On Vietnam and the Practice of History

This was typed on my phone in the bar of the hostel in Amsterdam. Any formatting errors on a desktop, I blame on my medium.

Enjoy. TD

Next year will mark the 45th anniversary of 1968, the year, as Mark Kurlansky notes, “that rocked the world.” Despite the oddness of it, it is possible that the entire year is worthy of remembrance and our historical attention. It was the year that Richard Milhous Nixon entered the White House, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. It wathe year of the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, and the Chicago riots.

Police and protestors clash in Chicago, August 1968.

Internationally, students and workers protested and rioted to show disdain for their governments and the United States. The Prague Spring welled up and was crushed by the Soviet Union. There were independence battles in Africa, and Palestinian guerrilla fighters first established themselves. 1968 became synonymous with international protest and discontent.

However, this is not a piece about the history of that year, although none of its events can truly exist independently of each other. Instead, it’s about the history of history, the historiography of 1968 and how it is uniquely important – forty-five years later – to our social, cultural, and political well being.

The nucleus of this piece was born as I wandered through the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. To call a spade a spade, the history on display here was a very thinly veneered effort at anti-American propaganda. Incidentally, when the museum was first opened in 1975, it went by the name “The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government.” The exhibits themselves have provocative titles, such as “American War Crimes and Atrocities,” and exhaustively document the horrors of Agent Orange, right up to a formaldehyde box with disfigured fetuses floating within.

No doubt, the images are horrific to look upon, and America should probably appropriately answer for such a ghastly crime. As a side note, for the best recent article on Agent Orange, see Christopher Hitchens’ The Vietnam Syndrome in Vanity Fair.

However, wandering through the rest of the museum and listening to the disapproving clucks and whispers of “my God, I can’t believe the USA did all these things,” I felt myself wanting to leap to the defense of Messrs. Kissinger and McNamara.

Why? Because outside of the gratuity of the Agent Orange exhibit, the rest d the museum was riddled with weak and lazy history, and deliberate attempts to valorise the communist forces and vilify the American coalition. (It is always worth remembering that Vietnam was not a unilateral war.)

In short, the outright distortion of history to construct a nationalist consensus is appalling, and an affront to professional history.

This objection came up a number of times over late-night barroom conversation, and I was usually met with the two sophomoric arguments that we North Americans are no less guilty of distorting our history, and that “each country owns their history,” and who am I to tell them differently?

The first argument fails to pass critical muster, by virtue of the fact that it just isn’t true. Our museums certainly focus on the positive bits of our history, but our media, schools and public programming easily provide any necessary counterpoint. The well-received documentary Canada: A People’s History even examined the use of blankets exposed to smallpox as an early form of biological warfare.

More importantly, our teachers painstakingly go through our national history, emphasising our conflicts, atrocities and misjudgements. There is no Canadian student who hasn’t critically examined the execution of Louis Riel (who, I hasten to add, was hanged. I won’t speculate on whether or not he was hung.)

Slavery in the United States, the deaths of thousands of Chinese immigrants along the track of the Canadian railways, and our shameful and nativist internment of Japanese Canadians (even worse than in the U.S.) are all subjects that get their just exposure. Even the most useless student of history has a cursory grasp of these abuses.

And that doesn’t even account for the massive body of critical literature, and the sustained assault by universities on traditional history and the legacies of colonialism. In short, the discipline f history in Canada and the United States has got its house in order, and for that reason, retains a morally relevant critical voice.

The second objection, that a nation owns its history, has marginally more cohesion.

It is true that those who experience history have the right and responsibility to see it preserved. I will even concede that there is some value in national histories and myths to build a national consciousness.

However, the unequivocal creation of a consensus is the antithesis of honest historical inquiry. There are relatively few historical theories that are in complete consensus. Disagreement and debate – the dialectic – is what is important to historical inquiry.

So yes, a nation owns its history. But it is only legitimate insofar as it embodies the critical faculties of historical inquiry. Therefore, in the case of Vietnam, the War Remnants Museum history might be legitimate, but only if there is a contrasting and widely available alternative history.

Unfortunately, the ongoing evidence from the other exhibits and museums suggests a single, unalterable historical discourse.

