LINK: There are a number of legitimate criticisms one can make of Christopher Hitchens, a number of ideological stands he takes that I can understand reasonable people dissenting with, and his politics in recent years have been such that one can probably apply, with various degrees of accuracy, a number of labels to them, but this isn't one of them:
"The anti-clerical side of Christopher Hitchens' curious brand of New World Straussism..."
I'm not sure what exactly 'Straussism' is (is it anything like Straussianism? Or perhaps just shorthand for 'Jewish neoconservatism?'), but I'm hardly sure it follows: even if one can produce some text of Strauss' which shares similar political sentiments to something Hitch has written, aren't there other, more proximate influences that are able to explain his political influences? I can't see the functional purpose of this, except to be snotty and disrespectful*.
*I happen to think the article that's being discussed is rather entirely off-base, and I don't really agree with much of anything Hitch says on organized religion, but I can still manage to separate out what I like from what I don't.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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