Alan Bock was the Register’s moral lodestar

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a dozen years since Alan W. Bock, the Orange County Register’s veteran editorial writer and columnist, passed away. Today would have been his 80th birthday, so we’re commemorating the role he played in shaping this newspaper’s libertarian political philosophy and for his consistent – and consistently good-natured – promotion of freedom.

Bock was the ultimate happy warrior, who always saw the best in his fellow humans – even when they held beliefs that were diametrically opposed to his (and ours). His fellow writers used to gently tease him when he insisted that So and So, whose views were conspicuously authoritarian, was just one good argument or book away from discovering the bounties of human liberty.

He wrote thousands of editorials as well as four noteworthy books on topics ranging from the drug war (“Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuana”) to government overreach (“Ambush at Ruby Ridge”). He set the stage for 25-plus years of Register opinion-making. Former editorial-page editor Cathy Taylor noted that, “Alan truly lived his values, political and personal.”

Here are a couple of our favorite Bock snippets:

“There never really was a Golden Age of Liberty, nor is there likely to be. As Jefferson noted, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Each generation must come to grips with the importance (or unimportance) of liberty and find ways to advance its blessings to more members of the human race.”

“There are plenty of things more important than politics: your family and friends and treating them right, the search for spiritual meaning in an often confusing and ambiguous world, art, music, science, simple enjoyment of the good things in life … . All these challenges, however, can be handled better – not necessarily easily, but better – in an atmosphere of personal liberty and freedom to make one’s own choices than in a repressive regime that makes choices for you.”

And so we urge Register readers to dust off a copy of one of his books and celebrate the many blessings of liberty. Rest in Peace, Alan.