The following article by IWP Founder and President John Lenczowski appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 14.
William Clark, Freedom Fighter
The judge fought alongside Reagan in the long twilight struggle of the Cold War.
When William P. Clark died on Saturday at age 81, his family and colleagues mourned his passing-and recognized that the world had lost one of its greatest champions of freedom.
Judge Clark, as he was known to one and all, served as a justice of the California Supreme Court from 1973 until 1981, and later as President Ronald Reagan’s deputy secretary of state, national security adviser and secretary of the interior. In his foreign-policy roles, Judge Clark became one of the figures outside the Soviet empire most responsible for its collapse and for the liberation of millions from the tyranny of communism.
As an adviser and friend, Judge Clark was as close to Reagan as anyone except the president’s wife. This proximity derived from many things, including their shared political philosophy, their love for ranching and horseback riding, and their common spiritual faith. It was from this spiritual outlook on life that the president and the judge viewed the Cold War fundamentally as a moral conflict: a struggle between good and evil, and between truth and falsehood. They both saw it as a conflict in which there could be no reconciliation.