R.W. Bradford: 1947–2005  

The Conscience of a Libertarian

by Ross Overbeek

---

I met Bill Bradford when I was in the ninth grade, and he was in the eleventh. We lived in a small town (about 18,000 people), Traverse City, Mich. It was 1963, and Barry Goldwater was leading a conservative movement to take control of the Republican Party. Bill and I had both read Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative" and were looking for ways to support him.

Those were heady days as Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton fought Goldwater for control of the party. They were days when the entire culture believed strongly in modern liberalism, if not socialism. At least that is how Bill and I saw it.

I doubt that Bill's political philosophy was particularly well thought out; mine certainly wasn't. We had both read a number of widely available anticommunist books. Even then, Bill was devouring books voraciously. He was also reading William F. Buckley's National Review.

We met at a gathering of a local conservative club. The meeting was held in the basement of one of the local businesses. Bill, my brother, and I were the only people there who were less than 20 years old; it was natural that we struck up a conversation. Bill attended the public high school, while I was still in junior high. We discovered that we lived fairly close to one another, so we agreed to meet again to continue the discussion.

Over the coming months, I often met Bill at his home, and we discussed issues that ranged from religion to politics. These early discussions focused on anticommunism and conservatism. He had read quite a bit of Buckley, and I attempted to study Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" (a mistake, to say the least). Bill gave me a copy of Whittaker Chambers' book "Witness," which we both thought was extremely well-written. Chambers was a communist who eventually changed sides and accused Alger Hiss, a man of great influence in the government, of being a member of the Communist Party. History has vindicated Chambers (at least on that point), but at the time feelings still ran very high on the issue. It seemed to us that the world split fairly clearly between people who believed that there was an active communist conspiracy and people who did not.

Neither Bill nor I understood economics in any meaningful sense of that phrase, and our notions of liberty were just beginning to form. But soon there was a group of five or six of us that met periodically, followed the Goldwater campaign, and participated when we could. We spent one Saturday hanging leaflets on doorknobs in Alpena, another little town in Northern Michigan; spent days manning a booth at the summer fair; and continually attempted to improve our understanding of the many subjects that interested us.

I have the belief (quite possibly an illusion) that we experienced a completely different type of event from the modern political campaign. At least for us, it was a clash of ideas rather than the slugfest hosted by two C students that the U.S. electorate recently witnessed. Fifteen years later we became friends with Karl Hess, who wrote many of Goldwater's speeches. We found Karl to be a wonderful, passionate advocate of freedom, and considered it significant that he also (a bit later) wrote speeches for the Black Panthers. How Karl could see a common thread between these wildly different perspectives was a topic that seemed important to us.

It was the campaign of 1963–1964 that brought us into contact with people and ideas we had not encountered before. Most factions within the Goldwater movement centered on anticommunism, but there were also many old-line conservatives, some classical liberals, and a very few people who might reasonably be called libertarians. Participating in this event exposed us to all kinds of ideas and books. A campaign worker from downstate Michigan (if I recall correctly, his name was Jerry Plaas) discussed numerous issues with us. He talked about Orval Watts, a free-market economist who was teaching at the Northwood Institute (a small college in Midland, Mich.). Plaas respected Watts and mentioned that his library included a number of books worth reading, including "The Constitution of Liberty," by Friedrich Hayek, a book valued highly by Watts. That is the only book I remember being explicitly mentioned, but I would guess that he also pointed Bill to the work of Ludwig von Mises.

From that time Bill began seriously exploring classical liberalism, Austrian economics, and conservatism. Just as important, from my perspective, he discussed everything with a small group of us. This was not a formal club, but rather a group of teenagers seeking to understand. It was the midst of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis had just occurred, we were all just a few years away from being drafted, and life seemed quite serious.

I doubt that either conservatism or a desire to support the Republicans ever attracted Bill. I remember a delightful discussion in which we considered whether Goldwater might win, or whether it was even critical that he do so. Bill pointed out that Goldwater had addressed a gathering of farmers, stating that he would abolish farm subsidies, that he had told a group of old people that Social Security had to be rethought and should not be compulsory; and that he had recommended the abolition of the draft to an audience of conservatives. All these positions, Bill argued, would weaken his chances of winning; but he believed that Goldwater was right to have announced them in that way.

