Talk:Peter Hitchens/Archive 1

message: I'm slightly confused as to why the description of the erroneous comment that Hitchens was 'born' Jewish is continually being changed back to 'raised' Jewish. As far as I can tell, checking the edit history of the article, the first time the Jewish heritage was mentioned it was described as 'born' not 'raised'. Unless someone can prove otherwise I'm going to change it back to 'born' once again because this was what the erroneous contributor added. Magic Pickle 19:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Raised as Jewish / born as Jewish 

message: I am almost certain that this article was written by Peter Hitchens himself. It's heavy in opinion and justification of his own opinions. Wikipedia is not the place for such dogmatism - he has his own 'blog' in the Mail on Sunday.
Also, compare the volume that is entered to other journalists or public figures.
:See above.  -- Run!  20:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authorship 

message: Seems to me that with the interpositions of "he believes" and the like in the article, and with other similar edits, that it is no longer the POV essay it was before Mr. Hitchens understood NPOV.  Therefore I propose removing the POV tag.  Yes, there may be a need of further POV edits here and there from time to time like any Wikipedia article, and perhaps it could stand for other cleanup, but in my view it is no longer a fatally, fundamentally flawed piece meriting a tag anymore.  Comments?  LeoO3 02:56, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, please, let's keep it. I LIKE being in the same category as the Armenian massacres. As for whether or not I shall ever 'understand' the idea of NPOV, this is not really the issue. I understand the intention all too well, but think it laughable and bound to fail, much like the supposed 'impartiality' of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which consists of a lot of social liberals doing their best to avoid making any openly partisan statements, while skewing news, current affairs and culture to suit them. I do not believe any such a thing as a 'neutral point of view' has ever existed, does exist, or will exist. The truth does exist but has to be discovered, often through arduous effort. The idea that it will be discovered by people trying to pretend that they have no opinions is absurd. Peter Hitchens, signed in as Clockback 09:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mr. Hitchens, I really think you should read the NPOV article, or re-read it if you already have.  The POV tag is not meant to be there to be a boastful display of controversial status, or in an ironical statement of philosophical disagreement with the NPOV principle.  Furthermore, the BBC, like any centralized traditional media outlet, is run by a handful of people who, as you say, can (and perhaps cannot help but) impose their POV in a pervasive manner, and those who disagree with that POV have no swift or effective recourse, in effect guaranteeing POV.  By contrast, Wikipedia being free and open in effect forces controversial issues to be covered in a fair and impartial way via a sort of Darwinian process; any unfair coverage will be immediately corrected by the offended party, with overcorrection being corrected in turn.  It's a fascinating social experiment that resembles the prisoner's dilemma.  While one gains a temporary large advantage for one's POV by writing a slanted article or making a slanted edit, one and everyone else benefits more broadly and lastingly from fair coverage. Over the course of time, most of the time, it tends to work out.  Take a look at abortion, for example. LeoO3 06:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: An interesting point, though it contains a classic misunderstanding of the Darwinian theory, which posits an undirected and wholly random sequence of events. It also misunderstands the nature of 'neutrality', a position in practice defined by its inoffensiveness to the dominant intellectual trends of the time (much as neutrality in wartime, in practice, is influenced by the relative strengths and geographical nearness of the warring powers). Majority opinion in the English-speaking world, especially among the under-40s who tend to be over-represented on the web is generally egalitarian, agnostic, and tends towards the cultural Marxism known as political correctness. I should be surprised if an entry such as this referring to a journalist and author of the Left would have attracted a warning label, even if all other things had been equal. Dissent from the mainstream is always controversial and usually met with hostility and suspicion. Peter Hitchens, signed in as Clockback 11:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text:  