Christopher Hitchens, "Hitch" to us admirers, died today at 62. I have to say, right out, that he was one of my heroes - and one of my few living heroes. There will be many obituaries and postmortems, so I won't go into everything one can say about him (who could?), restricting myself to how he affected me.
What I most admired about him - how he inspired me - was his unrelenting dedication to truth, and the witty, engaging, and graceful way he went about it. He was fearless, and didn't shy from confronting the vicious stupidity, mediocrity, cruelty, and hypocrisy which mark so many in power and who would wield power over others. But he also had something substantial to offer in the place of the cowardly cant which passes for wisdom in our society: the rigorous search for truth, no matter where it takes one; a zest for life; the humanist love for a truly liberal society and the blessings it bestows on us all; the courage to be himself whatever the conventional wisdom may demand; the intellectual and moral knowledge that, as Socrates put it, the "unexamined life is not worth living." He formulated one of the ideas which remain, for me, a guiding light: "That which is asserted without evidence may also be dismissed without evidence." He will remain, for me, a model of living in the world to which I aspire.
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