Goldwater did get the nomination, and in the acceptance speech he said, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Those were pretty powerful words, and I remember vividly the night the speech was made. I was not with Bill; I was with three successful businessmen (a Democrat, a Republican, and a Marxist), who were all equally horrified by Goldwater's comments. Bill found the words inspiring, but I also suspect that they worried him on pragmatic grounds — he clearly saw Goldwater's defeat coming.

After that summer, and a few months before the election, I started Traverse City High School as a sophomore, while Bill was a senior. We spent one wonderful year together before he graduated. He introduced me to "The Exploitation Theory" by Eugen von BÖhm-Bawerk, an extract from his major tome "Capital and Interest." That was the first time economics made any sense to me. I had read "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt, but both Bill and I felt terribly dissatisfied with that book. Hazlitt focuses on issues relating to the unintended consequences of economic decisions. In this he follows Frédéric Bastiat, who wrote entertaining essays on the topic. (Bill and I were especially delighted by his petition to the French Chamber of Deputies on behalf of candlestick makers.) One can use this approach to establish that something is being overlooked, but it fails to convey the principles upon which economic reasoning should be based. To understand how it should be done, I would refer you to the early chapters of Murray Rothbard's "Man, Economy, and State." Bill would have referred you to Mises' "Human Action."

Anyway, when Bill ran across Böhm-Bawerk's attack on Marx, which allows a real glimpse at the underlying economic issues, he realized that he had found something we had to understand. We started studying the works of the Austrian free-market economists. I forget the order in which we started reading those works, but we found them intensely interesting. I was able to borrow a copy of "Man, Economy, and State" from the Knott's Berry Farm lending library, and we both read it. While many feel that efforts like that lending library seldom have much impact (and that may be true), to two kids in Traverse City, Mich., it was a very big deal. Rothbard wrote beautifully, and reading the first volume of his great book made Mises much more accessible. This was the first major intellectual step that we took that school year, and it set the stage for the second.

Bill found Ayn Rand at some point that year and gave me "Atlas Shrugged" soon after he had read it; we were both overwhelmed. We came into the experience with a basic understanding of Austrian economics and found the portrayal of the economic issues absolutely riveting. I was religious at the time, and there were a number of issues that I considered hugely problematic, but we moved quickly through all of Rand's novels. Her ideas rapidly became a focus of interest within our high school crowd of ten to fifteen people. To say that Bill led things would be incorrect; it was more as if he was at the center of things. Eventually, both of us were deeply influenced by Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism.

We were completely out of step with almost all the teachers in our school, although we were both studying constantly. I remember the assistant principal telling Bill that, in his opinion, if Bill didn't believe in public education, he should not be consuming public resources at the school. Our grades were fine, but we were absorbed in studying economics and political theory, and even attempting serious philosophy. In many ways, it was what college is supposed to be like, but certainly never was for me.

Bill graduated before I did. His parents moved that summer to Grand Rapids, and he spent the summer living at their cabin in near Interlochen, northern Michigan. He went downstate a couple of months later, lived with them, and began his studies at Grand Valley State College.

This may be a good point to summarize the intellectual path that Bill was traveling. He has described it in one of his Liberty observations (February 1999). I highly recommend this brief note, both because of its relevance to Bill and because it outlines a set of issues that troubled many libertarians of the period. I suspect that some current libertarians might not relate to it, but I find it a lovely summary of the intellectual paths we both wandered during those times.

As I see it, Bill's intellectual development went through five main stages:

1. In his early high school years, he focused on conservatism and anticommunism. He studied a huge number of fairly obscure works to try to arrive at an understanding of the communist movement.
2. This naturally led to a desire to understand economics. His early exposure was to Austrian economics — especially the works of Ludwig von Mises. This led him to read numerous non-Austrian treatises, but Mises remained at the center of much of his worldview.
3. Then he encountered Ayn Rand. His studies covered everything from her philosophy to her positions on art and psychology. He was deeply inspired by her. He took everything she wrote very seriously. This was a period of integration and firming up of basic beliefs. One point was especially significant — the "nonaggression principle." In this quotation from Bill's words (in the article cited above), I put the nonaggression principle in bold:

   Rand and Rothbard begin their political theory by arguing that people by their nature possess inalienable individual rights to life, liberty and property. From this, Rand quickly concluded that "no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others." For Rothbard, the very meaning of a right is the obligation it imposes on others not to initiate physical force.

