OpEdNews » Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity . . .Thank God.

August 7, 2007 at 07:22:24

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Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity . . .Thank God.

by Robert Weitzel Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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Christopher Hitchens, contrarian atheist and slayer of all beasts fascistic and theocratic, will be in Madison, Wisconsin, this fall to present the keynote address at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s fall conference. Anyone who is familiar with Hitchens’ substance and style will expect a speech that is irreverent and uncompromising and totally worth the price of admission.

Predictably, faster than a fart can make a tent full of Cub Scouts giggle, letters to the editor and op-ed pieces appeared bemoaning Hitchens’ upcoming visit and calling him a boorish bigot for his willingness to describe the emperor’s nakedness in all its scabious and purulent magisterial arrogance.

Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are not bigots. They are an unholy trinity of bestselling atheist authors who are fed up with having to tap dance around people of faith whose religious beliefs are as irrational as they are ubiquitous, and as potentially deadly as they are personally cathartic.

This unholy trinity is the rising voice of over ten percent of Americans who identify themselves as atheists (closeted or otherwise) who are mad as heck—we don’t believe in hell—and who aren’t going to take it anymore. What else can account for the phenomenal sales of the unholy trinity’s recent books?

Think of it, at least ten of your hundred closest friends are the “pissed off faithless” . . . a sizable cabal at any backyard barbecue, or polling station for that matter.

If the faithful would just keep their religious beliefs in their own pocket and out of public school classrooms and bedrooms and women’s wombs, I doubt much would ever be heard from the unholy trinity or the POF. What would be the point?

But in kissing up to the religious right . . . or religious center . . . or religious left, it’s gotten so that politicians, both elephant and ass, will not open their mouths without first crossing themselves or testifying. For the POF, it’s particularly nauseating every election cycle as candidates yammer on about their walk with the Lord while they trample all over the truth to cut each other’s throats.

In preparation for the 2008 “holy war,” Hillary hired an evangelical Baptist who has put together her faith steering committee and sends out a weekly wrap-up sheet, Faith, Family and Values. Can you say “focus on the family” values? Rest assured, both John and Barack have their faith-based mojo working overtime as well.

I’m not suggesting there are no politicians with authentic religious bona fides. Jimmy Carter comes to mind. I just think it’s interesting that each and every member of the Executive and Legislative branches of our government is tight with the Lord. Statistically, at least ten percent of them should be atheists. Someone is not being very honest. Could it be they know atheism is the only unforgivable and unelectable political “sin?”

I suppose the real question is not, “Are they really religious?” but is, “To whom and at what price have they sold their souls?” Until political pandering to the religious and the dishonesty it breeds ends, the unholy trinity has work to do.

Closer to home, a recent Capital Times photograph shows Annette Ziegler, soon to be disciplined for ethical misconduct, placing her hand on a Bible and swearing to uphold the law as a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. The POF will find this picture disturbing for several reasons. Until Christians see what the POF sees, the unholy trinity cannot rest.

Lest I become a boorish bigot let me add this. It goes without saying that multitudes of the faithful live quiet lives comfortable in the skin of their beliefs, and that good people are dedicating their lives to the betterment of humanity (locally and globally) under the banner of one religion or another. But if religion disappeared tomorrow, those same good people would still be out there doing what they can because of who they are not because of where they worship.

Without religion, though, their motives are above suspicion. Think Mother Theresa, whose religious beliefs concerning birth control exacerbated the suffering she was trying to relieve, assuming a person’s suffering and not their soul was her foremost concern.

Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris are carrying the torch passed onto them by the original unholy trinity of Paine, Jefferson and Madison whose views on religion and the separation of church and state laid the foundation for the religious freedom of the Republic. But they, too, were subjected to the same scorn and ridicule as their unholy 21st century progeny. So buck up boys. You’re in good company.

Commenting on Hitchens’ visit, The Capital Times was of the opinion that “his determination to express viewpoints that are so frequently forbidden makes him an essential player in a national debate that is so frequently emptied of meaning by it’s caution.”

The POF say “Amen brother! Bring it on.”

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Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience (www.mwcnews.net). His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI.

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7 comments

Mark Sashine

Hitchens

as English MP Galloway said once- 'is in bad need for a drink'. This idiot who supports the war in Iraq is one of the most odious anomalies on the current times and he is not even an atheist. To be an idiot does not mean to be an atheist. What surprises me that we here all that ' pissed off' thing. I would say that we have many things to be pissed off about, killing people is the first one coming to mind but nope..our Unholy Trinity is pissed of at .. religion. I would also say that compared to the great scientific minds of the past these three are so shallow that they certainly do not carry any torch- maybe a gas lighter would be the proper definition.