I don't know how much scientific background Mr. Hitchens has, but his understanding of the scientific enterprise is seriously flawed. The primitive view that in order to be "scientific," something must be observable was already questioned by Newton's contemporaries, because he referred to "atoms," which could not be observed. Today we realize that atoms are unobservable. Period. Any attempt to do so would create problems with photons colliding with other subatomic particles. There is no branch of science which does not refer to unobservable entities. Nevertheless, scientific truth can be obtained, clearly, with the proper careful use of unobservable constructs. To get to the point, the fact that Evolution posits and deals with things that have not been observed, does not detract from its scientific credentials, nor from its veracity. Evolution, like any scientific theory, like the theory of Relativity, or Quantum Field Theory, etc., does indeed suggest events that have not been observed, that will not be observed, and even that cannot be observed. Its validity--like that of any scientific theory--does not depend on a directly-observed experimentational basis, but on a much more complex argument, linking many diverse facts, and inferences drawn both from those facts, and from other facts, and from the converse to those facts. The bottom line is that in the scientific world today, there are very few, whether physicists, biologists, chemists, astronomers, zoologists, anthropologists, who doubt that species develop over time in the way that Darwin described. The discoveries of Gregor Mendel only further served to supply the microscopic mechanism to support the broader patterns that Darwin outlined. I am not going to describe all the evidence for Evolution; see the article for that. What I would like to suggest is that Mr Hitchens's suggestions that Evolution has no greater epistemic credentials than belief in God because it describes unobserved phenomena are really primitive. Suffice it to say that no one in science (or, almost no one) really questions Evolution today. It has been scientifically confirmed repeatedly, very little scientific evidence has ever suggested it is mistaken, and it continues to yield valuable fruit to understanding the animal and plant world. To what alternative view of human origins does Mr Hitchens subscribe? Does he believe that (1) Humans were created by a god, and placed here with animals and plants? (2) That humans simply existed on earth for all time, just as plants and animals? (3) That human existence is simply an unexplained fact (this is not a completely ridiculous point of view, and it clearly has greater epistemic likelihood than the previous two)? Human presence on earth, along with that of plants and other animals, is a scientific curiousity, a fact which we would like to understand. The Theory of Evolution is the answer of science to these questions. It explains the existence and the termination of animal and plant species all over the globe, in a way that is understandable, likely, and scientifically confirmed. 66.108.4.183 20:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mr. Hitchens, I understand Darwinian evolution as well as any reasonably well-educated person, hence my qualifier "a sort of" when I used it in an analogy.  I also understand your view that natural selection cannot create a neutral article if the "natural environment" that forces "organisms" (read:articles) to conform to it consists of a set of Anglosphere netusers (and a Wikpedia community in particular) that may disproportionately disagree with you.  However, Wikipedia (generally) does not operate via majority vote; it allows every individual editor to re-write any article.  Thus articles must deal fairly even with minority viewpoints to "survive" or avoid substantive edits.  All it takes is one person (such as yourself) to make the necessary changes.  And since pretty much the full spectrum of opinion can be found on Wikipedia, this process helps ensure reasonably fair coverage for all.  Is it a foolproof or perfect system?  No, but over time it tends to work. P.S. Without necessarily disputing your view that people on the Right such as yourself face a more hostile environment on the net, I would note that the Noam Chomsky article once sported an NPOV tag, as do the Gerry Adams and Cindy Sheehan articles right now.LeoO3 02:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do hope you understand Darwinian theory better than most reasonably well-educated people, who wrongly believe that it is a proven fact rather than an unproven theory; or than most reasonably well-educated people who think that the evolutionists' belief in the undirected process of evolution can be reconciled with Christianity's belief in a purposeful universe. You're right that it only takes me to put things right, but I cannot spend my entire life logged on, and it equally takes only one person to destroy the whole entry or to alter it to devastating effect. What's more, there seems to be a view that it is somehow illegitimate for me to intervene at all. It is that view that has led to the introduction of the tag. Yet if I had not intervened, the entry would be seriously misleading.  