{"id":27942,"date":"2011-12-16T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T13:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=27942"},"modified":"2011-12-16T10:10:28","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T14:10:28","slug":"rip-christopher-hitchens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=27942","title":{"rendered":"RIP Christopher Hitchens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Christopher_Hitchens_crop.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27943\" title=\"Christopher_Hitchens_crop\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Christopher_Hitchens_crop.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"442\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Christopher_Hitchens_crop.jpg 616w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Christopher_Hitchens_crop-300x265.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI just heard that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/online\/daily\/2011\/12\/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011\">Christopher Hitchens died yesterday<\/a>. I met him once, I think it was at the National Press Club. It was right after the war against terror began and he&#8217;d just been fired from The Nation for supporting President Bush&#8217;s policy of pre-emptive war. He and I discussed the sad state of journalism when it seemed that the entire profession opposed the war just because it was a Republican who initiated it. He later sent me a signed copy of his book, &#8220;Why Orwell Matters&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He debated Noam Chomsky, George Galloway and Scott Ritter with vigor and wit. He was a soldier in the war against terror in the rhetorical battle of ideas.<\/p>\n<p>He was an unapologetic communist, but an important ally when it came to our national security. I admired his writing talent despite the fact that he was rabidly anti-religion and admired Lenin and Trotsky.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll miss his columns and subtle wit. Iowahawk wrote what I wish I had written about Hitchens: Farewell to the best writer of the post-9\/11 age. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just heard that Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. I met him once, I think it was &hellip; <a title=\"RIP Christopher Hitchens\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=27942\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">RIP Christopher Hitchens<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blue-skies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}