It is regrettable that atheism as a movement is represented by the unfortunate idiots. It is also regrettable that in these times when we have to protect ourselves from Bush and Co we consider the one who is supporting him as the 'carrier of the torch'. It is doubly regrettable that we cannot distinguish between the real thing and a quackery, atheism or not and let the drunk to get his laurels. It is triply regrettable that we waste our time on this.

I was born and raised in the atheistic society I am atheist myself. Let me tell you something: it does not mean anything. It does not make you better, smarter or more enlighttened. It does make you lonely. Of course, we all have to fight for the right of anyone to maintain his/her spiritual health they way they want. But none of us is better than the other and many of us are worse. Hitchens is much worse. He should go to Hell where he belongs.

by Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4101 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 9:32:12 AM

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k kelly

HERETICS UNITE!

arent' we all just freethinking heretics of one shade or another? :)

whether pagan, pelagian, atheist, or any shade between... we are all fed up with the orothodox and evangelical hijacking of our government and our lives. it's definitely past time we take action and speak out, returning these "lords of the flies" to their proper peripherial fringe, before pyres of inquisitions and witchtrials again burn.

these mental midgets mean to usher in a new dark age, by blood and fire.

are we to allow it...again?

to borrow a line from Gandalf... in his standoff with the firedemon Shadowflame...

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

by k kelly (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 182 comments) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 10:20:34 AM

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Steven Leser

We call him a bigot because he is one...

Not because of his supposed "willingness to describe the emperor’s nakedness in all its scabious and purulent magisterial arrogance."

There are 99 articles bashing Islam for every 1 article supposedly taking on the Christian right in this country. He is an absolute apologist for Bush attempting to unite church and state in this country. If that is atheism, I really dont understand the term.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 11:59:49 AM

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Steven Leser

And another few things, Comparing Hitchens to either

Paine, Jefferson or Madison is like comparing Dan Quayle to Albert Einstein.

What we need are true atheists stepping up to the plate to represent the movement, not Islamophobes masquerading as Atheists. Even the horrid favoring of the Iraq war would be acceptable if Hitchens had routinely called Bush out for his pandering to the Christian Right and his desire to marry church and state in this country. Hitchens does not do that. He is not a true atheist, he is an Islamophobe.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 12:05:30 PM

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Mark Sashine

Reply: Excellent, Mr. Leser!

I am all with you, here (see my put above). Mr. Hitchens's malice cna be matched only by his ignorance. He is not anything. He does not have any beleifs. It is an empty vessel which can be filled with anything but stores nothing.

by Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4101 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 1:15:03 PM

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Allan

Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Alan Dershowitz

August 7, 2007

On July 27, I, as an atheist, emailed the following to the Freedom from Religion Foundation with copies to many people. I am a member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, as well as the Atheist Alliance. The reference to the denial of tenure of Professor Norman Finkelstein by "St. Paul University" should have read by "DePaul University":

Friday

July 27, 2007

Dear Freedom from Religion Foundation:

I'm a member of the FFRF, the Atheist Alliance, and an associate member of the Council for Secular Humanism.

I have already lobbied Ms. Margaret Downey of the Atheist Alliance on this issue, and I'm lobbying you, now.

I will make the same suggestion to you that I made to her about the upcoming Atheist Alliance convention. This time, I make it about the upcoming FFRF convention.

If you are going to have the shill, flack, mouthpiece for the worst theocratic political regime in American history, the Cheney-Bush regime, Christopher Hitchens, speaking, the least you could do is have a prominent public atheist such as Tariq Ali or Gore Vidal, both of whom are anti-imperialists and strong opponents of the Cheney-Bush regime's imperialist invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, speak to counter the lies of Hitchens when he's questioned about the Cheney-Bush policies, and his flacking, lying, mouthpiecing, and shilling for the Cheney-Bush gangsters.

I was happy the FFRF sued the Cheney-Bush thugs, and unhappy the FFRF lost its lawsuit over religion-government separation.

