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I haven’t had a drink in 16 years, but I’m very tempted to buy a bottle of scotch tonight, drink it and talk philosophy, politics and morality all night, in honor of Hitch.
So much has been said about his intellect, so instead, I’d rather focus on how he affected me personally. I saw him as a safe harbor of integrity and wisdom in a sea of ideologically driven partisans. As such, he gave me a signal, a lead, an idea that I could attempt to hold a moral view of the world and make up my own mind about the affairs of the day rather than taking my cues from others.
Of course, concomitant with standing on my own feet intellectually came the responsibility to learn, to be informed, to never stop seeking knowledge. I rediscovered my own interest in “the classics” and the entire classical liberal experiment that we’ve been undertaking for the past 500 years as a result. It’s been a humbling and awe inspiring journey.
All due to Hitch. He showed me the way to reject ugly partisanship, dogma and its attendant hypocrisy. Of course, this required me to walk my own path, and Hitch his, but without fail, Hitch was always a beacon of moral integrity and intellectual rigor that I could take a bearing on, like a star in the night sky I could reference to guide me.
Most of all, I found his humanity, his generosity of spirit and his willingness to castigate evil and denigrate that which deserves denigration, warming and reassuring somehow. To be a thinking man, but to not retreat from the ‘real world, but instead be an actor in it: I would not know how to be so were it not for Hitch. He demonstrated a zest for life, and acceptance of its – and his – contradictions, and embraced his humanity without shame or fear. It is this quality, which I think is inseparable from his other traits, that touched me most of all. Hitch, I salute you, bid you farewell and will forever commemorate your life as an example for us all.
