“Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
Hitch has had cancer for a while now, and I've sort of been preparing myself for this, but it doesn't make it any less painful. This is a typographic portrait of Hitchens I designed sometime earlier this year. I loved that man.
Hitchens and I had something major in common. We both had a mutual hero: Thomas Paine. I've seen Hitch describe him once as "the greatest Briton, and the greatest American." In addition to being the most passionate advocate of freedom and liberty among all the founding fathers (he supported equal rights for both blacks and women; travelled to France after the Revolutionary War, taking part in two revolutions), Paine was also an extreme critic of organized religion. I see a lot of left-leaning secularists nowadays saying "the founders were all deists!" and as much as I'd like that to be true, it's really a huge exaggeration. They were mostly Christian. Thomas Jefferson rarely shared his opinions about his deism, because he knew it would be political suicide. And his opponents used the rumors about his religious opinions to attack him. Thomas Paine was the only founder to publicly come out strongly, and radically, against organized religion, and it cost him dearly. When he died, he hardly had any friends at all, with only Jefferson writing him letters every once in a while (Jefferson distanced himself once his political opponents discovered they were still friends).
Hitchens wrote a wonderful little biography about Paine, and I'd strongly recommend it. It's a short, easy read, and mainly focuses on summarizing all of Paine's greatest writings. Hitch's love for him just shines right off the pages:
Paine's closing years, pitiful as they were, contained one closing triumph. He might have become a scarecrow-like figure. He might have been forced to subsist on the charity of friends. He might have been denied the right to vote by a bullying official, when presenting himself at the polling station, on the grounds that the author of Common Sense was not a true American. But as the buzzards began to circle, he rallied one more time. It was widely believed by the devout of those days that unbelievers would scream for a priest when their own death-beds loomed. Why this was thought to be valuable propaganda it is impossible to say. Surely the sobbing of a human creature in extremis is testimony not worth having, as well as testimony extracted by the most contemptible means? . . . Dying in ulcerated agony, he was imposed upon by two Presbyterian ministers who pushed past his housekeeper and urged him to avoid damnation by accepting Jesus Christ. 'Let me have none of your Popish stuff,' Paine responded. 'Get away with you, good morning, good morning.' The same demand was made of him as his eyes were closing. 'Do you wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?' He answered quite distinctly: 'I have no wish to believe on that subject.' Thus he expired with his reason, and his rights, both still staunchly defended until the very last.
I think I loved Hitchens so much because he reminded me a bit of Thomas Paine. Hitch was notably vicious as a debater, but underneath, you could always tell that he was just having a blast. His unrelenting wit is something to be admired, and it's something he and Paine had in common. This sort of vicious wit can be seen in even the most casual reading of Thomas Paine's argumentative writings (The Age of Reason, especially). It's just beautiful. They would've been amazing friends.
So without further ado, here comes the 'best of' video. Fuck, I'll miss this guy.
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