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Three years ago, I was invited out to Berkeley, of all places, as the 23rd Admiral Chester W Nimitz Memorial Lectures. I was the first foreigner to be asked to serve as the Nimitz Lecturer, and I regarded it as a great honor. One of my hosts for my stay at Berkeley was Thomas Barnes, a long-time professor of military history and Canadian studies, which sounds like a slightly schizophrenic job, but which wouldn't have been, for most of the Dominion's history. He was a bright, funny, engaging and enthusiastic host, and I was very sorry to hear the news earlier this week that he had died following complications from a stroke.
Professor Barnes and I wound up, rather to the bemusement of others, talking a lot about the Canadian Maritimes, whence he hailed. But, by the time of his death, he had spent half-a-century in Berkeley, in "the belly of the beast", as a friend of his put it. He was a genuine conservative in a town where most folks are either soft left, hard left or insane left, but he remained a happy warrior in the ideological struggle. You can get a sense of him in his introduction to one of my talks, "After America: New Order And No Order", and he's also present on the Berkeley TV show I appeared on, "Conversations With History", anchored by his friend, Professor Harry Kreisler.
There's something faintly surreal about delivering a series of military lectures at Berkeley. That it was so agreeable was due to my hosts, Captain Buckey and Professor Barnes. I shall miss him.
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