It just came across the transom from Free Republic that Joe Sobran has passed away at the age of 64. I do not do many RIPs, but I am writing this one because Sobran was one of the biggest influences on me apart from Soren Kierkegaard, some preachers and college professors, and my parents.

Sobran was an editor at National Review from the 1970s-1980s. I did not keep up with him much after that; from what I saw he ended up on the paleoconservative side of the conservative intellectual movement. There was a booth at CPAC in 2007 which distributed Sobran’s work.

Joe Sobran was important to me because he wrote the essay that convinced me to adopt conservative principles, at a time when I had not yet made up my mind. I was in college in the 1980s, and through most of that time I subscribed to National Review, New Republic and The Nation simultaneously. During the times when money was tight, I read them at the school library. At that time, you could read them as the right, middle and left, respectively, and get a really good overview of the ideological spectrum. At that time, I could see a lot of the truth in each. “Liberal” and “conservative” meant slightly different things in the 1980s. That is probably another essay in itself.

My viewpoint circa 1985, heretical from every side, could be summed up as: It is criminal that abortion is legal and marijuana is not. Abortion to me, at that point, as it still is now, was the worst thing in the world because it meant killing people- pure and simple – but the government intruding into how we choose to party was a comparable problem. I had not reached a firm position on macroeconomics and the implications of the welfare state, but regarding weed it was, well: Here. I. Stand.

Then, at the end of 1985, National Review published this amazing essay by Joe Sobran: Pensees

Those who seek power have a natural interest in creating dependency on themselves. Where limited government and the rule of law prevail, politicians can do this only to a limited extent, through appointments and a certain amount of patronage. In this regard, socialism has opened new vistas: where the state can command a whole economy, it can make millions dependent on it for life itself. It is in this sense that socialism “works,” and the socialist ruler isn’t necessarily inconvenienced by the scarcity the system causes: the more desperate the people, the more they are at his mercy. Why should he want them to enjoy leisure and independent means? In such circumstances rebellions have been hatched.

Liberalism–retail socialism–doesn’t seek the direct confiscation of property; although it furtively admires such policies abroad, it knows they would make bitter enemies and create organized opposition in America. It prefers incremental measures: progressive taxation, redistributive programs of a piecemeal sort, regulations on the use of private property, inheritance taxes. It resents being identified as socialist, and pretends its assorted measures are “pragmatic,” ideologically unrelated to one another. It proceeds gradually, masking the principle involved even as it is consistently guided by principle: at every step it moves toward socialism, and furiously attacks any proposal to rescind its progress.

Read it all, by all means. If you want something to show to impressionable young adults to explain the world, it is an excellent primer.

If one is libertarian-leaning, as I was, I think Pensees fills in the blanks as to why more traditionally conservative views make sense.

Sleep well, Joe. Of all else you accomplished I actually do not know, but what I do know is you changed my life when I was 24 years old with that one essay you wrote.