Grigg is gone.

Sometimes, even God gets selfish.

If you'll forgive the crudity, this nevertheless sums it up just about perfectly:

The irony is that Grigg could have done it better without being crude.

There's a hole in the freedomverse today, and it's a big one.  I find it extremely telling that within just a few hours, I have seen more love for Will Grigg pass by my Facebook feed, than I have seen attention paid to any single person or event since I entered the TwitFace space just about ten years ago now.  It's difficult to explain how someone I never met in meatspace could become so important in my life, but anyone who spends any amount of time reading these pages will not fail to run across Grigg's name with some regularity.  I'd like to think that does not happen by accident.

I could go on and stumble for the words myself, but Dan Sanchez did a pretty fine job summing up the je ne sais quoi of Grigg's style, in an article for FEE today:

Each essay he wrote was a masterpiece of erudition and eloquence, precision and passion. He did not hurl invective. He simply described each official injustice exactly, stripped of all euphemism, as one would a crime committed by any “mundane” outside of the “punitive priesthood” and devoid of “blue privilege,” to use three of his many incisive coinages. He would illuminate the matter by drawing fascinating parallels from his expansive knowledge of history, literature, and popular culture: especially science fiction, which he loved. And he would slice to pieces the officious justifications of official victimizers with his razor-sharp reason. He was, bar none, the best writer in the liberty movement. And in his painstakingly produced podcast Freedom Zealot and his many interviews with Scott Horton, he seemed to craft final-draft prose as he spoke.

Yes, that.  All of that.  And for me, there is one other thing, too:  William Grigg was an actual living manifestation of something that is otherwise at least arguably an impossible enigma:  a true, literal Christian libertarian.  What I am usually used to is that the acceptance of God as the ultimate benign authoritarian, will ultimately and always trump the libertarian impulse at some point in the continuum;  but then somehow there was Constant Will, never budging from a libertarianism so beautifully radical it could easily be called the oh-so-naughty A-word...and yet somehow his devoutness was never in question--maybe it's because he always made it seem so personally, individually voluntary.  I found that inspiring and impressive, even alongside his more obvious stylistic brilliance.

He leaves behind a world that desperately needs him, but which seems even more desperate to ignore him.  "Those malignant bastards" do not deserve to breathe any easier for not having Will around any more, calling them out in his gloriously plain, honest language for what they are.

Somehow, in light of this terrible news, I am reminded of something I heard him say more than once:

This is a man.  Take notes.

He always said that about others--certainly worthy others--but based on everything I have learned about the man through his writing and social media presence, the sentiment is absolutely made for him.

Let me put it this way:  my own son will get the notes I have taken.

Rest in peace, Will, and thank you eternally for the attitude.