Christopher Hitchens, Anne Henderson, and a festival of silly ideas

(Above: Christopher Hitchens in a silly pose, used as the promo for the festival of dangerous ideas).

Ripe fruit from low hanging vines for the gourmet connoisseur from last week's Q & A on the ABC.

It's the kind of program designed to cause a frisson rather than a resolution, and things brewed up nicely when Christopher Hitchens met "the lady from the Sydney Institute", who identified herself as Anne Henderson. After promises of intimacy by the end of the program, Hitchens took objection to Henderson smearing the Fabian Society and the Fabian Society for not being part of the volunteer system helping out at Villawood Detention Centre:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: .... Why I asked her about - because she wasn't content just to say religious people volunteer for charities, if that was news to anybody, but she had to couple it with a smear against Fabianism and social democracy. Now, as a matter of fact...

ANNE HENDERSON: Well, they weren't there, Christopher, that's all I was saying.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I'm sorry to say that without the....

ANNE HENDERSON: I didn't say it was a smear.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: No, the efforts of Fabianism is you...

ANNE HENDERSON: But you're good at smears.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The efforts of Fabianism...

ANNE HENDERSON: What's wrong with a smear?

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I'll get to the end of this sentence if it kills you, let alone me.

ANNE HENDERSON: We have to interrupt you, Christopher.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The efforts of socialists and social democrats to make sure that things like education and health do not depend upon private charity given by rich people and religious institutions to the deserving poor are the reasons why a lot of it is taken care of because it's taken care of, because we would have welfare and...

ANNE HENDERSON: Hang on, I wasn't rich. But, just a minute, there's another smear. I wasn't a rich person giving charity where it wasn't got. You have to understand the problem...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I didn't say that you were.

ANNE HENDERSON: Well, it seemed to come across that way.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I didn't even imply that you were. No, the efforts of Fabianism and social democracy - socialism - were to make sure that these things didn't depend on the voluntary whim...

ANNE HENDERSON: Yeah, but they don't do that now.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: ...or the idea of the deserving poor. Now, that's the first point.

ANNE HENDERSON: I know about Fabianism.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The second point - well, because it's so taken for granted now, I love to remind people. Actually this meant...

ANNE HENDERSON: But that was a long time ago.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: This meant social, political action, as you correctly say...

TONY JONES: Hang on for one second.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: As you quite correctly say, and I can help you out here by emphasising it, quite a while ago. That's why I said not to forget it. Now, to the point about religious activism. Isn't it true - haven't you all heard that Hamas does so well because it supplies social services? Are you going to say that the same is true for Hamas, an Islamic jihad? Never mind that they're religious. They distribute services where otherwise there'd only be secularism and corruption. Well, if you want to claim that, you can't just claim the charitable part of it, it seems to me. Mother Teresa endlessly praised for work that most of the time she actually never did. I went to watch her very closely in Calcutta. You don't mind that she thinks that what Bengal and Calcutta mainly needs is a campaign, a clerical campaign, against birth control and family planning. Has anyone here ever been to Bengal and concluded that's what it really needs? That's what she was really campaigning for, in case you are worried. But never mind. She gives a wonderful impression of being a charitable person. So what Indians need is more missionaries to cure poverty, when everybody knows there's only one cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women, which means giving them some control over their reproduction. You name me - you name me a Catholic or Muslim charity that goes into the fields determined to secure the empowerment of women...

Ah the joys of a rampant atheist set loose in the antipodes. A lot of heat, even if not much light.

Then we got on to the question of violence when Anne Henderson seemed to get a bee in her bonnet about people being violently different:

ANNE HENDERSON: ... I mean, there's so many different ways in which people see God and even within the Catholic Church there's violently different ways in which people practice their faith. And the idea...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Did you say violently?

ANNE HENDERSON: Pardon? I missed that.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: You did say violently?

ANNE HENDERSON: Well, violently, as well.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I know you didn't mean to.

ANNE HENDERSON: I agree with you. I agree with you on all that that you say about violence among religion. And that's the point. I like the old Greeks and the Romans. You had a god of war and a god of peace and, you know, you had different kind of gods. I like that. But the idea that we're all following the Pope, I think, is a bit misguided.

TONY JONES: Okay, I want to...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: You're either Roman Catholic or you're not, but you can be tonnes of kinds of Catholic.