One of the most heartening (and ultimately disturbing) events of the Vietnam War was the actions of Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., and his two gunners, Specialists Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta.

On the morning of March 16, 1968 soldiers under the command of Captain Ernest Medina and Lieutenant William Calley descended upon “Pinksville,” expecting to meet enemy resistance.

Instead they systematically massacred the seniors, women, and children – all that remained in the village of My Son.

The rest doesn’t even need to be explained; it was achingly documented in a series of photos by Army photographer Ronald Haeberle. The photos are a gruesome testimony to the brutality and atrocity of My Lai.

Note the “placement” of the baby in the middle of the picture.

However, one of the lesser known sides of the story is that Thompson and his crew evacuated 11 Vietnamese, and Andreotta personally extracted an infant from a ditch full of bodies. Indeed, Thompson instructed his gunners to turn their fire on their comrades if they interfered with his airlift, and had two headed exchanges with superior officers.

This inspiring tidbit of history is particularly important because it was conspicuously absent from all the museums I visited, with the notable exception of the actual memorial grounds at My Son. This notable absence serves to bolster the dichotomous and universal “us vs. them” mentality of the Vietnamese museums.

However, this was far from the only example. The infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” one used by French colonial forces, was later used by the North Vietnamese to hold captured American airmen. One of these airmen was former Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Now a museum, it is meant to be a snapshot in time that superimposes the horrific abuses by the French against the gentility of North Vietnamese jailers. Photos abound of Americans eating Christmas dinner, opening gifts from family, and playing basketball. The silence on any abuses by the North Vietnamese is palpable.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are binders with mug shots of every American held there. John McCain claims that his facial deformities are the result of torture while in the Hanoi Hilton.

There is no mug shot on display for John McCain.

This means that not only is the history selective – ignoring Americans who turned on their fellow servicemen – but also blatantly disingenuous.

This facade does breakdown satisfyingly, though. Christopher Hitchens once wrote that “a good liar must have a good memory,” the alternative usually ends with one hoist upon their own petard.

In the War Remnants, there are two nearly identical photographs, with tellingly, and significantly, important captions.

The first shows an American tank dragging a body through the streets, with a caption explaining that this was a popular form of torture. The second, a helicopter hovering over the trees with a body down below. The caption explains that it’s a loyal comrade being callously tossed to his doom. Elsewhere in the museum the fraternal twins of these pictures are, respectively, explained as disposal of corpses, and retrieval of the dead from the battlefield.

One wonders how many museum-goers picked up upon this duplicity.

If these efforts have been exposed as a hopeless nationalist fraud (and I think they have), then what is the implication?

The first is that one fervently hopes that there is a body of critical scholarship within Vietnam that insists upon accountability for all parties. Or, as a second-best alternative, that there is critical literature from elsewhere that is readily available.

The second is that, in no way, is this meant to downplay the suffering of the Vietnamese. It is meant to segue into the implications this has for Canada and the United States, and make my case that history can be, and has been, corrupted for nationalist objectives.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that “history is hard to know because of all the hired bullshit.” To plagiarise, that’s true, but he misses the point. History is a competitive and self-purifying discipline, in which the only real taint comes from the meddling fingers of government.

Thankfully, in most Western countries, the government line is treated with open suspicion, if not hostility by journalists and the academy. And so, this brings us full circle back to 1968 and the importance of dissent and disputation to a healthy democracy.

Indeed, if our histories have only one line, one controlled by the government, we have not only lost our collective and individual pasts, but also our future.

If we cannot have an engaged and conscious and critical discussion of our past it becomes impossible to tackle the future through this same process of conflict. It is the dialectic, whether historical or when confronting future problems that is the engine of progress.

It is, therefore, no coincidence that the nations which control history, speech, art, and literature are limping, stunted and weakened into the arms of modernity.

If we conclude (and we must) that history has an impact on the future, then our inquiry must be done through the frame of disputation and investigation, and not dictated from the places of power: legislatures and pulpits. History is – and must remain – the property of those who lived it, those who study it, and those who love it. And this must always be maintained in a critical context, for the love of history is the love of argument and debate.