I like Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

But Hitchens is, to me, one of the most reprehensible types of people, for he has given an "atheist" cover to the Cheney-Bush policies. His raving idiocies about his invented phrase, Islamo-fascism, are designed to whitewash an imperialist system that has done more to reinforce the flow of Near Easterners into the ranks of Islamic extremism than anything else. He's basically trying, by his awful and egregious shilling for the Cheney-Bush gang, to gain his way into American citizenship by making the U.S. red-baiting and anti-communist nutcase bipartisan government who built bin Laden into a Frankenstein monster by its 12 years of cold war anti-Soviet and anti-communist actions against GODLESS "communism" forget that in the 1970s, he himself was something of a Trotskyist.

But I remain a left-winger and socialist and unreconstructed radical 1960s era Marxist. That means I am an IRRECONCILABLE ATHEIST, AND MATERIALIST. And each time I hear Hitchens defend the imperialist policies and system of the U.S. (His latest rant was a rant against Jimmy Carter's correct characterization of Israeli state policies on the issue of the Palestinians as being "disloyal;" this reminds me of the 1950s Joe McCarthyite witchhunts against socialists, communists, leftists of all varieties, and so, it seems Hitchens is doing his darndest to make it impossible for radical left-wingers who are atheists to oppose him by smearing anyone even as conservative as Carter as "disloyal." In my view, that makes Hitchens not an "iconoclast," but simply evil), I want to puke out my guts.

You should get Tariq Ali up there or Gore Vidal up there alongside Hitchens, because both of these men are public atheists, long-time public atheists, who have had a hard-line position in defense of religion-government separation. But both men are ANTI-IMPERIALISTS, and would not let Hitchens get away with his FLACKING, SHILLING, AND MOUTHPIECING for the MOST REPREHENSIBLY THEOCRATIC POLITICAL REGIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY, THE CHENEY-BUSH GANG OF IMPERIALIST GANGSTERS, THUGS, AND ENEMIES OF RELIGION-GOVERNMENT SEPARATION, WOMEN'S EQUALITY, GAY RIGHTS, EVOLUTION, RACIAL INTEGRATION, AND PRACTICALLY EVERY OTHER MANIFESTATION OF PROGRESS THAT'S COME DOWN THE PIKE in the past 50 years.

I have a couple more points in this regard. (1) In your calendar appearing each issue the FFRF's journal, Freethought Today, of births of famous atheists, I noticed in May you left out the date of the birth of Karl Marx. What are we Marxists -- chopped liver to you? I would from now on include the birthday of Karl Marx, the birthday of Friedrich Engels, the birthday of Franz Mehring, the birthday of Rosa Luxemburg, the birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the birthday of Leon Trotsky, the birthday of James P. Cannon, the birthday of Amadeo Bordiga, the birthday of Otto Ruhle, the birthday of Paul Mattick, Senior, the birthday of Peng Shu-tse, the birthday of John Reed, the birthday of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the birthday of Natalya Trotsky, the birthday of Isaac Deutscher, the birthday of Tamara Deutscher, the birthday of Georgi V. Plekhanov, for starters; all of these were eminent Marxist thinkers and political activists, all were militant atheists, all were secularists, all were philosophically materialists. (2) As for interpretations of atheism that do not fit within the bourgeois Enlightenment 18th Century tradition, I refer you to Georgi V. Plekhanov's great 1895 book, The Development of the Monist View of History, which provides one of the most careful Marxist historical looks at the "pluses" and "minuses" of bourgeois 18th Century and 19th Century atheist materialisms, and provides as an alternative solving many of the problems and issues to which Georgi V. Plekhanov pointed in both 18th and 19th Century bourgeois atheist materialisms the kind of atheist materialism created and invented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, dialectical and historical materialism. Plekhanov's book is one of the best for "starters" in introducing people to the "pluses" and "minuses" of bourgeois 18th and 19th Century atheist materialisms, and in explaining the alternative of Marx's dialectical and historical materialism. It can be accessed free of charge by going to the website of the Marxist Internet Archive, www.marxists.org, clicking on "Marxist Writers," scrolling down to the name, "Plekhanov," clicking on his name, then scrolling to the book, The Development of the Monist View of History. Then, click on it, and the book is there free of charge and accessible and free to read.