ANNE HENDERSON: Oh, you'd be surprised, Christopher.

Well I guess quite a few were surprised at the thought of membership of the Holy Roman Church not necessarily involving much of a role for the Pope. Even the Society of Jesus rep on the panel skipped around that one. Itt seems it's possible to be a cultural Catholic, which presumably means you go along for the tea and scones and the social outing, with the hope of eternal life as the reward for being a convivial soul, with fear and comfort the main inspirations for belief. So much for the ecstatic life of the eternal spirit and the place of the soul in the afterlife.

At the wrap up, as usual it was Hitchens who saved the best lines for himself on the matter of God:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: When Voltaire was dying the priest came and said, "You should renounce the devil," and he said, "This is not time to be making enemies." It's a religious falsification that people like myself scream for a priest at the end. David Hume very famously didn't and was witnessed by James Boswell not doing so. Most of us go to our ends with dignity. If we don't and if it is the wish for fear or comfort, then both of these things are equally delusory, as religion is itself.

There's more - you can get the transcript here and also watch the show online here - but there's even more tonight, as Hitchens didn't just turn up in the antipodes to monster Anne Henderson. He's one of the star attractions at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which really should have been titled the festival of loon pond ideas. Talk about heat and not much light.

It's happening in Sydney - known to Melbourne and Adelaide folk as the centre of the universe - and apart from Hitchens' usual routine about religion poisoning everything, you can also fork over hard cash to hear Keysar Trad argue that polygamy and other Islamic values are good for Australia, and Cardinal George Pell contend that without god, we are nothing. Dear lord, pay twenty bucks to listen to Pell parrot on?

Even more bizarrely, there's Baroness Susan Greenfield expecting punters to fork over thirty nine bucks to hear her once again ask whether online networking harm children's brains, when all we have to do is read Miranda the Devine and Janet Albrechtsen recycling her ideas second hand for free.

Throw in Germaine Greer and Garey Foley, and then you'll be ready to listen to Rear Admiral Chris Barrie argue that we should bring back conscription. Well bring back witchcraft and black cats and broomstick flying, which will surely reduce time spent on housework and make the world a happier place (thank the lord we now have re-runs of Bewitched on the new FTA channel 99).

Barrie should really whet your appetite for Ray Evans arguing that we should allow child labour and say no to the minimum wage. Yep, they've even let in the H R Nicolls society and the Lavoisier group, and got Michael Duffy - the original inspiration of this site - to host the talk. I'm not happy with Evans' minimalist stance - I say bring back slavery, and slip a hundred million of the poorest Chinese over to Australia to work as housekeepers, maids and butlers. 'Every home with a Chinese slave' is a slogan surely going to win the Loon Pond Happy Birthday party a vast majority at the next election.

Oh yes, it's as fine a gathering of loons as could be mustered, but Hitchens, with the prime Saturday night slot in the Opera House concert hall is the star (and is even shown decked out in prattish trench coat looking like a Humphrey Bogart of ideas in the advertising for the event). At $65 bucks, he's also the heavyweight in pricing, with the likes of Greenfield and Greer at $39, and the Pells and the Trads and Barries and Evans clocking in at twenty bucks.

There's also a keen hierarchical division in seating, with the heavyweights scoring the concert hall (yes Greenfield is a heavyweight, oh weep antipodes, weep) while the likes of Trad and Evans and Pell have been consigned to low rent venues like The Studio, or in a few cases, even the Utzon room.

Luckily I can't afford to attend, having spent my readies going to the Opera House last night to listen to the SSO, which did a mixed banquet of English composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams celebrating music, and quoting Shakespeare:

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet-sounds,

Is fit for treasons, strategems and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus;

Let no such man be trusted.

Or woman for that matter.

Oh there'll be a plentiful squawking of the loons this long weekend at the Sydney Opera House, but not much by way of sweet sounding music. Let not an idea that emanates from the din be trusted.

The only good result so far? The first pope of the un-united church of anti-theism being worth sixty five bucks in the marketplace, and Cardinal Pell worth only twenty. Put it another way, in terms of market power Pell is the Pepsi of the event, up against the real thing ...

(Below: Cardinal George Pell looking particularly silly wearing some kind of frock while relentlessly opposing gay marriage).