I think your examples of other entries with NPOV tags rather make my point that a comparable person on the Left simply would not create such controversy. Chomsky, Adams and Sheehan are all, for good or ill, far more controversial and politically significant people than I am. I have the label because I am that rare thing in my age-group,  a political, moral, social and cultural conservative. In some eyes, I am a sort of generational traitor. My very existence is upsetting and inexplicable to quite a lot of my opponents. Hence the misrepresentation and name-calling against which I must constantly defend myself. Peter Hitchens, logged in as Clockback 18:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia Talk: message boards are for discussing the content of their articles, and are not forums for debating the validity of various opinions or viewpoints.  Therefore it's inappropriate for you to make a claim of opinion on an issue such as Darwinian evolution as fact here, regardless of which side on the issue you accept.  (Incidentally, as with any set of ideas, one can understand its claims without necessarily accepting or rejecting them.)  Our discussion at the moment is, as I understand it, about the necessity of retaining the POV tag on the article given what you perceive as the flaws in the inherent structure of Wikipedia and a systematic anti-conservative bias by Wikipedia editors.  I've been trying to illustrate for you that situation on Wikipedia is not as bad for you and those of your views as you believe.  I'm sorry if my cursory search did not turn up left-leaning commentators who are in your opinion at your level of notoriety.  However, I think my point that has been illustrated; there are plenty of right-leaning Wikipedia editors, and you might be surprised at how many fans you have, or even people who disagree with you but are intellectually honest and will work on fair coverage.  Furthermore they do not have to be nearly as prevalent as left-leaning editors; all it takes is one.  As for the tedium and imposition of time necessary to constantly monitor one's own article to ensure accuracy and fairness, I suppose you have a point.  Then again, such a burden has always been on public figures; the Times of London or the BBC could print or say something unfair about you, and your options of recourse have always been far less effective than those that are available to you here.  Have you clicked the "watch" tab when looking at your article while logged in?  That way it will be on your watchlist and you can click on "my watchlist" whenever you visit Wikipedia to see what changes have been made.  LeoO3 21:02, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the advice about the 'watch' tab, which I have taken. And I made no claim of opinion about the Darwin controversy, merely an implied swipe at yet another problem in defining this fantasy known as the Neutral Point of View. It is my experience that the incontestable fallacies I refer to above are very common, among people who believe themselves to be well-informed on this important controversy. Admittedly, these fallacies make it a lot easier to hold one opinion than another, but I can't help that. People should know the subject better if they want to argue seriously. As for the Left-wing media in Britain, I'm not sure you're right. Oddly enough, the 'Times' has been very generous in printing my letters, especially when Tony Banks traduced me in its pages, and the 'Guardian' and the 'Independent'have given me reasonable and in some cases generous rights of reply to attacks on me in their pages. In the case of the 'Guardian'they have actually given me a platform from time to time. Even the BBC, which initially dismissed any complaints from such as me as the ravings of paranoid lunatics, has eventually granted me an encouraging amount of airtime. All these came because I fought my corner, as I do here.  Being compared with my old adversary Gerry Adams was fun. He once paid me the great compliment of suggesting that I should be decommissioned. Peter Hitchens signed in as Clockback 17:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree that the article is now NPOV. Faulty 03:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of tag 

