Hitch is married, has three daughters, is against abortion and teaches his kids to read the Bible? Who knew? Plus he hid Salman Rushdie in his apartment until MoDo outed him --and he's endured death threats ever since.
It's a depressing week when I don't get them," he says. "No bravado here. I think of it as a compliment, and it's the least I can do considering the risks other people take. It's not guarding a polling station in Anbar Province in the hot sun. I'm doing what I think is the civic minimum. Who in the United States would not be willing to say, 'I wouldn't mind these people hating me personally?
On the Bible:
You are not educated if you don't know the Bible. You can't read Shakespeare or Milton without it, even if there was nothing else of it. And with the schools now, that's what I hate about secular relativism. They're afraid of insurance liability. They don't even teach it as a document. They stay out of the whole thing to avoid controversy. So kids can't quote the King James Bible. That's terrible. And I quite understand Christian parents who want to protect their children from a nihilistic solution where there's no way of knowing what's been discussed.
On abortion:
I'm a materialist and I'm a parent. I've looked at sonograms, and I don't know a lot of embryology but I know enough. The concept 'unborn child' seems to me to be a factual statement.
On Bush, whom he doesn't really like ("not my type"):
It is a war and we are in our life radically incompatible with totalitarianism, including the theocratic version. He understands that. And I can trust him while I sleep that he's not going to change his mind. This is not true of people who are supposedly more intelligent and better educated, like, for example, the senator from Massachusetts—either senator from Massachusetts—or many others."
Protests religion too much, I think. Whereas Rod Dreher seems to be on an arc that will take him out of the Church if he continues, Hitch is a prime candidate for a deathbed conversion.
Curtsy: Open Book Additional curtsy to ninme for Hitch's Memorial Day piece, which you should also read.