For certainly, in the study of history there are answers, such as they are, and this doesn’t resign us to any sort of relativism where all answers are equal. I simply state, firmly and with some conviction, that the best historical line, or the best means of our intellectual progress is almost certainly not the one espoused by any government.

Naples to Jordan

Florence – Pisa – Rome

Cambodia to Venice

Saigon from the balcony of the Caravelle Hotel.

Extremely clever bar name – “wat” means temple.

Hong Kong from the harbour at night. Incidentally that is the tower from The Dark Knight.

Piz Gloria in Switzerland, the setting of the James Bond film (and book) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Interlaken, Switzerland at night.

007 coffee in the Piz Gloria.

The Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge in Venice.

Another of Interlaken at night.

Gondolas at the Grand Canal.

Looking out over Venice.

Genocide in Cambodia

Angkor Archaeological Park

Photos from the Road

One of the Wats (temples) in Ayutthaya

Wat Phra Mahathat – tree that has grown around a Buddha head

Wat Phra Si Sanphet in Ayutthaya. All the wats have been destroyed by wars. I believe primarily the Burmese, and they torched all of them when they conquered Siam a few hundred years ago.

The chaos of Khao San Road, one of the main drags in Bangkok

Wat Arun, across the canal in Bangkok

Not quite sure which temple this is, but it’s somewhere in Bangkok

One of the large waterfalls in Koh Samui. It’s right in the centre of the island.

This is in the main tourist area of Koh Samui, near Chaweng Beach

The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lampur. The one site that was seen, since I was only in town for about six hours.

Nightime in Singapore, looking across the marina towards downtown.

The light show at the Sands Marina Hotel. Puts the Bellagio to shame as they project images onto the mist from the water

Sands Hotel in Singapore. There’s a giant boat atop the three towers. Almost managed to sneak in, but got hustled away by security.

I believe this is looking over the terrain of Russia or China

Tundra, either in Alaska, somewhere near the Bering Strait, or Siberia.

The Literary Bond, Part 1

Bond author Ian Fleming

For quite some time, I’ve had half a mind to say something about the old Bond novels. At one point, this revolved primarily around the waning of British imperialism, and the apparent fondness for Empire displayed within Fleming’s pages. However, more recently, I’ve become interested in the less profound aspects of the novels, particularly how the everyday habits and presence of Bond is actually quite alien from our current conceptions of health, masculinity, and vice.

For most people, the name James Bond primarily refers to the highly successful film adaptations of Ian Fleming’s novels. Beyond the entertainment value of the twenty-two films (plus one unofficial film featuring Sean Connery), there are important social and cultural lessons to be learned, specifically from Ian Fleming’s novels. Indeed, the evolution of the series itself (not to mention Bond’s character) can tell us a great deal about how society has changed since 1953 when Casino Royale was first published. The thirteen James Bond novels reflect a great deal of the social changes with which British society — and Western society — were grappling with around mid-century.

Bond’s personification of English-ness has been rather well hashed out by some of the best writers of the past half century, such as Christopher Hitchens, who memorably wrote in The Atlantic that Ian Fleming was “a sadist, a narcissist, and an all — around repressed pervert,” who is redeemed only by the fact that he “saw past the confines of the Cold War.” Indeed, entire books have been written on the subject of Bond’s cultural relevance.

However, a number of significant observations can be made without delving too deeply into the books, specifically regarding Ian Fleming’s presentation of James Bond.

One of the defining characteristics of the Bond novels and films is his sexual presence and charisma; the conquests are themselves a precise component of the story, as important as the villains or cars or guns. However, from a twenty-first century perspective, the presence that the literary Bond has is nearly laughable, at least compared to the rippling, hairless pectorals of Daniel Craig’s film Bond.

According to the Russian dossier in From Russia, With Love, Bond’s description is as follows:

Height: 183 centimeters (6 feet); weight: 76 kilograms (167 pounds); slim build; eyes: blue; hair: black…all-round athlete…Smokes heavily (N.B.: special cigarettes with three gold bands); vices: drinks, but not to excess, and women.

