Thoughts on this man?

He's just another public "intellectual"

Pic related.

Who are you quoting?

This.

His travel memoirs are really interesting - Short Breaks in Mordor. I haven't read anything else he's written.

none of your business boy

>ignore these people because I personally dont like them
eat shit, autist

My nigga.

Sophist.

Thomas Aquinas, Scaruffi, Pope Francis, Hegel, Nikola Tesla don't belong on there.

every single opinion he has relating to drugs is actually a fact

youtube.com/watch?v=PMcQddzH3Ug

Milo too

No it isn't. His weighs in on subjects which are heavily ambiguous. No one can properly describe the nature of addiction because the brain itself is very poorly understood. No one can explain the nature of the correlation between drug use and crime because, again, it's poorly understood. He's right to call attention to these facts, but these issues are very emotive, and he acts in a deliberately incendiary manner. For him to act like a persecuted right wing martyr is disingenuous. He criticised Enoch Powell for "paddling in sewage" because Enoch was too intelligent to not know what he was doing, and the same accusation is applicable to Peter.

yes, let the buttmad flow through you

>he doesn't understand sarcasm

Sad

bait

>No one can explain the nature of the correlation between drug use and crime because, again, it's poorly understood

*violent crime

I would've assumed anyone posting in this thread would understand the point I'm making because it's one of Peter Hitchens' hobby horses along with Grammar schools and Tony Blair. Your eagerness to post a funny image and some green text lets you down.

Grammar schools are/were an objectively good thing, though.

Comprehensives are dog shit, and have made education more of a class warfare battleground than ever before - whereby the rich price the poor out of the catchment areas for good schools.

I know a lot of buttblasted older people who failed their 11+ and never got over it. Grammar schools were surely worth it if only for their function as a salt manufacturer.

There is not a bit of evidence which doesn't show them increasing the class divide. The most educationally successful areas of Britain are fully comprehensive and Kent, which still has a grammar system, is rated low. Also Finland.
You've been fucked by education ministers who either don't want the underclass to be too clever or mobile (why else would they continually denigrate language teaching?), or because they were educated at private schools and grammars, which through tuition become proxy-privates, they simply think the vast majority of the nation are incapable.

>Muh Finland

Every fucking time. Don't concern yourselves with the immense differences in culture/etc, we're all the same! All children are blank slates, tabula rasa, who can be thrown into a foreign education system with ease!

>the class divide

Only people who are at the top of the class divide even care about the class divide. Meanwhile the rest of society is wondering how to get there.

They were so contrarian to one another it was ridiculous. And in the end nobody really wanted them because of their childishness, Peter is too hard line for the conservatives that would accept him and too touristy for the ones he wants to join. The other one had to move to America and was such a non entity generally that I've actually forgotten his name.

Stephen Hawking went through a very similar early years education to what they do in Finland. He didn't learn to read until he was 8 or something.

I agree in broad terms tho, English people in general are too retarded from all that inbreeding and any decent education would be wasted.

>Meanwhile the rest of society is wondering how to get there.
Middle class worldview. Go fuck yourseld braaaah

Its true. Rather than helping poor students receive a better level of education grammar schools tend to widen the gap between middle class kids and the poor. Just look at the relatively small number of poor pupils accepted to grammar schools where they still exist. By the time children are sitting their 11+ those from middle class families are already ahead academically of the poor kids, so it tends to be the middle class children that get in.

Londoner detected.

That doesn't make sense.

Or does it?

Peter Hitchens' foreign reporting us excellent and he's got a lot of good things to say about civil liberties. On the other hand he's far too pessimistic when it comes to subjects like drugs and teen sex where he comes across like some confused old man.

We need to go deeper, I still know faces that I don't see there.

I agree on the 'paddling in sewage' point but the correlation between drug use and crime, including violent crime, is pretty clear. The less of that stuff kicking around the better.

I got no idea who the fuck that is, so judging by his picture alone, I'm gonna guess he's some pretentious pseudo-intellectual wanker.

>Middle class worldview

How can it be? I'm poor, in fact I'm almost destitute.

The fact there is a correlation is clear. The nature of the correlation isn't. There could be any number of things causing the correlation, and Peter Hitchens is right to draw attention to it, particularly when it's ignored everywhere else. But you just state "drugs are bad" it does the argument damage, as it places you on the side of emotionalism and kneejerk reaction rather than understanding.

But this thread is testament to my point about Peter's own paddling on sewage. He invariably targets issues with a high degree of ambiguity and emotion attached. It's clickbait disguised in respectable journalism. He is an intelligent man with a lot of experience, but he doesn't seem like he's trying anymore.

yep

>and was such a non entity generally that I've actually forgotten his name.
Read his literary criticism. Knowing Christopher only via his views on religion is like knowing Nabokov only for his crazy opinions of other authors.

