Red Wine + Good Fight = Great Friends

Have you ever noticed that some of the people you are closest to are people you met through some argument? I've decided that this is due to the fact that a lot of false pretenses that may be put forward first in a friendship are bypassed and then people see exactly who you are without wading through all the other 'stuff'. Once the argument is resolved, you then get to know each other from a more truthful starting point, a higher plane. I'm not saying that it is bad or wrong to put forward those better faces at first, it is what our society dictates and is our culture. But when the other situation presents itself, it can turn out good as well.

Michael Totten experienced this out on the town with no other than Christopher Hitchens and some Iraqis. To be honest, when reading blogs I usually don't hang around and read long posts unless it just knocks my socks off. But this post has it all. It is suspenseful, funny, and such a unique view into an evening made up of an eclectic group to say the least.

I almost always agree with Hitchens. He is one of the best writers of our time and I respect him for some very specific reasons. One, he is intellectually honest with himself. He is one of only a few liberals that fully recognize the Islamic-fascist threat at hand. He is a hawk and God love him for it. Which brings me to another point with Hitchens. He is an atheist. This is certainly his free-will choice, but this leads to some terribly unfortunate columns, IMHO. He wrote a column about a year ago about Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" that was horribly misguided and vile in my opinion. He is seriously off-course in this area. However, exposure to him has taught me, to my amazement, that you can passionately agree on some very big important issues, but completely and totally disagree on even greater issues. I never know what I'm going to find when I go to read Hitchens. I do know that I'm either going to love it completely or be in complete and total disagreement. Let it be known, that Hitchens is not alone, Charles Krauthammer wrote a similarly disappointing column on Gibson's movie, the source of my only disagreement with Charles.

What is wickedly ironic is this dilemma of mine: I despise Pat Buchanan, however, he wrote a brilliant column on Gibson's movie that totally took Krauthammer and other writers to task. It is the one article that I cheer from Buchanan. Again the dichotomy.

Anyway, go and read Totten's story of his night out. It is a true story worthy of a chapter in a good novel.