5 Feet of Fury

Joe Sobran, controversialist conservative writer, has died

Just read this on Ann Coulter’s Twitter feed. Jack Fowler at National Review Online has more. Sobran’s Wikipedia entry has yet to be updated.

If you’ve read the essential primer, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (and you should. I reread it about once a year), Sobran’s name will be familiar.

By all accounts a brilliant man and correct about many things, sadly, he apparently embraced “Holocaust denial”/anti-Zionism in his last years, although disputes about the exact nature and import of his “crimes” divided colleagues on the right.

Sobran was also one of those “Shakespeare didn’t write his plays/Abe Lincoln was a dictator” types you hope never to get stuck with on a long flight. And I do wish he’d been a Presbyterian…

His passing should prompt a reassessment (along with a reopening of old wounds, and provide young conservative and libertarians a precious glimpse into the passionate struggles that shaped American political thought.

Pay attention this week, kids.