Christopher Hitchens & Ben Stein Part 6: Pat Robertson, Socialism, Money & Politics (1995)

August 17, 1995 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/christopher-hitchens-and-ben-stei...

Ben Stein: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww....

Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (born March 22, 1930) is a prominent political spokesman for the Christian right in American politics and a highly visible spokesman in the media for Fundamentalist religion. He is the founder of numerous organizations and corporations, including the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Christian Coalition, Flying Hospital, International Family Entertainment Inc., Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, and Regent University. He is the host of The 700 Club, a Christian TV program airing on channels throughout the United States and on CBN affiliates worldwide.

The son of U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, Robertson is a Southern Baptist and was active as an ordained minister with that denomination for many years, but holds to a charismatic theology not traditionally common among Southern Baptists. He unsuccessfully campaigned to become the Republican Party's nominee in the 1988 presidential election. As a result of his seeking political office, he no longer serves in an official role for any church. His media and financial resources make him a recognized, influential, and controversial public voice for conservative Christianity in the United States.

Stein is twice married to entertainment lawyer Alexandra Denman, with whom he has an adopted son. He lives with Denman in Beverly Hills and Malibu, California. Stein also has a summer home in Sandpoint, Idaho. Stein also owns an apartment in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, which he inherited from his parents.

In 1992, Hitchens wrote an article for The Nation in which he called Mother Teresa "The Ghoul of Calcutta." He later narrated and co-wrote Hell's Angel, a documentary broadcast November 8, 1994 on Channel 4 in Britain, and expanded his criticism in a 1995 book, The Missionary Position. He accused her of failing to treat people, particularly children, placed in her care; her strong religious views on contraception and abortion, the latter of which she described as "the greatest destroyer of peace today"; and her "acceptance" of poverty, which took the form of encouraging the poor to embrace their poverty.

Hitchens asserts that Mother Teresa behaved like a political opportunist who adopted the guise of a saint in order to raise money to spread an extreme and aggressive version of Catholicism. He also condemns her for using contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing a teaching hospital, the latter being what he implies donors expected her to do with their gifts.

He also criticized her pursuit and acceptance of donations from third world dictators; large donations accepted from Charles Keating, who was later convicted of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy; and the allocation of these donations away from treatment and towards furthering what Hitchens called fundamentalist views. Hitchens's writings have earned him the ire of Roman Catholics; Brent Bozell, board member of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, for example, called Hitchens and Aroup Chatterjee "notoriously vicious anti-Catholics."

During Mother Teresa's beatification process, Hitchens was called by the Vatican to argue the case against her (in particular, noting that her "miracles" were better explained through technology than divine intervention). He testified in Washington, the role previously known as the "Devil's Advocate", although Pope John Paul II had previously abolished that position. Hitchens has satirically referred to his work in the case as the person chosen "to represent the devil pro bono."

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[nomis101uk]

At what point did Ben Stein lose his mind?

[soph55804]

I used to like ben stein.... I never realized he is many of the things I loath! A little part of me just died :(

[owenline]

@soph55804 What are the "things"?

[liquidfreak]

BUELLER, BUELLER!!!

[kidlomax]

Christopher Hitchens - one of the smartest primates to ever walk on Planet Earth.

[5ringswarrior]

Try to never be worse than useless. Ben Stein is that, a piece of shit.

[youtoobesucks]

Why does every caller have a Southern drawl?

[Kn1gHtMaRe00]

I know socialists too. None of them are control freaks. Who are these people, Ben?

[qwertypoiu4321]

@Pervyable The LTOV is as part of reality as the unicorn theory of value. Demand and Supply give value, as the water-diamond paradox proves. Implying (or outright stating) anything else is an insult to yourself. Only someone that believes in the fallacious, self-refuting LTOV would say something as ridiculous as the starvation whine, as if were everyone not to work supplying human demand in any conceivable system there would not be the threat of starvation.

[TheTollundWoman]

@Pervyable

To clarify. i was not referring to Marxism in general but to Marxism-Leninism. Kim Jong Il is a Leninist.

[TheTollundWoman]

@Pervyable

Leninism hence prohibits the "entire working class" from having any real political power in the early (indefinite) stages of the revolution, instead entrusting absolute power to the "revolutionary vanguard." Hence the firing squads of the Cheka. Hence the public executions in N.Korea. "One man and his group of lackeys"...sigh...do you think Lenin and the Bolsheviks were any different/better?

[TheTollundWoman]

@Pervyable

Lenin interpreted "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean a "revolutionary vanguard" which would rule provisionally in the name, and supposedly in the interests, of the proletariat as a whole. Since 1917 Communist movements around the world, including the KWP in N.Korea (and also the CPUSA in my own backyard) have adapted Leninism as the "updated" version of Marxism. (continued...)