Remember this piece about David Horowitz on Christopher Hitchens?

Are you busy, with lots to do?

Forget all that, and read this long transcript of American conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in conversation with Hitchens, now on heavy cancer treatment.

Hitchens is a ferociously well read and knowledgeable person. He is a massively opinionated writer who has taken it upon himself to go and see things for himself, a Leftist in the best Orwell tradition of staring fearlessly at tyranny, hypocrisy and stupidity wherever they loom large.

In a way I was hoping that Hewitt would drill down deeper than he does into Hitchens’ beliefs (and maybe his own). Yet the discussion perhaps is all the more engaging because it is so wide-ranging and unexpected.

Hitchens on an evil Argentinian general:  I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well… He’s in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that, if you know what I mean. 

Hitchens on possible death:  when Mark Twain was pronounced dead in the newspapers, he said rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. I read so many nice things about myself now I begin to think that rumors of my life have been a bit exaggerated.

Hitchens on social class:  you also learn that at the absolute height of bad manners is to be rude to someone who is, I don’t mean these words, but you know what one would call social inferiors. You mustn’t be rude to waiters or servants or anything like that, because it’s taking advantage of something that’s unfairly conferred on you.

Hitchens on reading widely and learning things:  I’d rather do anything than patronize people. I’d rather say look, I know this. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. And if you didn’t, don’t complain. I’ve just given you the opportunity to check it out. And I backed myself, saying I think there is a gold standard in writing, and in the world of ideas. And I know something about it, and I’d like to introduce you to it, too.

Hitchens on Israel:  for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can’t, it’ll have to dispense with the occupation. It’s as simple as that. It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can’t govern other people against their will…

And I’m afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I’m a prisoner of that knowledge. I can’t un-know it.

Hitchens on John Sparrow:  his role in the life of the university of Oxford was to act the part of the most comic, antediluvian reactionary that it was possible to pick, a man who lived in a college that was full of vast riches of endowment that was famous mainly for its dining and its port, almost a parody of Oxford as the home of lost causes, and of extreme monarchical and Anglican conservatism. I mean, we could hardly believe there was someone as amusing as that still around in the 60s.

Hitchens on Castro:  “if the most salient figure in this state was immune from critical comment, then all the rest was detail. Ah, never forget how useful the obvious can be.”

Hitchens on Iraq:  The fall of Saddam Hussein was generally very positively experienced. And I think it will be remembered as a great thing to have done. But unfortunately, the overlay of incompetence and mismanagement and bungling that followed the liberation is never going to be forgiven or forgotten. And by the way, I don’t think it should be.

Hitchens on Obama:  He just seems to believe, it was same watching him with Netanyahu this week, as if all this can be resolved, you know, man to man, these are just misunderstandings that can be ironed out by people of goodwill. He doesn’t seem to have the concept of radical conflicts of interest at all.

Just wonderful verve, confidence and insight.

Take time out and read it all. You’ll learn something.

Then swing by Amazon and buy this, as I have just done: