At 5:01 PM -0500 1/13/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>[So now he's writing for the WSJ's comics page! "From the left" indeed.]
>
>Wall Street Journal - January 13, 2003
>
>COMMENTARY
>AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
>A View From the Left
>
>By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Hitchens was a rotten leftist, but he may now make a fine conservative -- _if_ he is courageous enough to embrace the venerable label, that is -- a conservative in favor of secularism, civil liberties, Palestinian self-determination, and respect for history, opposed to "the featherbedding of mediocre and greedy managements" in a good old wet Tory fashion.
Yoshie -- I don't see him as a conservative. He accuses the leftist flacks for Saddam and Osama as acting conservatively, i.e. cowardly.
Richard A. Posner, the conservative judge Justin has a crush on, calls him "a maverick rather than a doctrinaire leftist" in this somewhat favorable review of Hitchens's Orwell book: http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=8767
He's had stuff on the funny pages before. Not long ago I saw him on cable where he appeared on Hardball with Pat Buchanan guest hosting and John Fund and Tony Blankley were the other guests. He was smiling the whole time apparently reveling in the absurdity of that collection of characters. He also defended affirmative action, not a conservative position last time I checked.
Peter