Lew, I’m saddened to hear of Howard Phillips’s passing. I first met Howard in 1984 when James Bennett and I were doing the research for our book, Destroying Democracy: How Government Funds Partisan Politics. The book is about how the government (illegally) uses billions of tax dollars to subsidize special-interest-group lobbying for bigger government. Howard’s Conservative Caucus had collected several huge file cabinets full of government grant documents from Freedom of Information Act requests listing who got how much for such purposes and he allowed us to use all of it.
Howard once told me that at one time he was the most popular “Lincoln Day” speaker in the Republican Party, but that he had seen the light and became a certified, card-carrying Lincoln hater. I’m sure he was on the Soviet Poverty Law Center’s Hate List. He also told me a few years ago that he and his wife routinely sat around the breakfast table with their grandchildren reading LewRockwell.com articles out loud and enjoying it immensely.
Gary North is right about Howard — he always struck me as an extremely intelligent and well-read man and was also a great public speaker. He once invited me to speak on Lincoln at a convention of home schoolers organized by his son, who is a minister. I was blown away by the high intelligence and depth of learning of these mostly early teens, who will be a part of Howard’s legacy to the freedom movement in the world.
11:21 am on April 22, 2013