The first observation is just how small Bond is according to Ian Fleming. 167 pounds is pretty darn small, especially when it’s clarified with “slim build,” and then put in context compared to what physical attributes are found attractive in twenty-first century North America. Indeed, in Moonraker, M expresses distaste that Bond is sunburned after returning from Jamaica in Live and Let Die, as tanned skin suggests unemployment, or too much time under the “sun lamp.”  Daniel Craig’s hulking Bond is certainly a physically

James Bond c. 2006

different specimen than Ian Fleming envisioned in 1957. Moreover, it tells us at least a little bit about what was attractive in the 1950s. Other novels give us even more insight into Bond’s physical characteristics.

One only needs to Google Daniel Craig to notice that on the “related searches” list, one of the options is “Daniel Craig workout.” By comparison, James Bond’s level of physical fitness is laughable, espeically as Fleming describes him as an athlete. In From Russia, With Love:

Bond went down on his hands and did twenty slow press-ups, lingering over each one so that his muscles had no rest. When his arms could stand the pain no longer he rolled over on his back and, with his hands at his sides, did the straight leg-life until his stomach muscles screamed. He got to his feet and, after touching his toes twenty times, went over to arm and chest exercises combined with deep breathing until he was dizzy. Panting with the exertion Bond went into the big white-tiled bathroom…

This description of Bond’s workout regimen is quaint, if not outright hilarious by modern standards. It does, however, explain Bond’s slight build. This disconnect between the literary Bond, and the modern film Bond isn’t a particularly deep observation about the nature of the evolution of sexual standards in society, but it is interesting to note how substantially our ideas of masculinity have evolved in sixty years.

Coupled closely with Bond’s physical state is his attitude towards vice, primarily int he form of cigarettes and alcohol. From the above quote from From Russia, With Love, it is clear that smoking isn’t considered a “vice” per se, and that Bond’s drinking is not considered to be excessive. The explanation for this could be relatively straightforward. Fleming was an exceptionally heavy smoker and drinker,it is likely that he didn’t consider his character’s level of consumption to be particularly extraordinary. Fleming is noted by the New York Times to have smoked up to eighty cigarettes per day. Bond himself averaged around sixty per day, although while playing cards in Casino Royale, he gets up towards seventy. It is worth considering, actually, where one would carry this many cigarettes while out on the town. Bond carries his triple gold banded Morland cigarettes in a flat, gunmetal cigarette case which (according to the text of Casino Royale) holds fifty cigarettes. However, in Moonraker, Bond carries this case in his “hip pocket.”

The damn thing must be gargantuan, which makes you wonder about his pockets.

Furthermore, as Iain Gately points out rather keenly in his excellent book Tobacco: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World, most of Bond’s enemies do not smoke, although when they do, and Sir Huge Drax does, Fleming quickly points out how boorish Drax’s chain-smoking really is. However, when the characters do smoke, they are obsessively described: Bond lights his darts with a battered, black Ronson lighter, for example. Bond’s luxurious smoking “he let the smoke out between his teeth with a faint hiss,” for example, are described with a near sensuality. The habits of his friends are always deeply investigated as well, such as the Colonial Secretary, Pleydell-Smith in Dr. No is described as “one of those nervous pipe smokers who are constantly patting their pockets for matches, shaking the box to see how many are left in it, or knocking the dottle out of their pipes…Bond wondered if he ever got any smoke into his lungs at all.”

Anyways, in addition to his Herculean consumption of cigarettes, Bond is an impressively heavy drinker. Over the course of his card game at Blades in Moonraker, Bond drink a vodka martini, a three-ounce shot of vodka (sprinkled with pepper), a battle of champagne with dinner, a “fat measure of pale brandy,” and a second bottle of champagne (seriously) while playing cards. Fleming also specifically described Bond smoking seven cigarettes and a “thin black cheroot.” Bond also presumably pilots his Aston Martin home afterwards (as he drove it there).  All of this over a period of roughly eight hours, and then by 10am, Bond was back at the office, “feeling dreadful.”

Despite his hero’s drinking and smoking habits, Fleming is quite clear that he’s also rather human in that regard. Bond wakes up following his night out in Moonraker with a heroic hangover, and Thunderball opens with Bond recovering from “a hangover, a bad one…when he coughed — smoking too much goes with drinking too much and doubles the hangover — a cloud of small of luminous black spots swam across his vision…” Shortly thereafter, Bond is sent to a health clinic to recover.

