A few memories of Rich to add to Ramesh’s tribute. A few years ago, I went to Kansas City to speak to a conservative group he was involved in out there. He picked me up in his tiny, beat-up car that looked like it had been lived in for years by a family of gypsies with a decidedly intellectual bent. Printed matter was everywhere and the trunk was stuffed with stacks of the newspaper he published. Rich was the original absent-minded intellectual.
I met with him last year here in NR’s conference room. I believe he wanted to talk to me about trade, but we got onto immigration. He told me he had something like eight points, and he asked as he began to launch into them a characteristically Rich question: “May I pace?” Of course, I answered, and Rich walked back and forth around the room holding forth as only he could.
It was from that conversation that his famous — or infamous, depending on where you stand — article in NR on immigration arose. The last time I saw him was at a Council for National Policy in Washington a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting in the back and Rich walked in and headed toward the front. It was hard to miss Rich at such events — with his goatee, he looked like a stray Trotskyite who might be rushing the stage. I caught up to him and asked, referring to the immigration controversy, “Haven’t you been purged?”
He laughed. He was a sweet-tempered, deeply principled, and brilliant man. His passing is a loss to conservatism, and to all of us who knew him. RIP.