |
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01700ac
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Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type."
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spirituality
religion
science
new-ge
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Christopher Hitchens |
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f5b598b
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as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise?
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Christopher Hitchens |
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60173d2
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Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by in his book , the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on..
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ethnicity
white-anglo-saxon-protestant
united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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ebbb7c7
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It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0e31b65
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Porcophilia can also be used for oppressive and repressive purposes. In medieval Spain, where Jews and Muslims were compelled on pain of death and torture to convert to Christianity, the religious authorities quite rightly suspected that many of the conversions were not sincere. Indeed, the Inquisition arose partly from the holy dread that secret infidels were attending Mass--where of course, and even more disgustingly, they were pretending..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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6e99b9f
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There can be no doubt that the cult of death and the insistence upon portents of the end proceed from a surreptitious desire to see it happen, and to put an end to the anxiety and doubt that always threaten the hold of faith. When the earthquake hits, or the tsunami inundates, or the twin towers ignite, you can see and hear the secret satisfaction of the faithful. Gleefully they strike up: "You see, this is what happens when you don't liste..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b32a976
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Um verdadeiro homem de fe deve acreditar que esta aqui para um proposito e que e um objeto de real interesse para um Ser Supremo; deve tambem fingir ter pelo menos uma nocao do que aquele Ser Supremo deseja. Eu proprio fui chamado de arrogante na juventude, e espero ganhar o titulo novamente; mas pretender conhecer os segredos do universo e seu criador - isso esta alem de minha presuncao.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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bcb0ea7
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The drops (polio vaccine) were designed,said these believers. Their intention and effect was genocidal. Nobody was to swallow them, or administer them to infants. Within months, polio was back...
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Christopher Hitchens |
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2a254dc
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Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility and abjection, requiring you to regard yourself as conceived and born in sin and owing a duty to a stern creator. But in return, it places you at the center of the universe and assures you that you are the personal object of a heavenly plan.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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783bcaa
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To begin with a summary of Paine's astonishing life and career is to commence with a sense of wonder that he was ever able to emerge at all.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9ca4e11
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I have been taunted on various platforms recently for becoming a neo-conservative, and have been the object of some fascinating web-site and blog stuff, from the isolationist Right as well as from the peaceniks, who both argue in a semi-literate way that neo-conservativism is Trotskyism and 'permanent revolution' reborn. Sometimes, you have to comb an overt anti-Semitism out of this propaganda before you can even read it straight. And I can..
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politics
blogosphere
isolationism
peace-movement
permanent-revolution
right-wing-politics
trotskyism
us-non-interventionism
war-on-terror
iraq-war
neoconservatism
propaganda
internet
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b102d57
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Considering these limitations, it is quite astonishing how irreligious the Founders actually were. You might not easily guess, for example, who was the author of the following words: Oh! Lord! Do you think that a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical Strifes in Maryland Pensilvania [sic], New York, and every part of New England? What a mercy it is that these People ca..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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5bc4daf
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Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is [...] often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.
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politics
iraq-war
neoconservatism
revolution
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Christopher Hitchens |
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a7c9b4d
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The speakers use all accents of sincerity and sweetness, and they continuously praise virtue; but they never speak as if power would be theirs tomorrow and they would use it for virtuous action. And their audiences also do not seem to regard themselves as predestined to rule; they clap as if in defiance, and laugh at their enemies behind their hands, with the shrill laughter of children. They want to be right, not to do right. They feel no ..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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4b4a59f
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I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of e..
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1973
basque-people
dictatorship
eta
francisco-franco
house-of-bourbon
juan-carlos-i-of-spain
luis-carrero-blanco
terrorism
spain
fascism
assassination
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Christopher Hitchens |
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4588c18
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To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?"
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Christopher Hitchens |
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004f1c5
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The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her "as she is." Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9046868
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Montaigne: "Religion's surest foundation is the contempt for life."
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Christopher Hitchens |
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31dd43d
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To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right fr..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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22e14af
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The atheist generally says (though the bold Dr. Victor Stenger goes a bit further) that the existence of a deity cannot be dis-proved. It can only be found to be entirely lacking in evidence or proof. The theist can opt to be a mere deist, and to say that the magnificence of the natural order strongly implies an ordering force. (This was the view taken, at least in public, by opponents of religion such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.)..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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7d80e06
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Real rustics are not conscious of being picturesque, they do not construct bird sanctuaries, they are uninterested in any bird or animal that does not affect them directly ... The fact is that those who really have to deal with nature have no cause to be in love with it.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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2766c07
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believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarrels and could now be destroyed by their modern versions.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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be70b85
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For a fuller account of the revelations of the Moscow archives, and their detailed vindication of Orwell, see my Introduction to Orwell in Spain (Penguin, 2001).
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Christopher Hitchens |