One of the interesting trends in Fleming’s writing about Bond’s smoking anddrinking is that Bond exists around the time when people were beginning to become legitimately paranoid about the health dangers of smoking. After returning from the health clinic, Bond stops smoking his Morland Specials, and switches to Duke of Durhams because the “Consumers Union of America rates this cigarette as the one with the lowest tar and nicotine content.” This is actually true, I bothered to look while researching my thesis. Bond also cuts back his consumption to twenty, though he admits it’s usually around twenty-five — still around a pack a day.

Bond is, therefore, not a completely carefree imbiber of spirits and nicotine. Instead, he is quite conscious of the health effects of his habits, and, as did many smokers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, began to make an effort to cut back on his smoking, or make it healthier. This is an attitude that is not really present in the earliest Bond novels, only becoming apparent in Thunderball, and tracking alongside the developments in medical science that were changing the society around Ian Fleming.

These are merely some of the more obvious tidbits of historical information that can be pulled out of the Bond novels. Much has been written about Bond’s sexual appetites and misogynist views towards women, and there is still much to be said about Bond’s presence at the twilight of British imperialism. However, it is important to keep in mind that Ian Fleming’s novels are not literary classics in the sense that they have something deep and profound to say about British society. Fleming was not Dickens. His books are written as entertainment, and they redefined the thriller genre for a generation of readers. As such, it might just be the case that the less deep observations are the most interesting. After all, there is always a lot to say about smoking and drinking, especially from the perspective of twenty-first century paranoiacs who fear any sort of consumption. But, if you’re anything like me, and annoyed by Brosnan and Craig’s nonsmoking Bonds, the books are chock full of an alternative narrative about James Bond’s persona, and it is worth keeping this in mind the next time you pick up Ian Fleming’s novels.

An Obituary for Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

Last Thursday, the free world lost one of its fiercest warriors in the battle against totalitarianism. Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens died of pneumonia in Houston, Texas, where he had been receiving treatment for stage IV esophageal cancer. It is a loss that has been keenly felt by his friends, those in the journalistic profession, as well as for his allies who found his words a fearsome salvo against the forces of depravity. His words, a source of comfort and inspiration (and occasionally, anger, when he wrote something truly dreadful, which did happen) will be a loss felt each time we do not see his byline in our important publications.

A heavy smoker (up to three packs of Rothmans Blue a day) and drinker (Johnnie Walker Black Label) Hitchens battled the malignancy that took his life for eighteen months. Although he was best known in his final years for his excoriating critiques of monotheism, Hitchens’ journalistic career spanned over four decades, and took him around the world as he penned columns on everything from oral sex to international relations.

His career began in Britain, where he was a student at Balliol College at Oxford, and a militant “soixante-huitard.” His time was divided between the demonstrations of any good Sixties radical, and the smoking lounges of Britain’s literary elite. In the late Eighties, Hitchens crossed the pond, settling in the United States, of which he became a citizen following 9/11. Here, he wrote a column called “Minority Report” for The Nation, finally departing messily from the American Left in the early 21st century. Since then, his work appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, among others. In addition to his essays and book reviews, Hitchens also wrote a number of books, most notably No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton and The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice and god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Hitchens announced his diagnosis in June 2010, writing that on that day: “I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.” He was in the middle of a book tour to promote his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22. His final column, entitled “Trial of the Will” and published in the January issue of Vanity Fair pointed out that his recent radiation treatments were either boom or bust; no more could be done to combat his cancer. Throughout his treatments, Hitchens gave his readers a glimpse into his life in “Tumorville,” and consistently remained optimistic about the power of modern medical science to prolong his life, although he admitted he would probably die with cancer, if not of it.

Hitchens and Blair pose at the Munk Debate in Toronto, Canada

Shortly after his diagnosis, I made the effort to get to an event to see Mr. Hitchens speak, and I managed to secure tickets to his highly anticipated and sold-out debate against former UK prime minister Tony Blair, with whom he mopped the floor. The entire affair necessitated a grueling red eye flight out to Toronto, and a few nights spent in suspect hostels awaiting the show. However, the most haunting thing of all was that I was, quite literally, within speaking distance of Hitchens, and never had the chance to say something.

