Liberty has lost an irreplaceable champion. There are many advocates for western civilization and its freedoms in our world, and each and every one of them makes a difference. Of them all, French Academie Francaise member and "immortal" Jean-Francois Revel may have been the greatest.
Liberty. Humanity. Clarity. And an intelligence that enlightened, revealed, and challenged you every step of the way. Others will step up, and join the love story that he was a part of, and aim at the same things. They will take their place in our civilization's long chain - but those who rise to Revel's level are never really replaced. Was de Tocqueville ever replaced? Baron Montesquieu? It is enough that we had them for a short while, borrowed treasures that left something of themselves behind.
He has fought the good fight, and laid down a pen mightier than a brigade of swords. If there is a Heaven, he goes now to its Elysian Fields.
Au revoir notre pere, notre ami (1924-2006). May we prove worthy of your legacy.
UPDATE: Jeremayakovka has a tribute, and some links.
Revel:
Jean-Francois Revel was one of the people who, in the early 80s, rearmed this country intellectually after the disaster of post-Kennedy "Liberalism". He was our Lafayette, and How Democracies Perish was the right book at the right time.He wasn't one of the happy, super-confident voices of the Reagan-Thatcher days. He was a Whittaker Chambers, preparing us for the Long Twilight Struggle.
A guiding light for Europeans. The third author of the trio recommended by classic Liberals: Mises, Hayek and him, with the advantage of writting about the specific problems of our time: anti-Americanism; or the way the Left has assumed the failing of the Soviet Union and strike back, in The Great Masquerade (title in Spanish).
Superb. We'll miss his talent.
I read "Without Marx or Jesus" when I was in college and it made a big difference to me. I already was not in the leftist camp. (I always had to be different, so I was an anarchocapitalist (but that's another story), but it was great reading someone sensible who wasn't either very fringey like Karl Hess, or melodramatic and embarrassing like Ayn Rand. Revel was clearly a serious well-respected intellectual, from the France of the 68 revolution yet, saying these things.
[A part of my college curriculum was Revel's famous book]Ni Marx, Ni Jesus, too. That, and his regular columns in "Le Point" made for exciting and important reading. His ideas will live on.
[AL - edited to move url back in the post]