As for some other significant works in the Marxist vein, I would recommend the following books:

1. Human Nature: The Marxian View, by Vernon Venable. This was written in the 1940s, but remains one of the better books on the subject;

2. Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation, by Sidney Hook. This was completed and published in 1933, when Hook was still a Marxist. An updated version of this book has recently been re-issued by Prometheus Books. Their site is, www.prometheusbooks.com;

3. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, by Karl Marx. This was the seminal work of the new worldview of Marx;

4. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, by Friedrich Engels. This was Engels' short, but brilliant, summing up of both how the great mid-19th Century German atheistic naturalistic humanist, Ludwig Feuerbach, influenced him and Marx, and also the pluses and minuses in Feuerbachian thought as seen by Marx and Engels. This should probably be read in combination with Feuerbach's own brilliant 1842 book, The Essence of Christianity, possibly the most devastating demolition of Christianity ever written;

5. Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, both by Karl Marx;

6. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin;

7. Conspectus on Hegel's "Science of Logic," by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin;

8. Their Morals and Ours: Marxist Versus Liberal Views on Morality, by Leon Trotsky.

I think a first reading of Georgi V. Plekhanov's great 1895 book, however, Development of the Monist View of History, is a real eye-opener for atheists who know little or nothing of how Marxist philosophers think. That's why I recommended it first.

As for a nice historical work written by a Marxist historian of philosophy, I recommend The Origins of Materialism, by the late George Novack.

Finally, for a kind of dialectical materialism that is ancient, and therefore pre-Marxist, I recommend the wonderful little book, Fragments: The Wisdom of Heraclitus.

Heraclitus was sort of theist, sort of atheist; he was probably more akin to Lucretius, the later semi-atheist, semi-theist, but materialist, Roman philosopher and poet in his, Heraclitus's, view of whether or not the gods existed. He seemed, like Lucretius, to think they did, but that they did not necessarily have the inordinate or important impact on humankind later ascribed to them by the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic viewpoint. Consequently, in all these thinkers, there was a kind of secular materialistic attitude. What makes Heraclitus's thinking of interest to a modern dialectical materialist, however, is that Heraclitus seemed to evince in statements like his famous statement that you could not step twice into the same river, for the moment you did so it changed, a kind of dialectical materialist attitude as to how nature and society functioned.

I think the 1895 book by Georgi V. Plekhanov, however, who was the founder of Russian Marxism, and one of the most eminent of Russian materialist philosophers and thinkers, The Development of the Monist View of History, provides a very good critique of diverse kinds of materialistic secularism other than the variety of materialist secularism he, Plekhanov, defended, the Marxist variety.

Again, I urge you to try to get Tariq Ali or Gore Vidal to speak if you're going to have Hitchens speak. Tariq Ali is world renowned, has spoken all over the country, and all over the world, is a very public atheist, and a very public anti-imperialist and leftist. So is Gore Vidal. They would, or at least one of them would, provide a decent "counter-weight" to the egregious and awful Cheney-Bush hack, Hitchens.

Hitchens deserves to get a hearing before atheists for, and only for, his two books, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

But his flacking, shilling, mouthpiecing, and hacking for the terrible theocratic gangster regime of Cheney-Bush -- whose president said, "God told me to invade Iraq" -- has, in my view, made him lose all credibility. It is particularly hard for people like me -- militant atheist anti-war activists -- to even get colleagues in the anti-war movement to read anything by Hitchens because of his horrible hacking for the Cheney-Bush gang. I think he's acted despicably in the doing of that.

So please get some anti-imperialist-minded atheists up there to speak as a hardline counterweight to Hitchens, will you? Thank you.

Yours truly,

Allan B. Greene,

Member,

Freedom from Religion Foundation

On August 6, 2007, I emailed the following comment to the Council for Secular Humanism and the Centers for Inquiry associated with the Council for Secular Humanism. I am an associate member of the Council for Secular Humanism:

August 6, 2007

Monday

Dear Recipients:

Professor Norman Finkelstein is a long-time political scientist with a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University.

He is the son of two Holocaust survivors. Even though he is a prominent Jewish scholar, and the son of two Nazi Holocaust survivors, he is also a long-time opponent of Israeli state terror against Palestinian Arabs, and he is a defender of Palestinian equal, civil, democratic rights, and he is an opponent of the Zionist ideology and of Israeli persecution of the Palestinians.

Until recently, he was assistant professor at DePaul University. In some previous emails, I incorrectly called the university, St. Paul University, not its correct name, DePaul University. My apologies for any misunderstanding this incorrect labeling of the university name caused. He has written numerous books having to do with is specialty of political science. His website is www.normanfinkelstein.com.

