{"id":5,"date":"2006-02-16T22:17:33","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T04:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=5"},"modified":"2008-03-02T11:22:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-02T16:22:34","slug":"tam4-part-1-christopher-hitchens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"TAM4 Part 1:  Christopher Hitchens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Christopher Hitchens blurred his way through the first lecture on Friday morning. He was ill-miked and a bit hard to understand. That said, his speech was very strong and very interesting (if President Bush wants to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teach the argument\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in public school science classes, then tax-exempt churches should have to teach atheism too). I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have to go back and read him now. I was actually quite taken by his acerbic wit and by his libertarian convictions. I hate it when it turns out I like people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m used to not liking. That really makes me question a lot of my other calls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">He talked about Thomas Jefferson (pitch for newest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;tag=relaxandhavef-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0060598964%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1140368884%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3F%255Fencoding%3DUTF8\">book<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=relaxandhavef-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" style=\"border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/>) and the separation of church and state. He noted Jefferson was most bothered by the problem of slavery and by the occurrence of fossils in a ridge near his home (?). Conveniently, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, and they went on to solve Jefferson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two main problems. Hitchens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rally cry at the end was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMr. Jefferson, please build up that wall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 where the wall was the wall between church and state defined by Jefferson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Christopher Hitchens blurred his way through the first lecture on Friday morning. He was ill-miked and a bit hard to understand. That said, his speech was very strong and very interesting (if President Bush wants to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teach the argument\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in public school science classes, then tax-exempt churches should have to teach atheism too). I [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}