4. The nonaggression principle as formulated by Rand is a powerful and elegant expression of the essence of libertarian thought, as seen by her. Its implications are profound, and they led Bill toward Rothbard's form of anarchism. As Bill put it,

   Rand never realized that the non-aggression imperative led rather quickly to the rejection of government entirely. She maintained a rather primitive faith in the American political system envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, calling for the complete separation of economy and state, but rejecting anarchism as a system incapable of functioning. Somehow she managed to claim that it was always wrong to initiate force, but tolerated tax-supported programs ranging from the maintaining of a multi-million volume library to the exploration of outer space, suggested that opponents of the Vietnam War ought to be dealt with harshly, and supported the presidency of Gerald Ford despite his broad intervention in the economy.

   The modern libertarian movement emerged as Rand's readers realized, beginning in the early 1960s, that her categorical prohibition of initiated force led to a political theory much more radical than what she envisioned. By the mid-1960s, they were forming study groups and producing modest publications examining the implications of the non-aggression principle more closely. Many realized that the principle led ineluctably toward the very anarchism that Rand had denounced.
5. Finally, Bill began to be seriously skeptical about the nonaggression principle. Since this was the foundation of many of his beliefs, it was a major effort for him to reconstruct a coherent position. He moved to a position we often called classical liberalism. He described his shift in this way:

   By 1968, as other libertarians were becoming anarchists, I had rejected the notion of inalienable rights, replacing it with the notion that rights are valuable social constructs, but not absolute imperatives. I had embraced a libertarianism based on a rather complicated praxeological analysis of coercive action.

This is, of course, a somewhat oversimplified and artificial structuring of his development. It leaves out, most notably, his attitudes toward war. However, I do believe that his emphasis on tolerance grew out of these shifts. He clearly understood that he had held and defended positions that he now considered wrong. There grew in him a deep aversion to Rand's harsh reaction to opposing views and to Rothbard's notion of the "The Plumb Line" or absolute standard by which to judge people's ideology. I think that Bill's attitude was simply "Look, I got it wrong for a while after huge effort. I may still have it wrong. But I'm damned sure that you guys have made some pretty major errors of your own. Let's stop going nuclear over sincere differences of opinion and try to learn from one another." Those are my words, but I believe they capture the attitude that would lead him to found Liberty.

We were not in much contact during the year after he moved. He wrote and distributed a newsletter that he called Eleutherian Forum. As I recall, he told me later that he had successfully gotten seven issues out before he ended it.

College Days

In 1966, I moved to Holland, Mich., where I attended Hope College. For me, it was a frantic year; I worked in a factory full time, got married, bought a motorcycle, and carried a full load in college. Even with all that going on, Bill and I started getting together again, since he now lived only 30 or 40 miles away. There were a few wonderful moments when we sat by the shores of Lake Michigan and continued our discussions about whether or not aggression was ever justified and how one might derive a solid position on the issue. He wrote a paper for a political science class on the proper role of government, and he remained proud of his position for the rest of his life.

Rand, Rothbard, and Mises had become the center of our discussions. We came to the conclusion that the nonaggression principle as formulated by Rand led to anarchism, and we felt ourselves moving rather quickly in that direction. At this point in his life, I think that Bill had been deeply moved by Rand's novels and was seeking to understand her positions in depth. He was studying Aristotelian philosophy from one of the relatively few Aristotelians in academe (he read Henry Veatch's work under the direction of Professor Young of Grand Valley, who was, I believe, a student of Veatch's). He was inclining toward Rothbard's anarchism, but he was trying to work things out carefully.

It was also during the 1966–67 school year that Bill began seriously dealing in coins. He had wanted to leave his parents' home, and for $30 a month I agreed to let him unroll a sleeping bag behind the couch in the shabby apartment that my wife and I rented in Holland, Mich. As U.S. coins (half dollars, quarter dollars, and dimes) moved from silver to copper-nickel clad, Bill started visiting local banks, getting thousands of dollars of coins. He would sit at my kitchen table and sort the older, silver coins into one pile and the newer, clad coins into another. He would return the clad coins to another bank and sell the silver ones to investors. I found this a bit amusing. Later in life, Bill offered me a job dealing gold in Lebanon (not in response to any skills on my part — he just needed someone he trusted). There is a lesson here about the entrepreneurial spirit and what distinguished Bill from many of the rest of us.

