Pubdate: Tue, 25 Apr 2006
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2006 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Morley Walker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

HITCHENS ADMIRES CANADA'S AFGHAN EFFORT

CANADIANS should not let military casualties yank them from their  
course in Afghanistan, says a leading international political and  
cultural pundit.

"I'm full of admiration for what Canadians are doing in Afghanistan,"  
Christopher Hitchens said in a phone interview yesterday prior to his  
first-ever visit to Winnipeg.

The British-born writer, who lives in Washington, D.C., is best known  
for his vigorous defence of the American-led war on terrorism in such  
publications as The Guardian in England and Vanity Fair in the U.S.

"If we are beaten by the other side, which is quite possible, it  
won't be a defeat for the Bush administration," Hitchens, 57, says.

"It will be a defeat for everybody, a defeat for civilization in  
general."

The Hitch, as he is known to both allies and adversaries, has been  
invited to Winnipeg by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a think- 
tank led by the right-tilting analyst Peter Holle. He will be the  
guest speaker tomorrow night at the Fairmont Hotel before 200 people  
who've anted up $75 each for dinner and to hear the intellectually  
pugnacious writer.

There are still a few tickets available. They can be purchased by  
phoning the FCCP at 977-5050.

Hitchens' topic will not be international politics but rather the  
"busybody state," which he sees as a woeful aspect of liberal  
democracies throughout the western world.

Governments should not regulate their citizens' personal choices, he  
says.

In the U.S., for example, an 18-year-old can vote and go to war but  
cannot legally enjoy a glass of wine.

"It's quite preposterous," he says. "I can't believe people put up  
with it."

An unapologetic nicotine addict, Hitchens puts state-sanctioned non- 
smoking regulations in the "busybody" category.

"I know the difference between protecting non-smokers and imposing  
prohibitions on smokers, and the line has been crossed." The "famous  
war on drugs," as he calls the U.S. policy against those who choose  
to indulge in marijuana and cocaine, is his third major beef against  
state-imposed morality.

He encourages the Canadian government to legalize marijuana sales  
without fear of U.S. administrative reprisals.

"My feeling is that there are lot of people in the U.S. who would  
applaud that bit of common sense."

Hitch-watchers, both friends and foes alike, draw parallels between  
him and one of his intellectual idols, the great British novelist and  
political journalist George Orwell.

Orwell, a socialist, fell out with the British left-wing during the  
Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Hitchens, who also called himself a  
man of the left and wrote a book called Why Orwell Matters, broke  
with his fellow travellers in the wake of Sept. 11.

Yet Hitchens is embarrassed at any attempt to compare him to the man  
who gave the world such novels as 1984 and Animal Farm.

"For one thing, he was a much better writer than I am," Hitchens  
says. "He also suffered the physical and moral consequences of his  
beliefs. I've lost a few magazine jobs because of my principles, but  
that's hardly the same thing."

Hitchens, who has written books excoriating Mother Teresa, Bill  
Clinton and Henry Kissinger, among others, is hesitant to offer an  
opinion about what he sees as his own virtues as a writer.

"I can be serious, but I'm not always boring," he finally offers. "I  
can sometimes make people laugh. It almost kills me to say this,  
because it will stop being true."

Militantly anti-religious, Hitchens says he is working on a new book  
called God is Not Great.

He says it will contain a chapter refuting the argument that atheism  
was responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than religion.

He calls his distaste for supernatural belief "the main thing in my  
life."

He was raised by a Baptist father and a non-practising Jewish mother.  
He went to a Methodist prep school and was married in a Greek  
Orthodox Church, then later by a rabbi. But the cosmologies of the  
world's monotheistic religions strike him not just as "preposterous"  
but actually distasteful.

"Imagine being supervised by some divine leader for all your life and  
even into eternity," he says. "It would be like living in a celestial  
North Korea."
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