I really can't carry this on with you, Josh. I'm just a big tent kind of a guy, who thinks that "I am more radical than thou" on the left and "I am more conservative than thou" on the right are exercises in self-destruction. What I recall from the era of the civil rights movement is that we accepted the support of everyone who was willing to put themselves on the line in support of a cause that was worth winning and if you aren't with us on this one we'll still be happy to have your support when next we need it.

Ralph, what I'm talking about with Hitchens is strange behaviors and political stands that don't fit with his stated place on the political spectrum.

This is a matter of sizing someone up. Call it street smarts if you want. Someone presents themself to you but all the parts of the presentation don't fit. Something is not the way it seems on the surface (or there is an element of greater weirdness that coherently explains it all that is so strange that it blows the whole appearance out of the water).

You can say I'm being intolerant, but what would you think about a liberal or leftwinger who talked a good game but then said s/he admired Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or Lyndon Larouche?

I'm not necessarily saying Hitchens was a covert rightie. He may have held beliefs that together could not coexist for long in a single sane person. For instance, I knew a man who was only attracted to obviously ADULT men, who was a leftie, though with libertarian tendencies, and just a VERY nice guy who didn't believe people should have bad things done to them unless they deserved it. But he also believed that NAMBLA was a good organization, out of some notion of sexual freedom. I argued with him about this. I couldn't believe someone as decent as him could say anthing positive about a pedophile organization. Well, finally after I hadn't seen him for a while we talked, and he told me that he no longer thought NAMBLA was a good organization. His being a non-pedophile and a decent man could not forever coexist with support of NAMBLA. I think Hitchens' leftism may not have sat well with his other ideas and feelings. They may have coexisted for a while due to his arrogance toward anyone questioning him and his alcoholism, but even these characteristics would not have papered over the inconsistencies forever in a man as intelligent as he is.

Yes, but I still think a person being a Trotskyist, pro-life and LOUDLY pro-Warren Report won't exist comfortably together in one person.

Yes, there are Catholic Liberation Theology people and Evangelical progressives, but a Trotskyist isn't going to be Catholic or Evangelical, especially an sociosexually conservative one of these, without some considerable weirdness in the psyche.

As to believing in the Warren Report, I haven't seen an self-described leftwinger who could defend it and make any sense, especially as regards his/her motivation for that defense. Generally, when someone does something anamolous and/or irrational, and is public and even aggressive about it, it puts me on guard. In Hitchens case I was certainly right to distrust him, as his subsequent migration shows.

And let me add to my little list of things that aren't quite believeable is a supposed left-winger: Hitchens' rabid right-style anti-Clintonism, during the Clinton administration. A supposedly leftie who during the impeachment attacks Clinton for having sex with Monica Lewinsky. Didn't he try to help the process with an affidavit?