Hitch, gone but not forgotten

Robert Scheer, at Truthdig. like many who knew Christopher Hitchens, writes fondly of him as he is laid to rest this week, and recalls his word, deed and energy.  This ditty from "The Internationale" struck me today as worth repeating.

Arise ye workers from your slumbers

Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition

And spurn the dust to win the prize. 

Like many my age and background, we've traveled up and down the political ladder, scattering our thoughts along strange paths with stranger bedfellows.  When I left for Amsterdam, I was a young liberal New York Republican, and when I returned years later I was a staunch independent who leaned as left as I could without fear of falling from the boughs of tarnished ideologies.

Nixon was out, Carter was in and I was committed to the working class.  I lived in the East Village, wore carpenter pants, continued to ride my bicycle and read Trotsky.  Unlike Mr. Hitchens, 31 years later, I never supported the war in Iraq, and always suspected the reasoning behind the invasion was faulty, flawed and opportunistic.  After all no one in Iraq had plundered the very ground I walked on in New York, nor sent its citizens to down an American icon. On other issues I frequently agreed,  and like Hitchens, I remain in doubt about the existence of the Supreme Being.

I always enjoyed Christopher Hitchens talks and robust energy in debating all those who disagreed with him.  Like another debater, one I also didn't always agree with, William Buckley, I knew I was listening to a person who thought, and thought well.

Wherever you are, and whomever you rest with, Christopher Hitchens, rest well and slumber in peace knowing many of us will remember.