Archer writes:
Falwell's passing is a tragedy.
Everything dies. There is no tragedy in mere death.
Jerry Falwell was a hateful little man, little in heart and mind, hateful from the day he first came to public notice until the day he left it.
Many thousands of people's lives were blighted--and many thousands of deaths hastened--by his horrific ideas and the political forces he unleashed.
Some of us leave the world a better place for our having been here; some of us leave the world a better place only by our leaving it.
Falwell falls in the latter category. No one needs to apologize for recognizing that fact or for being glad that a loud voice for ignorance and hate has been silenced.
He is beyond all hurt our words can do; in life, as Buz suggests, he would welcome our contempt, as his allies in self-righteous spite must do now. To demonstrate glee at his funeral, to pull his family aside to point out what he was--those would be boorish: to acknowledge among friends in a place where such things are discussed that the world brightened a bit at his passing is not.
He was my enemy and not an honorable one. I am unabashedly gladdened by his passing.
Real things always push back.-William James
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