Friday, July 13, 2007

I remember this sort of stuff from college

One of the things that I remember liking least about college was that you were often encouraged to take any set of facts and give them a unique analysis. Since that time, I have pretty much accepted the fact that maybe such reliance on my own interpretation makes for some bad theories. I 'm not that smart, and certainly not that knowledgeable about most areas of public policy that I can synthesize my my own ideas from scratch.

Over the last couple of years I have largely avoided many of the more progressive news sources I used to rely on heavily when I was more... progressive.

This article irked me more than probably anything I have read today. Here Mr. Rainmondo alleges that:
Thirty years ago, Hitchens was hailing the secular socialist Saddam as the greatest Arab ”visionary” of his time: today, he hails Saddam’s overthrow by the US as an act of “liberation,” and this even as the horrifically bloody aftermath continues to inflict terror on the prostrate peoples of Iraq. What changed?
Nothing, really: it’s just that, back in 1976, it looked like the Third World tyrants, “secular socialists” like Saddam, were winning. Today, it looks like the US is winning. As Orwell noted in his “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” a certain kind of intellectual worships power, and will ally himself with the strongest brute out of “idealistic” idolatry, and a sense of invincible power.

How does one argue against this? Can I prove that Hitchens is interested more than just personal enrichment? Is Rainmondo's assertion valuable just because he asserts it (presenting no evidence)?

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