I left Hope College and joined Bill at Grand Valley State College in 1967. These were strange times. The Vietnam War was always in the background. There was a constant fear of being drafted, life and death issues were the norm, and we were young and intrepid. GVSC eventually began the process of generating a new college within itself, which at the time was informally called "the second society."

There were no grades or classes. Students designed their own curricula, found instructors willing to teach them, and somehow progressed toward degrees. We both viewed it as a wonderful opportunity. Together we took classes in Aristotle, H.L. Mencken, and utopian societies. These courses were largely designed by Bill. He would select a proposed set of readings and describe a reasonable set of objectives; then we would find professors to oversee our efforts.

I was moving into computing, math, and physics, but Bill focused on philosophy and political science. The relatively unstructured framework suited us, but there is no doubt in my mind that carefully planned classes taught in a conventional manner are usually more productive. The extremely experimental framework sometimes led to instances of extreme silliness. Once a week, all students were expected to participate in a common discussion. I still remember the day the instructors required that everyone join in smashing a car with sledgehammers. They felt, I suppose, that it would be a liberating experience. Bill was amused. I was horrified.

One day we met and he described how he had run for head of the Michigan version of the Young Republicans. He ran on an anti-draft position (that was his only issue and all he talked about at their convention). When the big vote came, he got something like seven or eight votes out of hundreds. He responded by holding a victory celebration at a local steak house on the ground that "every intelligent delegate voted for me." Somehow, although I was not there and I may have the details wrong, the quixotic attitude that it reveals seems to me typical of Bill. He sincerely wanted to shift people's focus toward essential issues, and he was willing to spend a good deal of effort trying to do it, even if successive efforts produced few visible results.

It was during this period that Bill got his first motorcycle. I had ridden bikes since high school, and one day Bill decided that it looked like fun. We went shopping and got him a little, heavily used Ducati. The bike would only do about 45–50 mph, but Bill decided to ride it from Grand Rapids up to his parents' cottage near Traverse City. He had to ride at night to avoid traffic. That was his first major solo ride, and I must admit I was worried about him. In later years, our roles were completely reversed. Bill took me on rides throughout the West, and he became far more competent on a bike than I ever was.

I believe it was during the 1968–69 school year that Bill, together with some old friends from the high school crowd, rented a portion of one of the two Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Grand Rapids. I believe it's the one at 573 College Avenue. Bill occupied the sewing room. It was a large, beautiful home; and although it was in a part of the city that was definitely becoming run down, it seemed glorious that he could be so fortunate. My wife and I visited him frequently. It is true that one of the friends who were living there got mugged during that year, but it was a great place anyhow.

At this point, my memories are not complete. I know that when Bill graduated, he got a job teaching young children at a Catholic school just outside Flint, Mich. I also know that he spent a lot of time in Lansing, where his sister lived. It was there that he met Kathy, and they eventually got married. At some point they started a real coin business. We would visit each other from time to time. He would occasionally do a coin show in Grand Rapids (I fondly remember escorting him with a shotgun as he transferred coins from a mall to his car one night).

Then I moved to Pennsylvania for graduate school, and I would see him only between semesters. We discussed the split between Nathaniel Branden and Rand, and our deepening disillusionment with the natural rights theory that we had believed in so passionately, and Bill's growing belief that almost all wars should be avoided. I was fairly shocked when he first asserted that the U.S. should have stayed out of World War II. Like almost everyone, I suppose, I found the Nazis' genocidal crimes good reason for the U.S. to join the war. Bill pointed out that the consequences had been that Stalin had been supported and went on to kill far more people than Hitler. This started a discussion to which we often returned during the succeeding decades. Bill gradually arrived at an isolationist view, arguing that every war since the American Revolution had damaged America more than it helped her.

I remember watching the 1968 Democratic convention on television in complete wonderment and talking with Bill about it afterwards. Young people today may well think that the Iraqi conflict is hugely distressing, and it certainly is taking a toll on civil liberties, but it is nothing like what was happening in the late 1960s.

I finished my graduate work in 1971 and started teaching computer science in DeKalb, Ill. I would visit Bill several times a year, but we were both deeply enmeshed in our own worlds. Bill's coin business was really prospering, I suppose because during the Carter years inflation reached double digits. It didn't take long for people to seek refuge in gold, and gold coins were a convenient way to invest. I became one of Bill's customers. Bill and Kathy were working extremely long hours with no vacations. To see them, I had to visit them at their shop. I remember one visit in which I bought a few coins and Bill gave me some old paper currency from Germany and Russia. At one point, that currency would have bought a house; now it was worth nothing. It didn't take a genius to see the point he was making. I recently gave these paper bills to some young friends of mine in hopes they might ponder the same issues I did.

