Wonderful Humor, Flashing Insight   

As a teen in the mid-1980s, I wanted to meet and visit with WFB more than any man on earth, living or dead.  It was his genius and sensibility.  It was his understanding of human nature and the human condition.  It was his understanding that to destroy and distort and prevent and take is so much easier than to create and build and allow and give.  That's why he and I hated the Communists and why we love Liberty and are true to her.  My mother met him at after a speech in about 1990 and held forth my 10 year old brother, saying, "he's a big fan!" to which WFB said - and picture his wry face and toothy grin - "What about you?"  She adored him, her modest cover blown.

He is the ultimate voice of personal responsibility, of the depth and art of meaningful morality - sometimes gray but often black and white, and he expressed the difference superbly - and of wonderful humor and flashing insight.

On a scale of 100 for sheer uniqueness, meaningful charisma and contribution to what the classical liberal thinkers and Founding Fathers started, which is only the most important codification of ideas man has ever wrought, WFB was a 99.5.  We have to assume that in Bill's world, perfection is reserved for the afterlife. 
H.B. Neel, Rochester, MN

03/02 07:33 PM