This was a couple hours after the show, and as I was walking with my friend to try and find a train station, Hitchens was pulling out of Roy Thomson hall with his motorcade. A couple of young guys (clearly far cleverer than us) had been camped out by the loading doors waiting for him to leave, and had managed to get a few autographs. As we walked in front of his Escalade, I pulled out my notebook and pen, only to watch Mr. Hitchens roll up his window and pull out onto the street. It is haunting, especially so now that he’s gone, but I at least have had the satisfaction of seeing him speak in person.

Now that he is gone, Hitchens has left his readers a rich literary legacy. Indeed, and the obituaries written by his close friends suggest that a few more columns might be published posthumously, and it has been announced that a final memoir, entitled Mortality, is forthcoming. I hope that this final volume will contain a decent amount of unpublished work and will give faithful readers an unprecedented glimpse into the trials of an atheist facing his death.

But until then, and until his miscellaneous papers are collected and published (as that always seems to be the case), we are left with his previous work. Most recently, he published Arguably, a monstrously hefty volume that covers a massive amount of subject matter. It is to his collected works that we must look to discern what sort of legacy Hitchens has left.

Unfortunately, many of his critics are already remembering him chiefly for his defense of the Iraq War and the Bush Administration (though never on its domestic or torture policies). Whether one agrees with him or not, Hitchens gave a spirited defense of the war, and it is hard to shrug off the moral arguments that compel us to act against tyranny. In particular, watching him and British politician George Galloway duke it out is great entertainment, somehow capturing the best qualities of both highbrow politics and bloodsports. Regardless, it is an inane attempt to pigeonhole Mr. Hitchens in this way, as Arguably show us, his work is far more diverse, and there is much to love, despite the occasional stumble along the way.

Christopher Hitchens recovers from being waterboarded

Though Hitchens will most likely be remembered as a literary critic – and I suspect this is how he would have wanted it – this always struck me as slightly tedious. However, it has received a decent amount of critical acclaim, and not being a huge fan of literary discussion, I’m not much in a position to judge Mr. Hitchens’ work on the subject. However, what I do think Arguably illuminates are Hitchens’ abilities as a cultural critic. This work is significantly less serious than his literary criticism, or his political polemics, but it is nonetheless highly engaging, and quite often uproariously funny.

Two things come to mind. The first is an essay in Vanity Fair entitled “American as Apple Pie,” which traces the popularity of the blowjob through American history. His conclusion, essentially, is that:

The United States is par excellence the country of beautiful dentistry. As one who was stretched on the grim rack of British “National Health” practice, with its gray-and-yellow fangs, its steely-wire “braces,” its dark and crumbly fillings, and its shriveled and bleeding gums, I can remember barely daring to smile when I first set foot in the New World. Whereas when any sweet American girl smiled at me, I was at once bewitched and slain by the warm, moist cave of her mouth, lined with faultless white teeth and immaculate pink gums and organized around a tenderly coiled yet innocent tongue. Good grief! What else was there to think about? In order to stay respectable here, I shall just say that it’s not always so enticing when the young ladies of Albania (say) shoot you a cheeky grin that puts you in mind of Deliverance.

This essay includes trademarks of Mr. Hitchens’ writing, such as the allusions to previously unheard of books and essays (one wonders how he managed to find as much as he did on the subject). Indeed, there also seems to be a mildly childish perverse pleasure that comes from discussing…sensitive topics in a public forum, the same fleeting sense of the unconventional that accompanies the inappropriate anecdote in a bar. Such is the musing: ““No, darling. Suck it. ‘Blow’ is a mere figure of speech.” Imagine the stress that gave rise to that gag.”

Imagine the stress indeed.

Secondly, his piece (also in Vanity Fair) on the limits of self-improvement is ridiculously funny, culminating with the waxing of “back, sack and crack.” Not much more needs to be said. But the point is, there is a legacy here for Hitchens fans that should be given more than a cursory look. Merely a snippet on yoga nearly brings one to stitches:

Not to be outdone by some tempestuous and tawny Californian, I attempted to balance and extend myself in the same way, only to find that I was seized by the sensation that I might die or go mad at any moment.