The Move to Port Townsend

Bill and Kathy had been working nonstop for a number of years. I would occasionally stop by and ask them if it was really worth it. I gradually began to think that Bill simply had a huge need to work. As in many things, he proved me wrong. He decided that he had built up enough money for a while and it was time to start doing things he really wanted to do. He studied the climate and terrain of almost all the U.S. and settled on a handful of locations that seemed ideal. He then subscribed to the city newspapers from each of these spots and read them for months. Finally, he and Kathy decided on Port Townsend, Wash., as the spot to live. They went out there, looked it over, and bought a big house on a hill — to me, a stunning progression of events.

In 1980 the Libertarian Party ran Ed Clark for president, and Bill and I thought very highly of the campaign he ran. I tried to join the LP but could not because I wouldn't sign a statement asserting a belief in the nonaggression principle — an assertion required for membership. Bill somehow got into the party without signing it. We both felt it was counter-productive to limit the party to those who bought into the Rand-Rothbard position on nonaggression. Just for starters, the party would have had to exclude both Mises (who defended the draft) and Hayek (who defended public education).

Later, in the pages of Liberty, our concerns with such issues led to the "the Liberty Poll." I remember spending evenings with Bill sharpening some of the questions he put to libertarians. For example, he posed the following question:

Suppose that your car breaks down in an unpredicted blizzard. You are trapped and may well freeze before help can get to you. You know that there is only one house within hiking distance. You hike to it. The owner, a frightened woman whose husband is absent, refuses to admit you (she has no phone, so asking her to telephone for help is pointless). Which of the following statements reflects your beliefs?

1. You should force entrance, but in this case it would not constitute an act of aggression.
2. You should force entrance, even though it would be an act of aggression.
3. You should not attempt to enter the house.

Sixty-two percent of the respondents agreed with the second position, 16% with the first, and 22% with the third. Bill and I felt that a belief in the second position meant that the nonaggression principle could not be accepted as written, and that the second position was perfectly reasonable. This was a problem about which people of good will could disagree. In any event, it was clear that a majority of the people considering themselves libertarians could not (at least in my view) honestly sign any statement that they would be unwilling to initiate physically aggressive force under any circumstances.

In the early 1980s, I quit my job as a professor, took my retirement plan, and rented a house in Hawaii for six months. I was trying to figure out what was worth working on. Bill and Kathy visited, and from that point on Hawaii became one of our three basic excuses to get together (motorcycle trips and Eris Society meetings being the other two). For a number of years, we would fly into Maui, arriving about 4 p.m. After quickly buying some flip-flops, we would drive to the Seven Pools, one of the truly beautiful spots on earth. We would camp by the ocean, bathe under waterfalls, hike in a rain forest, and basically cook in the sun for three days. Then, we'd head for condos on the opposite side of the island, and spend a week there. We did this for years, and the memory of Bill sitting in the shade under a rock out in the ocean reading for hours will always be treasured.

Bill also started taking long motorcycle rides from his home in Port Townsend. He helped me buy an old bike and stash it there. Then, about every couple of years, we would go exploring. Bill would plan a ride to some interesting place, and we would take off. Usually, but not always, Kathy would join us. On two occasions, we ended up in Rajneesh Puram, Ore. It was quite a place. As Bill explained it to me, a group had started a thriving commune based on free love, a charismatic guru, and so forth. The people in the nearby town of Antelope became intolerant; they decided to force the kids into public schools and refused to issue some building permits. At the next election, the Rajneeshis, who outnumbered the preexisting citizens of Antelope, voted themselves into power. They painted the town purple and orange, as part of a general cleanup of the place. Evidently the whole state went ballistic, and the authorities finally got the leaders of the group on tax evasion. When we visited, the place where 3,000 people had once lived was a ghost town. There was a library, an airport, hundreds of housing units, stores — all the trappings of a small town, just no people. It was unsettling to ride through the remnants of the place.

