THE WANDERER, FEBRUARY 24, 2005

JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH

Samuel Francis RIP

     Samuel Francis, whose column has appeared in THE 
WANDERER for years, has died at 57. One of the most 
trenchant conservative pens in America will write no 
more.

     In late January Sam suffered an aortic aneurysm and 
underwent seven hours of emergency surgery -- not one 
dangerous operation, but two -- in a Maryland hospital. 
He luckily survived that and, to the great relief of his 
friends, he seemed to be recovering for the next two 
weeks. Then, on February 15, his blood pressure suddenly 
plunged, and that was the end.

     Details are hard to come by. Sam was in no condition 
to receive visitors, and a shadowy friend, who had driven 
him to the hospital and waited throughout the surgery, 
jealously guarded both access and information, at one 
point turning away a priest who tried to see him. 
Fortunately, the priest had reportedly managed to see Sam 
the previous day; this is about all I've been able to 
glean, and though I hope to learn more, I doubt that much 
more will emerge.

     But I do know that some of Sam's Catholic friends, 
especially Fran Griffin in her tireless charity, did 
their utmost for him. (Fran, the publisher of my 
newsletter, is always there when you need her -- often 
before you even know you need her.) This must have been 
his only consolation in the painful and lonely final days 
of his life.

     Sam was born in Chattanooga in 1947 and graduated 
from Johns Hopkins, later earning a doctorate in 
political science. I met him during the Reagan years, 
when he worked for the late Sen. John East of North 
Carolina; later he worked for the Heritage Foundation, 
where he wrote about Communism and the emerging problem 
of terrorism. After that he wrote prize-winning 
editorials for THE WASHINGTON TIMES, where he became the 
target of a neoconservative vendetta that resulted in his 
firing in 1995.

     His columns continued to appear in CHRONICLES and 
other publications, winning a small but devoted 
readership, among whom the shocking news of his death 
spread with a rapidity that might have surprised him. 

     Along the way Sam wrote a few books, including a 
small study of his intellectual hero James Burnham. I 
don't think Sam actually met Burnham, but I worked with 
Jim at NATIONAL REVIEW during his last years there and 
shared Sam's admiration for him. The key to Sam's 
thinking was Burnham's book THE MACHIAVELLIANS, a study 
of power I also regard as seminal. Long before it became 
fashionable to mock the "politically correct," Sam was 
attracted by Burnham's pessimistic logic and total scorn 
for liberal optimism, especially in matters of race and 
ethnicity.

     Like Burnham, he had no desire to be accepted by 
liberals and stoically endured their ostracism. He was 
devoid of self-pity. It never crossed his mind to 
complain about the neglect he received, though it was a 
sort of organized neglect; his enemies were well aware of 
him, and they feared his pen.

     Sam was a familiar figure at conservative 
gatherings. He was an uncompromising Southern 
paleoconservative, with an abiding contempt for Lincoln 
and the liberal tradition. When I came, late in life, to 
a new political insight, I often found that Sam had known 
it all along. But he was too polite to say, "You've only 
just figured that out?"

     Willmoore Kendall used to say that American 
conservatives carried their political tradition 
implicitly, "in their hips." He might have had Sam in 
mind when he said that.

     For most of his life Sam was alarmingly well-fed; he 
reminded one of the character in P.G. Wodehouse who 
"looked as if he had been poured into his suit and forgot 
to say 'When!'" (I should talk! The Lord made me skinny; 
I did the rest.)

     But over the last two years he'd lost a spectacular 
amount of weight and quit drinking and smoking. It was 
startling to see him looking so fit. His determination to 
take care of his health came as a great relief to those 
of us who'd been quietly worried about him. He seemed to 
have taken the advice we'd been too shy to offer. That's 
why his recent emergency came as such a shock.


A Puzzled Respect

     I knew Sam well for many years, though not 
intimately, and he's oddly hard to describe. Gruffly 
good-humored, at once cynical and jolly, he didn't invite 
intimacy. Though I saw him often, we never had anything 
I'd call a heart-to-heart talk. He was outspoken and 
restrained at the same time. His mind was both searching 
and skeptical. I never heard him say anything about 
religion; my impression is that he had no particular 
faith, though I never asked; on the other hand, I never 
heard him say anything anti-religious.

     I'm only guessing, but my sense is that Sam regarded 
Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, with a 
puzzled respect. He had many devout Catholic friends, 
including Pat Buchanan, and it can hardly have failed to 
impress him that his idol Burnham, an apostate of great 
intelligence, had returned to the Church on his deathbed.

     Sam was an enigma. You never knew what was going on 
inside him, since he discussed political problems rather 
than ultimate questions. I was never even sure how well 
informed he was about Christianity; I still have no idea 
whether he had a religious upbringing in Tennessee. (He 
never married and is survived, as far as I know, only by 
a sister.)

     Given his pessimistic temperament, Sam wasn't given 
to inspiring affirmation. His outlook was bleak. The news 
was always bad, and I sometimes wondered what, if 
anything, he would regard as good news. His disdain for 
Republicans -- "the stupid party," he always called them 
-- was fathomless. He seemed neither surprised nor 
disappointed when so-called conservatives rallied behind 
George W. Bush and the Iraq war; Burnham had taught him 
how deluding political labels and professed principles 
can be in the realm of power.

     And yet, when a seemingly unbelieving man surrounds 
himself with Catholic friends, you can safely assume that 
he's attracted to the faith. Whether or not he believes, 
he wishes he did.


Pray for His Soul

     Some years ago my pastor remarked on how 
inappropriate it is that eulogies are now delivered at 
Catholic funerals, celebrating the virtues, rather than 
remembering the sins, of the deceased. It was a resonant 
comment.

     This is an age that combines spiritual laxity with a 
false optimism, as if it were natural, if not automatic, 
for the dead to go immediately to Heaven. Why bother 
praying for their souls if salvation is their birthright 
-- or shall we say their deathright?

     As his readers know, Sam Francis rejected false 
optimism in any form. If there is one Christian doctrine 
he would have believed without much argument, it is the 
doctrine of original sin.

     Let us pray for his soul, and ask God's blessings on 
those who remembered him at the end.

                 +          +          +                  

     SOBRAN'S examines the phenomenal anti-Catholic 
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                                        --- Joseph Sobran

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