Image credit to Vanity Fair

This work is impressively insightful, and perhaps more importantly, impressively funny – one of the great measures of intelligence. Some of his critics have suggested that these works are indicative of a base mind, that Hitchens, all along, was merely a poseur intellectual. But of course, this is simply ridiculous, as is demonstrated by the political and philosophical essays in his collected works.

This is where Hitchens is at his intellectual finest, at the absolute peak of his game. So not a whole lot needs to be said about them by me; this work is almost universally appreciated. His religious opponents have acknowledged his precision here, and his political ones cannot seriously dismiss his foreign affairs reportage. Mr. Hitchens lived and wrote through the three most important events of the last fifty years for Western civilization: 1968 (perfectly named by Mark Kurlansky as “the year that rocked the world“), the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the events of September 11, 2001. This is, if I might make a contribution to understanding Hitchens’ politics, writing and philosophy, the main thing to keep in mind as you attempt to understand why and how Christopher Hitchens thought.

The bigger question, and the most important aspect of his legacy is what has Hitchens left us, as his readers, his comrades, and ideological affiliates. The biggest thing is that he has mobilized young people. In a recent interview, Ian McEwan noted that at the “Christopher Hitchens Night” hosted by Stephen Fry, the audience seemed packed full of young people. This absolutely must give us hope, especially in the fight against totalitarianism and theocracy.

For at least a couple years now, there has been talk of an evangelical revival in the West, and a revival of fundamentalist religion in general. At this juncture in time, it is not up to the old guard of atheism to fight this battle. It is not up to the Four Horsemen to continue to meet these people head on in debate. Indeed, there is no “new atheism,” even as the media insists on using such an imprecise descriptor. Atheism can be traced, with certainty, through our written word back to Socrates. And so, we are left with the historical legacy of men and women who took up the standard, and went, time and time again into the breach, in order to ensure that our generation has what it does today.

If Hitchens has managed to mobilize a generation of young people and kept them away from the meager consolations of religion, then perhaps, the future victory over the forces of the Stone Age, will be his most important legacy.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

Five Must Read Articles by Christopher Hitchens (in addition to the ones already linked above).

Believe Me, It’s Torture, Vanity Fair, August 2008

The author undergoes waterboarding to dismiss Bush Administration claims that waterboarding is not torture.

I Fought the Law, Vanity Fair, February 2004

Breaking Mayor Bloomberg’s silly nanny state laws in New York City.

Is the Smoking Ban a Good Idea?, The Guardian, May 17, 2007

Hitchens defends smoking, and opposes smoking bans.

The Vietnam Syndrome, Vanity Fair, August 2006

On the still prevalent horrors of Agent Orange.

The Author Who Played With Fire, Vanity Fair, December 2009

A review of Stieg Larsson’s series, and a rather refreshingly critical one at that.

Sex Offense Hysteria, Common Law Prosecution of Children and Related Judicial Travesties

Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker

Last week, the eminent Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine posted about District Attorney in Grant County, Wisconsin, who has pressed first-degree sexual assault charges on a six year old boy for playing “doctor” with one of the neighbourhood girls.

Justifiably, the parents of the boy are pissed, and are suing the DA, Lisa Riniker for pressing these charges. The entire twenty-five page document can be viewed here (PDF).

These are the salient allegations of the case:

• There were three children present. Two were a brother and sister combo, and the third, (referred to as “D” in the document) is the boy facing sexual assault charges. The boys inserted their fingers into the anal cavity of the girl, and the other boy is alleged to have done the same to D.

• Only D is facing charges.

• The entire tawdry episode is alleged to have been tainted by investigative malpractice:

She [the girl] is the daughter of a well-known political figure in Grant County, Wisconsin. [...] D was investigated by Defendant Moravits of Grant County Social Services, whose regional supervisor (Ms. L) is the political figure’s wife’s sister-in-law, and is defined by the political figure (and by Ms. L) as the aunt of the two aforementioned 5 year-old children (of the political figure). Moravits wrote a scathing report critical of “D” calling for his prosecution and assuring the parents of D that in Grant County, Wisconsin a 6 year-old is and was not immune to criminal prosecution.