The Eris Society is a truly unusual group of interesting people, brought together by Doug Casey, that meets every year at Aspen, Colo. Eris was the goddess of discord, and the meetings encourage the expression of dissenting and "eccentric" views. Bill and I once rode bikes down from Washington to the annual meeting. Each night we would stop in little motels that charged $35–40 per night for the two of us. We would park the bikes, have dinner, and talk for a few hours. When we got to Aspen we ended up staying at Snowmass for $150 a night. Bill's comment was something like, "They gave us nice little chocolates on our pillows, but the showers weren't as good as the motels'."

Anyway, it was a wonderful meeting. Sonny Barger, the head of Hell's Angels, was there, and he and Bill talked about bikes for a bit. Our purpose in going to Eris, however, was basically to catch up with old friends, and we both looked forward to seeing the people we knew. The Eris group also pleased us by inviting interesting people to give talks. It was there that I got to hear a Breatharian speak about living off the nutrients in the air. One year Mark Skousen got an actor to masquerade as an anthropologist who had studied and even engaged in cannibalism. I was pretty much taken in (as were others), but Steve Cox immediately saw through it. He explained his reasons to me, and I had to reflect on how gullible I had been. I believe that Bill had been uncertain. It seemed a little shocking that, as a scientist, I had failed to exercise even a reasonable modicum of skepticism. Anyway, these were good, interesting gatherings that Bill enjoyed; and the trips to and from Aspen were a big source of pleasure.

And Then There Was Liberty

Bill started Liberty in 1987. He described the history of the magazine in detail in an article he wrote in 1992.

What has always struck me was his desire to create a framework in which all variants of libertarian thought could be expressed. He emphatically did not want to express a single position and bless it as the position of the magazine. He sincerely believed that getting at the truth would be served by the clash of alternative views. As I see it, this position cost him dearly. He was harshly criticized by almost everyone for printing things that were "wrong" or "silly." I know — I accused him of this on several occasions. However, the wisdom of Bill's position seems very clear to me now. It was important that Liberty include criticisms of libertarian positions, and not just the positions that I considered terribly wrong. It was also important that Liberty criticize events related to the Libertarian Party, although doing so generated substantial hostility.

I played a very minor role at Liberty during its start, and my participation declined over the years. I became absorbed in my own world and saw Bill less frequently. It always seemed that there would be time to do the bikes and trips again in a few years.

When Bill told me last spring that he had cancer, I went out to visit. The realization that we would never be able to ride cycles again or visit Eris together was upsetting, but Bill's continual attempts to maintain good spirits cushioned the blow. We focused on mundane issues like cleaning up his garage, getting trash to the dump, and so forth. It was just a visit to re-establish contact that had slipped over the last few years.

My wife and I returned in August to visit Kathy and Bill for a couple of weeks. Bill had become frail, finding it hard to walk or even sit. We would take short walks, go to a restaurant for dinner, then watch a movie. There were a few moments of reflection on libertarian issues, but that wasn't the point. In a departure from his normal laissez-faire attitude, he took time to make a number of suggestions about things I needed to do. He berated me for not seeing a doctor more often, and then apologized for nagging. We tried to take a trip as in the past (this time by car), but he was just too sick to enjoy it.

We did have a number of discussions about the impact of regulation on the speed of medical advances. It was a remarkably good visit, almost entirely because of the bravery Bill exhibited. He realized that he was in pain and dying, but he didn't want to focus on that. I went home still hoping that he might make it another year, but doubting it.

When it was obvious that the end was near, I went back. With just days remaining, Bill wanted to talk about how to keep Liberty functioning properly after his death. He tried to lay plans that would assure its future. As usual, he found my ideas well-intentioned but naive, while I found that his reflected huge experience but missed some points. It was like old times, but with a most poignant backdrop.

On December 8, sometime during the evening, Bill slipped gradually into unconsciousness in his chair in the family room and died. I was not there. I had gone back to my room early in the evening. When I came to see him, Kathy told me. I had expected that it might have happened, but even so the shock was real. All of a sudden one realizes all the things that should have been said and done, but weren't.

The day before Bill died, he wanted to have a small champagne celebration, and asked me to offer a toast. It was spontaneous and simple: "to Liberty, a great magazine and a great achievement." It was and is.

© Copyright 2010, Liberty Foundation

Send editorial comments to letters@libertyunbound.com.
All letters to the editor are assumed to be for publication unless otherwise indicated.

Send web site comments to webmaster@libertyunbound.com.