One passage from Simon Schama’s Newsweek obituary of Christopher Hitchens struck me as especially well-said:
It was Twain’s bravura in the face of the pompous and the banal that Hitch sought to perpetuate into the age of the conservative radio ranter, the formless drivel of the ego-indulgent blog, the timorous decorum of liberal high-mindedness. To those who would lay off what he called “Islamofascism” in the name of cultural sensitivity he had only the contemptuous curl of his smoking lip.
Those words prompted a look back to May 2006, when Hitchens addressed a John Locke Foundation Headliner audience in Asheville. Follow the link to read Hitchens’ proposal for a presidential response to the ravings of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
