Requiem For Joseph Hurley

It took about ten seconds for me to recognize that the man was my old friend Joe Hurley, who I’d written off as dead a few years before (for very compelling reasons that I won’t get into here).
Joe Hurley?
He turned and looked at me.
JOSH BROWN! GOD BLESS YOU! JOSH BROWN!
It was my indeed my old friend, alive and well, having gone through a spiritual experience that saved his life, bringing him from NY to California in the process.
Joseph Hurley and I first met in the mid eighties, when we were both messengers for Lightspeed Couriers, remaining friends throughout my university years upstate and beyond. Until that moment in San Francisco we’d last spoken in 1994, when I’d worked briefly for the messenger company he’d started in NYC before heading off to Taiwan.
At some point shortly thereafter the company closed down, and Hurley disappeared, with mutual friends telling me different sides of a story ending with Joe’s ditching NYC for pastures less likely to bring about his premature demise.
Having looked for him a few times in the late nineties with no success, I assumed - along with more than one mutual acquaintance - that he was dead. Finding out that he was not merely alive, but alive and well, made me extremely happy.
I am equally saddened now to learn of his death from Covid - and more than a little ashamed to have learned of his passing nearly three years after the fact.
Joe and I hung out often over the next year in San Francisco. When my dot.com job ended in the summer of 2001, I moved on, eventually heading back to Asia. Joe moved back east not too long after, and though it would be another 18 years before we lived in the same time zone, we still kept in contact sporadically, and would meet each other for meals whenever I was back in New York. More than once, Joe was the last friend I hung out with before heading back to Asia. We'd meet up, and he'd take me out for a three hour meal at a Queens diner before dropping me off at JFK to catch a red-eye flight back to Hong Kong or Taipei.
We fell out of contact a couple of times during this period, both times following heated political arguments. Joe was politically conservative - and here I should interject that his was a traditional Reagan / Goldwater conservatism rather than the current MAGA strain. His positions were well thought out, and he expected the same of anyone with whom he engaged in political discourse.
Which, at far as I knew, was anybody he thought was intelligent enough to keep up with him.
Conversations with Hurley generally turned to politics, and as he an I held opposite opinions on many (but not all) subjects, these often became debates, which sometimes became arguments.
My general strategy to end an unwanted debate is to say something obviously foolish, and Joe…well, Joe Hurley did not suffer fools lightly.
But we’d generally reconnected after a year or two’s radio silence, with one of us reaching out to the other over email or social media.
The last time we reconnected was in 2019. A mutual friend had run into him and told me he was doing well. I reached out over LinkedIn and discovered that he’d made a career shift to teaching following an incredibly impressive return to the academic world. We wound up talking regularly over the next few months, and had plans to reconnect in person that didn’t happen, mostly for logistical reasons.
We continued talking after I moved back west, though less often because of time zones and work schedules - he’d just started teaching social studies at West Side Collaborative Middle school in Manhattan, and with the commute factored kept long hours. Outside of LinkedIn, we’d never reconnected on Social Media, which, given our political differences was probably a blessing.
We'd been making vague plans for him to come visit me in Oregon. Joe was an accomplished poker player - semi-professional, playing at the same table as folks like James Woods - and I thought it would be interesting to bring him to a casino to watch him in action.
Then the pandemic started.
The last conversation we had was in spring, 2020. The lockdown had going on for a couple of months, and the strain of the pandemic was already making everyone testy. At some point our conversation got heated, and while I don’t recall any argument in particular, I do remember leaving the conversation thinking yeah, I think I’ll lay off on chatting with Joe until this thing blows over.
I guess at some point I figured that if eventually one of us would call or text the other. Weeks turned to months, and months to seasons. Life happened.
But for Joe, life would only continue for a few months past our last conversation. He would pass away in October of 2020 of Covid, as I - to my great shame - learned only a few days ago.
I’d been meaning to reach out to him for over a year, but the longer you go without speaking the harder it gets to initiate a conversation. A few nights ago I had a dream, more vivid than most, in which he was not present but deeply involved. I made a recording of the dream, along with an apology for not reaching out sooner, and sent him a text message reading Mister Hurley? A Certain Dwarf is offering Mea Culpas. It seemed prudent to do that before sending a rambling account of a bizarre dream to a number that might not even be his anymore.
When I got no reply, I looked for him on LinkedIn but couldn’t find his account. (Which is strange, since LinkedIn sends me annual reminders to celebrate career milestones of more than one long-deceased friend.)
It took a few minutes on Google to find out that he’d died in 2020, through an absolutely glowing staff tribute written by friends, colleagues and the parents of students at the school he’d taught at less than a year.
I can add nothing to these words of praise, appreciation and admiration, so I won’t even try. Instead, I urge you to read the tribute, written by people who knew my friend Joseph Hurley in ways in which I’m, frankly, envious.
