When they were old and near death, I asked both Friedman and Buckley if they felt content. They had each changed history in ways more profound than they could have expected when they set out. Did they feel they could rest now and be at peace? Neither man even understood what I was talking about. There was so much for them left to do. Until the day they died, they pushed ideas, lived for ideas, and tried to bend the world a little in the direction of their ideas. They were examples of what intellectual commitment looks like.
