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How Hitchens Can Save the Left

Audiobook
Nonfiction: Politics
Unabridged   15 hour(s)
Publication date: 02/28/2023

How Hitchens Can Save the Left

Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Digital Download ISBN:9781696611817

Summary

In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that Christopher Hitchens's case for universal Enlightenment principles will help liberals mount a resistance against emerging illiberal orthodoxies and defend free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values.

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Product Description

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks.

In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important.

Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens's case for universal Enlightenment principles won't just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

Author Bio

Matt Johnson writes for Haaretz, Quillette, The Bulwark, Areo, Arc Digital, and many other publications.