I believe today is Joseph Sobran’s wake and tomorrow is his funeral. I have a piece up at Enter Stage Right that hopefully does a little more justice to the points I was trying to make in my initial reaction to his death. Here’s Sobran’s own final take on some of the controversies mentioned therein, with an introduction by Peter Brimelow. But today I’d like to focus on what the next Congress could learn from the writer who was once one of National Review‘s finest.

During the 1992 presidential election, Sobran observed:

The real opposite of a legislating party is not a foot-dragging party, but a party of repeal. What we need is a conservative Congress whose chief business will be chopping down the jungle of bad laws that oppress us, laws that range from misconceived to iniquitous and unconstitutional.

Amen. As true today as it was then.