News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Hitchens vs. Hitchens

2:37 PM / General / No Comments

It's funny - I was aware of both Christopher and Peter Hitchens, but for some reason I'd never made the connection between the two. They are in fact brothers, Christopher Hitchens being the more famous (or should that be notorious?) of the two on an international level, thanks to his bullish persona and works such as God is Not Great. I frequently find myself opposed to the opinions he espouses, particularly with regard to issues such as his support of George W. Bush in the 2004 election and his continued defence of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but I always find him entertaining to read, watch or listen to... particularly, I must admit, when he gets on to the topic of religion, about which he and I would appear to be in complete agreement. I may not see eye to eye with him on every single matter, but his points are always well-made, and he takes great pains to justify his stances rather falling back on the wishy-washy "Well, that's just what I believe" defence espoused by a number of supposed intellectuals I could mention. Actually, I'd go as far as to say that the very fact that he so often disagrees with his left-leaning, liberal, secularist cohorts singles him out as an original thinker rather than just another bandwagon-jumper.

Peter Hitchens, on the other hand, is unlikely to have made much of an impression outside the UK, where he writes for the conservative-leaning Mail on Sunday (the Sunday offshoot of the infamous Daily Mail) and espouses good old-fashioned Christian values such as banning abortion, dismissing evolution as unproven, opposing sex education in schools and claiming that the rise of atheism is directly responsible for the supposed decline of moral decency. Given that mouthpieces espousing similar (and indeed more extreme) viewpoints to his own are in abundance in the US, those on the other side of the Atlantic can reasonably be excused for never having heard of him: Americans have enough right-wing crackpots of their own to contend with without importing one of ours. Over here, however, he's a frequent subject of ridicule, dismissed as "bonkers" by many of his fellow journalists... and with good reason: with regard to a number of the beliefs he holds, the man appears to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. In short, it's difficult to imagine two siblings with more diametrically opposing world views. Oh, and just to prove that contrariness runs in the family, Peter Hitchens opposed the Iraq war, unlike most of his right-wing buddies.

Someone, somewhere, had the bright idea of getting both Hitchenses on the stage together to engage in a public debate with one another. Given the infamous rivalry between the two and their long-standing estrangement, such a proposition seemed unlikely to say the least. Last year, however, it finally happened, the venue being none other than a church. The whole thing has been uploaded to YouTube and is available via the Grand Valley State University web site. It's quite long and well worth watching, as the brothers debate first the Iraq war and then religion, followed by taking questions from the audience. Both make valid points with regard to their opposing stances on the Iraq war, but once the topic turns to religion, Peter Hitchens is hopelessly outmatched and is reduced to huffing, puffing and blustering as his elder brother tears his position to shreds, all with a sly smile and continual good humour. ("I don't think it's going to take ten minutes," he laughs when told by the moderator how long he has to respond to the proposition "God does not exist and he is not great".)

Let the battle commence!

No Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.