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:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Monday, February 21, 2005 ::

Inventor of Shotgun-Golf Dead at 67

RIP HST

I feel the loss like somebody just kicked me in the stomach. I don't care if his later work wasn't as brilliant as the '70s stuff, or whatever people like to say. For me and many (but not enough) others, he defined both the good and evil of America, and he made a chicken-shit trade like "journalism" seem vital and romantic. He was wrong, or maybe he was just the last of his kind, or maybe just the last of his kind smart enough to con some moneybag publisher into bankrolling another jaunt to Mexico or Vietnam.

I don't know why he shot himself today, but I imagine he had good reasons.

Ken Layne-Reno, Nevada



From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

"And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

-Hunter S. Thompson

No matter your politics, it's really hard to hate a guy who could pound words together like that. Certainly, we've lost one of our greatest literary talents ever. Dang.

Tim Blair has more [>]

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