Nat Hentoff, RIP

A lefty, but an honest and independent lefty.

Wesley J. Smith:

We have lost a great writer, civil libertarian, free speech absolutist, jazz historian, and pro-life advocate....

Nat Hentoff was an indefatigable writer, a man whose deeply ingrained integrity compelled him to willingly lose good friends and professional opportunities if that is what it took to remain steadfast on behalf of causes he thought to be right.

This is from one of his columns about Terri Schiavo

For all the world to see, a 41-year-old woman, who has committed no crime, will die of dehydration and starvation in the longest public execution in American history.

Seems appropriate to quote the late Henry Hyde here.

When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God – and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world – and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, ‘Spare him because he loved us,’ – and God will look at you and say not, ‘Did you succeed?’ but ‘Did you try?’

There can be no doubt that Nat Hentoff tried. At great cost to himself and with no profit to be had, he was an unstinting fighter for life and human dignity.