On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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 Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:31 am Post subject: Conor Cruise O'Brien is dead |
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This is a bit belated, just saw the obituary today. I had a general idea of the guy's views, mostly derived from reading his inroduction to Burke's Reflections On The Revolution In France, and his lambasting of Thomas Jefferson in The Atlantic, mid-90s. The Jefferson piece is well worth the read, even if it stretches its point a bit in trying to connect Jefferson with the Oklahoma City bombing.
Other than that, O'Brien did a lot of stuff in his long and varied life. See the article for more details.
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Conor Cruise O�Brien, an Irish diplomat, politician, man of letters and public intellectual who staked out an independent position for Ireland in the United Nations and, despite his Roman Catholic origins, championed the rights of Protestants in Northern Ireland, died Thursday. He was 91 and lived in Howth, near Dublin.
Conor Cruise O�Brien in 1998. Mr. O�Brien, known as the Cruiser, led several lives as a politician, author and intellectual.
His death was announced by the Labor Party, of which Mr. O�Brien was a member. No cause of death was given. He was reported to have suffered a stroke in 1998 and several broken bones in a fall last year.
Once described by the social critic Christopher Hitchens as �an internationalist, a wit, a polymath and a provocateur,� Mr. O�Brien was a rare combination of scholar and public servant who applied his erudition and stylish pen to a long list of causes, some hopeless, others made less so by his combative reasoning. When called upon, he would put down his pen and enter the fray, more often than not emerging bruised and bloodied.
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