Hitchens on Burke

Here is a review, by the indefatigable Christopher Hitchens, of a new critical edition of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Enjoy! posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson 4/9/2004 07:44:44 PM Paul Weiss on Sport "Sport" has no clear, commonly acknowledged use. It is reasonable to suppose that it covers whatever is dealt with in the sports pages of newspapers and magazines. But these also contain reports on bridge and chess, which it would be odd to call "sports." * * * Hockey demands bodily exertion. Like every other sport, it tests what a rule-abiding man can bodily be and do. Though chess also has rules, and these have a history, and though a masterly game makes considerable demands on the stamina of the players, chess is not a sport because it does not test what a man is as a body. Mind and body more or less reverse their roles in these two cases. In hockey judgment and determination are subservient to bodily achievement, but in chess the body is used only to make possible a more effective judgment and determination. (Paul Weiss, Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry [Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971 (1969)], 132, 142-3) Ambrose Bierce Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911)