• The DA (Riniker) has been sending documents to the boy, and not his parents. These include a court summons and the reminder that he could go to prison if he fails to show.

• D will be a registered sex offender when he turns 18.

• The plaintiffs “allege violations of their U.S. 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendment Constitutional rights.”

• WISC-TV has reported that Riniker has obtained a gag order, which essentially prevents the parents of D from speaking to the media.

• Riniker has also threatened to remove D from his parents’ custody.

So…dear God, where does one begin with such a travesty?

The first is that by literally any definition, D was incapable of committing a crime. Indeed, the history of common law illustrates this very, very clearly.

Here’s Sir William Blackstone on the subject:

FIRST, we will consider the case of infancy, or nonage; which is a defect of the understanding. Infants, under the age of discretion, ought not to be punished by any criminal prosecution whatever. [My italics.] What the age of discretion is, in various nations is matter of some variety. The civil law distinguished the age of minors, or those under twenty five years old, into three stages: infantia [infancy], from the birth till seven years of age; pueritia [childhood], from seven to fourteen; and pubertas [puberty] from fourteen upwards. The period of pueritia , or childhood, was again subdivided into two equal parts; from seven to ten and an half was aetas infantiae proxima [age nearest infancy]; from ten and an half to fourteen was aetas pubertati proxima [age nearest puberty]. During the first stage of infancy, and the next half stage of childhood, infantiae proxima , they were not punishable for any crime.

So there. If an 18th century English politician has a better grasp on the mental capabilities of a six year old boy than a modern DA, then the American justice system is in pretty rough shape. But the historical legacy of age restrictions on criminal culpability makes it quite clear that there is a place for reason in the justice system, and that there is some sort of hysteria unique to the United States that makes this sort of thing possible.

Regardless, while this is a shocking and heartbreaking story, the entire thing hinges on whether or not a child can be morally or legally culpable for any crime, let alone a harmless one. Experts commissioned by D’s parents and attorneys will testify quite clearly that exploration of the body is normal for children, and that there is no conceivable link between playing doctor and sexual gratification.

However, that doesn’t mean it’ll get anywhere. It’s notoriously difficult to sue law enforcement officials or prosecutors because of the doctrine of absolute immunity, which shields them from civil liability. Radley Balko writes here that “The courts have ruled that prosecutors can’t be sued even if they intentionally manipulate or manufacture evidence that results in the conviction of an innocent person.”

We can, however, hope that it does, or that the petition to remove Riniker will be heard. It can be found on the Stop Lisa Riniker Facebook page, along with her email address, so you can get up close and personal with your feelings.

But, here are a couple other closing thoughts that tie in with this issue:

The United States executes more underage offenders than any other country in the world. And the list of countries that execute minors includes such beacons of human rights as Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Furthermore, The American Journal of Psychiatry did a study in the late Eighties that noted out of fourteen children awaiting execution in the United States, only two of them had an IQ above 90.

There is, then, at least a cursory obsession with the criminality of the young, and a reticence to treat them as such.

But, then again, this sort of thing isn’t so surprising when put up against hysterical statutory rape charges for consensual underage sex, or child pornography charges for high school kids who sext each other.

On point of fact, read both of those links. They make for heartbreaking reading, especially the first one. Here’s an excerpt:

Without the registry,” says Shirley Turner, “he would still be alive today.” She is referring, in a 2006 interview with Human Rights Watch, to her 24-year-old son, William Elliot. He was murdered that year by a pedophile-hunting Canadian gunman who found his name and address in Maine’s online database of sex offenders. Elliot’s crime: When he was 19, he had sex with his girlfriend, who was three weeks shy of 16, the age of consent in Maine.

Next is the general obsession with sex crimes, to the extent that people can be charged for relatively harmless things, such as the case of Fitzroy Barnaby, who is now a registered sex offender after grabbing a young girl’s arm while lecturing her. Or, the evidence that some users of child pornography do so as a form of therapy to cope with their own abuse as youngsters.

So there you have it. Egregious abuses and unimaginable hardship for some light, Monday evening reading.