"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."

The much missed Christopher Hitchens on free speech. I don't agree with everything that he says but he always said it so well.

The trouble is that some people have trouble telling the difference between ignoring the speech they don't like and preventing other people from hearing it. Then they then try to use free speech as a defense for their own Orwellian ideas of suppressing other people.

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus." That applies as much to 'Islam is the religion of peace' as much as 'Climate change is a settled science'.

Christopher Hitchens telling it like it is

Watch especially from 4:30

No 21st century Muslims are not victims like 1930's German Jews

As Christopher Hitchens wrote about the mega-mosque at Ground Zero:

'"Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s" Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.'

Don't anyone else dare to tell me that Muslims in Europe or America are persecuted in a similar way to the way Jews were in Nazi Germany. It's not true and it's frankly offensive.

An odd discussion about Al Quaeda, the Taliban, Afghanistan, Iraq and more

Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie and Mos Def on the Bill Maher show.

Mos Def ruined Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy but it looks as though he was more coherent in the film than he is in real life.

"Totalitarianism defined"?

CNN and Christopher Hitchens on the UN's plans to make criticism of religion illegal.

Don't blame sexism for Hillary Clinton's defeat

Christopher Hitchens is not a fan of Hillary or Bill Clinton:

"Posterity may well remember the Hillary Clinton campaign as the nearest that a member of the female gender had thus far gotten to the nomination of a major political party. But the episode will be recalled for many other salient features as well. The first time that the wife of an ex-president had leveraged her first-lady status into a senatorial seat and then a bid for the presidency. The first time that the candidate's spouse (and campaigner in chief) was a person who had been disbarred for perjury and impeached for—among other things—obstruction of justice. The first time since the 1960s that a Democrat seeking the nomination had implicitly relied on a "Southern strategy" of appealing to the rancor of the "white working class." The first time since the lachrymose Ed Muskie that a candidate's eyes had welled up with tears in New Hampshire. The first time that a woman candidate was married to a man who had been believably accused of rape and sexual harassment (see my book No One Left To Lie To). The first time that a candidate had said of her half-African-American rival that he was not a member of the Muslim faith "as far as I know." The first time that the loser in the delegate count had failed to congratulate or even acknowledge the winner on the night of his historic victory."

Do read the rest...