However, when the issue of his academic tenure came up, he was denied tenure by DePaul University. This was after a considerable amount of publicity around this issue and lobbying against his getting tenure on the part of those who opposed the conclusions he came to in his scholarship from the iron-hard empirical and factual data he got as the basis for his conclusions. The people who opposed his getting academic tenure smeared him for his conclusions, because they could not smear him for the quality of his scholarly and academic work, and the painstaking efforts he went to in piling up the facts from which he drew his conclusions. Mainly, they hated the fact this scholar, even though he is of the Jewish heritage, and had two Holocaust survivors as parents, did not defend the theocratic and nationalistic ideology of Zionism, and did not march in lockstep with the bipartisan American imperialist right-wing consensus of both Republican and Democratic parties on the issue of the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians.

The case received a considerable amount of publicity when the battle over his tenure was still going on. Finkelstein was interviewed on the popular liberal radio program headed up by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now. He received supporting letters from both scholars of many backgrounds, including Jewish backgrounds, Arab backgrounds, Muslim backgrounds, secular and atheist backgrounds, from both here inside the U.S. and from many other countries who had read his books and knew about the conclusions he had derived from his scholarship, conclusions of opposition to Israeli state suppression of the rights of Palestinian people.

One of the leading professors who does not like Professor Finkelstein, and who, it appears, seems to have fallen all over himself to not only insure Finkelstein was denied academic tenure at DePaul University, but that some of his books were not published, is, Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard.

For many years, Professor Dershowitz has gotten lots of free publicity touting him as some kind of alleged civil libertarian and alleged defender of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of opinion.

Indeed, I myself, an atheist, a member of the Atheist Alliance, an associate member of the Council for Secular Humanism, a member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, recently received an email from the New York-based Center for Inquiry, which is affiliated with the Council for Secular Humanism, mentioning they were prominently touting Alan Dershowitz as one of their speakers at an upcoming conference or event they were holding. I suspect the reason they are doing this is to some significant degree the fact that currently prominent public atheist, Sam Harris, received praise for his first book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason when it came out in 2004 from Dershowitz, and in turn, Harris seems to have promoted in his recommended reading list on his website, www.samharris.org, one of Dershowitz's books.

It is also the case that both Harris, and Dershowitz, have endorsed the use of torture under certain circumstances -- despite the fact that ample historical experience confirms that torture can never be any kind of reliable method for extracting factually accurate and truthful information from anybody. Harris evidently endorses it under certain circumstances on the basis of its allegedly realistic use value under circumstances when a ticking tactical nuclear bomb unknown to anybody might be lurking in some big city brought there by some fanatical terrorist -- again, utterly irrespective of the lengthy historical experience confirming that torture can never be adjudged as a reputable or reliable method of extracting information from anybody. Dershowitz has endorsed it as well, again under certain circumstances.

So it was after receiving this email from the Center for Inquiry in New York, affiliated as I said with the Council for Secular Humanism, of which I'm currently an associate member, and also after going to the website of the now prominent American atheist, Sam Harris, www.samharris.org, and finding a book of Dershowitz there prominently featured, that I decided to publicly inform everyone of the case of Norman Finkelstein, his denial of tenure, his website, www.normanfinkelstein.com, and the role in the denial of his tenure of Professor Dershowitz. If you go to Norman Finkelstein's site, you will find information on the role of Dershowitz in this. If you go to the article to which I supplied a link below of the American Trotskyist newspaper, Workers Vanguard, you will find more information on the case of Assistant Professor Finkelstein and his denial of tenure, and the role Professor Dershowitz has played not only in this, with his lobbying, but in efforts -- from what a Nation article quoted by the American Trotskyist paper said -- to insure books published by Professor Finkelstein were not published. Here is the link to the article from the American socialist paper, Workers Vanguard:

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/895/finkelstein.html

And again, the link of Professor Norman Finkelstein is:

www.normanfinkelstein.com

It appears from the public information "out" there that I've read that Professor Dershowitz really went out of his way to "get" Assistant Professor Finkelstein -- who, as I said before, is a son of two Holocaust survivors, two survivors of the Nazi Holocaust -- because, evidently, Finkelstein's brand of thought was not to his, Dershowitz's, liking.