message: I have removed the peterhitchens.com link since it does not work. If anyone - preferably Peter himself - could explain the position with regard to this website that would be helpful. Thank you. New Canadian, 19:10 EST, 21 March 2006
I do not know what has happened to this site, which was set up by a supporter of mine, with my approval but without my direct involvement. I know  he has been very busy lately and is presumably unable to maintain it. I hope it will eventually reappear.
PH, signed in as Clockback 10:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  peterhitchens.com? 

message: As is clear to anyone who studies the edit history of the Peter Hitchens entry, there appears to be a dispute revolving around a key sentence in the "Morality and Culture" section which attempts to describe Mr. Hitchens' religious beliefs.
An anonymous contributor has phrased it as follows:
A holder of strongly puritan views on sexual matters, he opposes sex education because of its contradiction of his belief that heterosexual marriage is a morally superior form of relationship that should receive preference over others
For his own part Mr. Hitchens (user Clockback) - describing his own beliefs -states:
A supporter of orthodox Christian morality, he opposes sex education because of its endorsement of sexual relationships outside marriage.
This matter has been brought to something of a head by Mr. Hitchens, who in a regrettable act (which some may consider a violation of the wikipedia vandalism policy) placed the following statement on the actual article having just restored his own version of the disputed sentence:
Peter Hitchens writes: "I have now three times removed from this entry the anonymous claim that I hold 'strongly puritan' views, and the attached claim that I object to sex education because it contradicts 'my' view that heterosexual marriage is superior to other forms of sexual relationship. This is not a question of 'my' view but of the orthodox Christian position on marriage. As for my alleged 'strongly puritan' views, I am not aware of these, which is strange if I really do hold them, and feel that such a description of my opinions is intended to give the impression that my views are in some way a character fault rather than a rational position - the default ad hominem argument of the cultural Marxist, which plagues this entry quite enough
Peter I am at a loss as to why you did not just start a new discussion section as I have done here? The above paragraph greatly demeaned and reduced the quality of the article for the brief 6-hour period before I was able to remove it, working on North American time.
In any event, the change from one description of Peter's moral stance to another has occurred several times and we need to reach agreement. The place to do it is right here. Many Thanks.
Val Hayes, signed in as New Canadian 03:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  On morality and culture 

message: A reminder: All Wikipedia articles must conform to the official policy of Wikipedia:No original research, which states that "Articles may not contain any previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, ideas, statements, or theories. Moreover, articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, ideas, or statements that serves to advance a position." This means that all novel assertions should be properly attributed to an external, secondary source.
For now, I've removed the following insertion. Feel free to discuss these issues on the Talk page, but we shouldn't be leaving novel comments in the article text: -Silence 15:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research

message: * Bonkers Hitchens? - 19th April 2003. Abusive ad hominem article about Hitchens, with incidental references to his book A Brief History of Crime in Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper. If anyone doubts that this is an accurate description of this article, please read the article (if its title does not give you enough of a clue to its nature) and explain why. Otherwise stop describing it as a 'hostile review' of the book which is so inadequate as to be inaccurate. While it wouldn't be quite true to say that it barely mentions the book, it is the case that the book has provided the pretext for the writer to review the author rather than his work. There were several reviews of this book in more significant journals than this. One of them was even more ad hominem, but so much so that it might be embarrassing even to my enemies. I suspect that this notice was chosen only because the contributor involved shared the views of its author. Peter Hitchens, signed in as Clockback 13:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Peter - "I have no idea what a saloon bar is", really? That's why you go on to describe what a saloon bar is?! And you "certainly haven't" been in one - ooh, get you! Like that's relevant. And "The lazy, cliched words are intended to suggest that the opinions attached are just the tired prejudices that can be found in any uneducated person's mind or mouth" - that would be the persons mind or mouth found in saloon bars. Like the people, journalists for example, that cliched literary enclave in London maybe, that frequent the wine bars, pubs and restaurants that have different decor. No words engraved on opaque glass doors there then, and no lazy, cliched words there? So educated journalists never pedal "tired prejudices" - they're only to be "found in any uneducated person's mind or mouth", the kind that populate saloon bars. It's amazing you can know all this when you've never been in one. I'm impressed. Miamomimi 14:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: New Canadian - I too had a look for those reviews to no avail but found an interview with Peter on 'Britain' and put it in 'General and book reviews' thus giving a link in the book review section to 'The Abolition of Britain' page. I thought I'd put the other book reviews I found there but wanted to provide a link from the book review section to it as there wasn't one, trust y'all agree but if not then please move them as you see fit. Miamomimi 11:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Critical review?

message: I've started an article on the book here. Count this as an invitation or notification as you wish. Philip Cross 17:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''The Abolition of Britain''

message: There is an absolutely ridiculous amount of requests for citations in this article, virtually one at the end of every sentence. The vast majority are for statements about Hitchens that hardly need substantiating given the tenor of his articles. JF Mephisto 01:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, plastering the article with citaction requests like this is a really irritating and lazy approach, in my view. I should remove them all and request that if anyone has a problem with what has been written, that they raise the issues here on a case by case basis. Laurence Boyce 10:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly my thought. Someone has gone on the rampage trying to make a point. Regards, E  Asterion u talking to me? 08:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The amount of citation requests 

message: Substituted at 21:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment