We received the sad news today that Joseph Sobran, always a good friend to libertarianism and the Mises Institute, has died. He was surely one of the great stylists of the 20th century and a wonderfully inventive thinker – a man who loved liberty with his whole heart and worked desperately to explain its principles to others even as he never stopped refining his own understanding of the idea. He wrote for The Free Market and spoken several times at Mises Institute events.
If you do not know his work, sample this gem on how to teach your children about government. His prose always had an inevitable quality about it, a sense of ease and beauty that appears simple until you attempt to imitate it. He almost always said things more clearly and creatively than anyone else could say them.
I knew him well years ago, and I can say of him what was often said about Oscar Wilde: this was a man “without a malicious bone in his body.” Many people loved him dearly and for good reason. My prediction is that his literary legacy will endure long past that of most of his contemporaries. May his soul rest in peace.
