Goodbye To The Doctor

Matt Welch has a beautiful piece on Hunter S. Thompson in Reason. Money graf:

He was that rare journalist who took the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments as seriously as the First, regardless of who currently occupied the White House. Unlike the Boomers and journalists who indulged him as a guilty, don't-go-there pleasure, late-in-life financial success did nothing to dull his outrage at overzealous prosecutors, lying cops, opportunistic legislators, and the enablers of the obscene Drug War. He was a patriotic, don't-tread-on-me lefty who shot firearms, despised nanny-state restrictions on speech, and only occasionally voted Democratic for president. He spoke, wrote, lived, and died, with a freedom few of us can contemplate.