I am therefore making this information known to those people who sincerely support impartial and objective application of the principle of equality of in expression of views, equality in rights of freedom of speech without fear for loss of livelihood, genuine freedom of opinion and freedom of thought, and who may have labored under the apparent illusion or apparent delusion that Professor Alan Dershowitz is himself similarly consistently interested in the same, in any kind of principled and consistent fashion. It does not at all appear to me that Professor Dershowitz is in any way, any shape, or any form consistently or in a principled way interested in free speech, free thought, freedom of views, freedom of expression of views, and it even appears to me he has gone out of his way to insure denial of a livelihood to someone whose views he hates. Apparently, if someone's viewpoint on the Near East and on the subject of Zionism as a political philosophy is to Professor Dershowitz's dislike, even if that person is the son of Holocaust survivors, he will seek to deprive that person of a livelihood. It appears that in this matter, Professor Dershowitz is utterly without any shame at all. And the article in The Nation quoted in the American Trotskyist publication, Workers Vanguard, indicates that Professor Dershowitz even seemed to have gone so far as to lobby the authorities of the state of California to try to deny publication of a book Professor Finkelstein sought to publish. Apparently the authorities of the state of California said they could not help in preventing publication as to do so would infringe on freedom of speech.

I don't know if Dershowitz holds the same view in support of the American invasion of Iraq that prominent public atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of the book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which I personally have read and have previously publicly endorsed, supports. But I do know that Hitchens has denounced the, to me, quite reasonable stance of former president Jimmy Carter (a president who is no favorite of mine, and whose right-wing religiosity I have previously denounced particularly for his wearing his religion on his sleeve in public when he was president which, it seemed to me, made it legitimate to have done that and, in the doing of that, undermined separation of church and state in the U.S.; but the issue of Carter's, to me, reasonable statement here is separate) which made the point that the state of Israel seems to have engaged in practices toward the Palestinian people akin to apartheid in South Africa. This view of Carter's caused Hitchens to call Carter "disloyal," which reminded me, a person of 61 years of age, of the disloyalty charges of right-wing, red-baiting, anti-Soviet and anti-Communist hysterical U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose senate hearings used to be on television when I was a little kid in the 1950s, and who used his position to destroy the livelihoods of all kinds of innocent people of a leftist political orientation. Irrespective of my generally voting for socialists in elections and not Democrats or Republicans, I share Carter's view that the way the state of Israel has largely "dealt with" the Palestinian people does, indeed, resemble the way in which the previous South African regime "dealt with" the black people of South Africa, on an apartheid-like basis. I think, therefore, that Hitchens' denunciation of Carter is groundless. But given it, and given Dershowitz's efforts against Professor Finkelstein, I would not be a bit surprised if Dershowitz also has the same view on Carter and has voiced them. I found on Professor Finkelstein's site interesting information as to the media attacks on Carter's views on the Near East that might prove interesting to other secular humanist atheists.

If someone supports genuinely freedom of speech and academic freedom, one ought not to lobby to get results that materially amount to deprivation of a livelihood for a person whose views one dislikes, particularly views that, in the case of Finkelstein, were and are well-researched, scholarly views with real corroborative and confirming empirical data supporting them. But it appears to me that that is precisely what Professor Alan Dershowitz has done -- lobby for results that amount to the material deprivation of the livelihood of other scholars and other academics the conclusions of whose research Professor Dershowitz dislikes. The fact that in the case of Professor Finkelstein, it's someone who is the son of two Holocaust survivors makes what Professor Dershowitz appears to have done in this matter of lobbying the DePaul University to deny tenure to Assistant Professor Finkelstein seem particularly sleazy to me.

But that seems to have been what has caused the denial of academic tenure for Professor Finkelstein. The views he had, based on hard data, did not meet some American right-wing bipartisan party line, and so, his tenure's been denied.

I urge you to go to Professor Norman Finkelstein's website and check out the information contained there.

I also urge you to check out the article below from an American socialist paper of the Trotskyists on the Finkelstein case of denial of academic tenure to Norman Finkelstein.

I urge you to protest to DePaul University denial of tenure of Professor Finkelstein, and I urge you to protest to Alan Dershowitz his involvement in trying to get a livelihood denied to Professor Finkelstein, the son of two Holocaust survivors, because Dershowitz doesn't like the views of Professor Finkelstein.

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Allan Greene,

Associate Member, Council for Secular Humanism,

Member, Atheist Alliance,

Member, Freedom from Religion Foundation

a/k/a tompaine1917@yahoo.com

by Allan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 2:46:58 PM

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Mac McKinney

Hitchens the Nihilist

Hitchens is enough to drive an atheist to drink, if not into the arms of some Deity. His speaking fees at least keep his own cupboard stocked. I would have to say Hitchens really isn't an atheist anyway. He definitely admires the Devil.

by Mac McKinney (53 articles, 114 quicklinks, 241 diaries, 1414 comments [31 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007 at 11:09:08 PM

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