Sam Francis, lots of us are going to miss you

I liked Sam Francis.

I didn't know him personally, but I liked him. This afternoon, I learned of his death on February 15. I'm going to miss reading and posting links to his articles and commentary.

I wish I had gotten the chance to communicate with him more - on a more personal level. I wrote to him three or four times commenting on his work. He only replied to me once. Perhaps my missives were too long. Perhaps he was flooded with email; I get between 20 and 60 a day myself after the Spam filter has done its work. Whatever the reason for the no-reply, I understood.

I recall that my message to him that did get response was one sentence in agreement with something he wrote. His reply? One word.

"Thanks."

That was it.

But I was pleased that he took the time to respond.

I'll miss the "looking forward to reading his latest" the most.

Here is what others are saying about Sam. I'll start where he was a columnist for quite a while - The Washington Times...

Sam Francis, columnist, 57, dies - The
Washington Times: Nation/Politics

"Mr. Francis frequently expressed provocative views on topics of history, race and culture that were often contested by other conservatives. 'Mass immigration means revolution, the displacement of one people and its culture by others,' he wrote last year. On the 40th anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling ' which declared mandated segregated public schools unconstitutional ' Mr. Francis called it 'the most dangerous and destructive Supreme Court decision in American history.'

In his last column, published Jan. 27, Mr. Francis criticized President Bush's second inaugural address: 'The president ... confirmed once and for all that the neoconservatism to which he has delivered his administration and the country is fundamentally indistinguishable' from liberalism."

...he was a regular at VDARE.com, a must read source for immigration reformers...

In Memoriam Sam Francis
Peter Brimelow, VDARE.com

Sam's great value to VDARE.COM was his unflinching disregard of contemporary taboos. He was always prepared to say the unsayable.

With the end of the Cold War, he emerged as a type of white nationalist, defending the interests of the community upon which the historic United States was, as a matter of fact, built. This position, of course, is as legitimate as Black nationalism, Hispanic nationalism, or Zionism. It is, indeed, the inevitable result of multiculturalism that is being imported through public policy.

Although VDARE.COM is not a white nationalist site, we regarded him as an important part of the VDARE.COM coalition. And we will miss him very badly.

The Establishment, left and right, wasn't ready to listen to Sam. The logic of their own policies, however, means that eventually they will be forced to.

...Sam successfully navigated a difficult journalistic landscape and had some nationalistic views, but he was always rational in expressing them...

Samuel Francis, Requiescat In Pace Domini
Thomas Fleming, Chronicles Magazine

"Sam Francis was a skeptic about most things, including religion. Some of his resentment against what he saw as the liberal influence of Christianity had been abating, however, and I have good reason to believe he met his end as a Christian."

...surely, he did.

So, I'm not feeling a particularly brilliant wordsmith this evening. I don't do death well. Sometimes I go back and read the gibberish I wrote the night John Lennon died just to remind myself not to wax nostalgic over those who have recently departed. When someone I like dies, my muse goes on hiatus.

I'll just leave you all with this piece Sam Wrote in 2003; with Social Security Reform on the table, it seems a fitting way to remember Sam today.


Sam Francis Weekly Column

"Not the least of the problems that mass immigration inflicts on the Americans whose nation the immigrants are colonizing is how it affects the creaking Social Security system. The Open Borders lobby holds that immigration will save the system -- a claim peddled by the Wall Street Journal and various professional Open Borders activists. But, like most of claims of the Open Borders lobby, this one isn't true either."

For more of Sam's work, please visit his archive at VDARE.com.
Sam Francis Articles