To me it is interesting that people on the right admire Hitchens. Of course he is an atheist, but that is forgiven because he was a big defender of the war in Iraq. If Hitchens had opposed the war, would he be a "scholar and a gentleman"? His friendship with Paul Wolfowitz certainly helped to assuage any concerns about his atheism. People forget that Hitchens started out as a Troskyist (a communist) and it was in that part of his life that his atheism developed. However, when the war in Iraq started he completely abandoned his left-wing politics in favor of right wing ideology. For all his intelligence, he seems to me ideologically flaky. Anybody who goes from left to right like that shows a lack of conviction in his beliefs. Yet in spite of his ideological switch, he still remained an atheist. It is rather a paradox.