All his journalism and speaking was a pile of shit. Nabokov isn't a bad comparison tho, outside of flowery language and structuring they were both plebemaxes.

Nabokov aesthetic proficiently can't be denied. The novel is an art; form is almost everything, and it's something that Nabokov was better at than all of his contemporaries.

*aesthetic proficiency

I bet you like Chomsky and Zizek you fucking pseud

True, I am cheapening that somewhat. But his analysis and academic shit is mostly terrible. I mean that fucking annotated metamorphosis is the worst fanfiction tier.

Hit a nerve?

He doesn't say that the war on drugs is lost by the states. He says that the UK state didn't even try.

So if it didn't try, then why has they blown so much money on it. And moralizing a medical issue is soo productive.

He isn't intelligent. He compensates with an animalistic energy.

The correlation between crime and drug use is simple to understand. The state pushes up the price of drugs and pushes down the quality.

>He criticised Enoch Powell for "paddling in sewage" because Enoch was too intelligent to not know what he was doing
>reading on Wikipedia on Enoch Powell
>tfw finding this gem
>Powell's ambition to be Viceroy of India crumbled in February 1947, when Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that Indian independence was imminent. Powell was so shocked by the change of policy that he spent the whole night after it was announced walking the streets of London.[9]:51 He came to terms with it by becoming fiercely anti-imperialist, believing that once India had gone the whole empire should follow it.[citation needed] This logical absolutism explained his later indifference to the Suez crisis, his contempt for the Commonwealth and his urging that Britain should end any remaining pretence that it was a world power.

brilliant

all that happens is that the upper middle classes stop paying for private education and buy houses near catchment areas for grammar schools, pricing out the working classes. it already happens for state primary schools nowadays

Forgettable prig

I couldn't agree more about the way he tends to overcook so many of his little 'witticisms'. I remember after his brother died, the first thing he wrote was a bizarre hit-piece on Stephen Fry which had resulted from, get this, the latter having come up to him during the wake to offer his commiserations, and Peter the autistic Christian getting all pissy for no reason whatsoever. He's way too proud of having thought to describe Fry as "an idiot's idea of an intellectual" or whatever.

B-but I happen to like Herman Hesse. What'd he do to you?

beautiful

>He's way too proud of having thought to describe Fry as "an idiot's idea of an intellectual" or whatever.
I guess a broken clock is right sometimes.

That doesn't make it right to smugly milk your punchlines for everything they're worth, like an Anglican, priggish Paulie Walnuts who has nightmares about children straying from God's path.

> Heh heh, hey Christofuh. I told him that he was an idiot's idea of an intellectual heh heh heh. Pretty funny hey Chris.

>Heh heh, hey Christofuh. I told him that he was an idiot's idea of an intellectual heh heh heh. Pretty funny hey Chris.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened had Christian Hitchens died and left Atheist Hitchens instead. I suspect some kind of religious epiphany just to keep their stupid sibling rivalry going.

Christopher was the greatest philosopher of the last 100 years. Peter is a giant cuck

>The correlation between crime and drug use is simple to understand
No it isn't. Everyone has a different interpretation of what the correlation means, and the shit you spouted is proof of that. Everyone thinks they know what it means but no one actually does, and that's what makes it harder to understand - people spouting so much shit, with their theories they are emotionally attached to.

Christopher was a well-read journalist. Tony Robbins is more of a philosopher than he was

>Aquinas
You did not just do that.

...

When I was younger I agreed more with his brother, as I grow older I find myself agreeing more with him.

Underrated whilst his brother is overrated.

His writings on the decline of Britain are brilliant on their own. I truly believe, in this topic, he is right where few others are.

I like his story of transitioning from a revolutionary to a conservative.

His public debate skills capabilities are questionable. To be fair he is often (as he claims) put on panels with everyone "out to get him." The question time in Australia is an extreme version of this. But often in one-to-ones and occasions where he is not deliberately balanced out, he retains this thinking and therefore comes off as overbearing.

He is however very measured and respectful of public debate, I think people too often equate him with American conservative lunatics who just shout a lot and hate liberals.

His opinions on drugs and some other topics are very silly and often questionable, built too much around feelings than facts.

He's great, always stands out on whatever panel he is put on and can talk for hours but never seem to lose things to talk about. However, since he believes that his soul will be saved by his Christian faith, he no longer seems to care about earthly politics too much, at least not to the extent that he will go out of his way to advocate for anyone, he doesn't even vote anymore.

What are the main points of his argument about the decline of Britain?

Hates freedom (transparent ressentiment towards his brother's greater succes), nonentity, indifferent towards him.

Look around you, wankah.

I'm not british

It's kind of a long and multifaceted argument that you need to have an understanding of British postwar history to truly appreciate. It's also been a while since I read it.

But the basic points are that since the Second World War, Britain has declined on account, in many respects, as a result of liberal elites imposing their agenda on it entwined with the postwar decline of Christian values.

Such imposed ideologies as multiculturalism, sexual liberation, etc., have made Britain a nation cut off from its history and culture, and increasingly becoming bland and money-driven.

His arguments are often subject to pigeonholing, you'll often find people accuse him of being Thatcherite, racist, etc., when he is none of these things.

...

...

>Reading Peter instead of Chris

That's pretty retarded t b h
It's obvious that the peak of influence that Britain ever had was a massive overextention and that ultimately it's not that significant of a country

>Not reading both and coming to your own conclusion
>Not appreciating both brothers respectively

>Reading Chris instead of Peter

I'm not sure what you point is.

His argument does not especially concern the decline of Britain as a world power, but rather the decline of British society.

Oh
Well that's still pretty retarded t b h
Society is constantly in flux and the sense of decline seems to be ubiquitous.

>I'm poor, in fact I'm almost destitute.
In other words "the threat of social benefits hangs over me!". This is fine, so long as you have somewhere to keep the rain off and can buy a small amount of food to keep you going you're alright.

However, being middle class even fairly meagre restrictions on your resources threatens your lifestyle and so is the end of the world.

You can argue that, it's a fairly objective argument from him. Perhaps "decline" is the wrong word - more negative change.

It's just worth noting he doesn't romanticise the past so much as believe, in his words, we "chose the wrong future."

>reading either
Falling at the first jump tbph. Both are obviously wastes of time/space/air.

*subjective I mean

On a similar note are there any other British political/cultural commentators you guys would recommend reading? (They don't have to have the same of even similar views to Peter)

Andrew Neil and Rees-Mogg.

I love Neil on the Daily Politics and Rees-Mogg seems like a nice guy though I haven't really read much by him, only seen a few videos here and there. Was more requesting something along the lines of highly opinionated columnists, that kinda thing..

I like him

alex jones does NOT belong there

That's because only the rich can afford to live in areas where grammar schools still exist. Apart from Northern Ireland, where there are grammar schools everywhere and education is better

The same is true of the best comprehensive schools in England too

The fact is comprehensives are even worse because the rich move to the best ones, and there isn't even a system of selection where they actually have to be intelligent

Should've formed a wrestling due, desu.

I like Hitchens but I feel like Ive either grown out of him or become bored. He doesnt have a very long field of vision.

I disagree with him and think that people should be able to take hypothetical harmless mind numbing drugs in their own home if it doesnt affect anyone else (although how can self harm through drugs be reconciled with socialised healthcare? Then your behaviour does harm the public who has to subsidise you. This is never brought up). Although he brings up indisputable facts that are really inconvenient for people. Marijuana really is de facto legalised. If only awful criminals and murdering cartels supply drugs then why is it immoral to currently prosecute people who buy drugs? Addiction is something that should be under more scrutiny. This current path of glibly saying "mental health" will lead to more government power (e.g., bureaucrats saying that disliking Islam makes you crazy). It seems that these "mental health" sympathisers wouldve agreed with Alan Turings treatment if they were born 60 years earlier.

He is small minded in some respects, although he doesnt get fooled by most bs false narratives created by the politicians and media.

I think grammar schools are not worthwhile because 11 year olds should not have the ability to seriously affect their futures. Its as simple as that. Hitchens is seriously small minded and ignorant with respect to education (thinks that maths tests without calculators are automatically harder and tests with calculators proof of intellectual degradation). The reason he puts such huge importance on school education (and I say this as someone with perfect school grades) is because he has been a journalist / writer all his life and therefore has not had to use any skills other than literacy and logic / critical thinking (which are innate to people). He simply has no clue that school maths is trivial compared to what youre taught in university. And so on for the sciences.

Also the 50s are not coming back.

>muh interpretation
Even though alcohol is heavily regulated it is not criminal. The price is not in a constant flux because of sporadic cop crackdowns, if you buy a bottle of Jim Beam from a legit store you can be sure it is not tea mixed with glycol etc etc and et fucking c.

Also: The age of prohibition in the US.

>since he believes that his soul will be saved by his Christian faith, he no longer seems to care about earthly politics too much, at least not to the extent that he will go out of his way to advocate for anyone, he doesn't even vote anymore
Good fucking riddance.