Joe and I often went months and years between conversations, so it’s not particularly noteworthy that we didn’t speak again between what would be our final conversation and his death in October, 2020.
But I’m ashamed at having let months turn into years.
I’m ashamed because I should have checked in on him far earlier.
I’m ashamed because I could have been a better friend, and should have learned of his demise far sooner.
But primarily, I’m ashamed because my shame would amuse Joe.
He would laugh with the gentle sadism of someone who knows he’d been right all along getting a long-expected apology from a foolish friend who'd finally come to his senses.
I hope the spectacle of my squirming publicly on my own blog amuses you, Joe.
I hope you’re enjoying this, wherever you are.
Catholic heaven, I presume, being reprimanded regularly by God himself - not just for arguing obscure points of holy doctrine loudly and openly with the spirits of the very clergy, bishops & popes responsible for creating them - but for winning these arguments frequently enough to alarm the angels.
I’ll miss you, Mister Hurley. My world continues to be a less erudite place without you in it.
Requiescat in pace, Joe.

Joe and I were both fairly active political writers in the early-oughts, with me churning out a column called Politics and Other Dirty Words (first for the Colorado Daily and later for the now defunct Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) and Joe writing for a publication called The Critical Observer. We considered collaborating on a point-counterpoint project where we'd debate various issues, but never got much further than a name for the website - politicallyincompatable.com.
But we did collaborate on one article that wound up in the Bullhorn. Outside of emails going back as long as I've had the same Gmail account, its the written example of Joe's voice I've been able to find (ownership of www.thecriticalobserver.com seems to have changed hands - it's now a website devoted to combat sports) and thus I present our original collaboration below.
Joe Conservative: Nader Republican
The name Ralph Nader throws many Democrats into paroxysms of invective and blame. Even those who acknowledge their own candidates’ lackluster performance are quick to decry Nader as the deciding factor in the 2000 election. The quixotic consumer advocate’s announcement of his intention to run again in 2004 set off howls of indignant recrimination from Democrats across the country. Nader’s response to Democratic critics was that they ought to “Relax and Rejoice,” and that his candidacy would take votes from the left and the right.
Few relaxed. None rejoiced.
But there is some evidence to support Nader’s claim that his candidacy may be a double-edged sword, carving away votes from both sides of the vast American political divide. Increasingly, traditionalist Republicans and mainstream conservatives – voters without whom neither Bush Junior or Senior could ever have been elected – are breaking party ranks and expressing growing distaste for the policies of the current administration.
Joe Hurley, conservative columnist for The Critical Observer, is one of the growing number of Republican voters planning to cast their vote for Ralph Nader this fall. In this online chat, he explains to the Bullhorn’s Joshua Samuel Brown what changed his mind about Bush and why he’s planning to vote for Nader.
JSB: So this has got to be purely a protest vote, right? I mean, is there any part of Nader’s platform that appeal to your own political sensibilities?
Joe: Well, discounting his overt socialism, I would say that the fact that he sees our current immigration policy as fundamentally flawed is a good selling point for his domestic policy. The fact that he is totally against NAFTA and the WTO is his best selling point on foreign affairs. But, yes, it is a protest vote.
JSB: You call yourself a conservative. Would you define the term?
Joe: To understand what a conservative is, you have to understand what a "classic liberal" is. Because they're basically the same thing: We believe that the role of government should be quite limited, that people should be free to go about their business without being hindered by undo restrictions placed on their liberty. The Constitution has laid out a good model for achieving this, by keeping government in check.
JSB: Do you consider President Bush to be a conservative?
Joe: No. He’s done very little that I would define as conservative.
JSB: What, for instance, has he done that is not conservative?
Well, he said (as a candidate) that he would veto McCain-Feingold, a bill he knew to be unconstitutional, but then he signed it for political reasons. He talked about reducing the size of government, but every budget that he has submitted has increased spending in every department of the Federal Government, including the one submitted before 911. This is not a conservative St. George slaying the big government Leviathan. He, like so many politicians, has misrepresented himself. And then there’s the Patriot Act…
JSB: Huh…I thought most conservatives liked the Patriot act because it’s designed to prevent future 911 type attacks.
Joe: Sure, and most of the Patriot Act does just that. But it is one thing to assume wartime powers, it’s quite another to strip us of our due-process rights as a matter of law. FDR and Lincoln did things that they considered necessary to win their wars. FDR set up internment camps. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and set up political prisons for, among others, dissenting journalists and editors. But they did this by executive order. They did not turn these obviously unconstitutional measures into law. Congress effectively showed their approval by not calling for their impeachment. But these clowns in Washington nowadays are stripping us of our most basic rights.
JSB: So why not just vote for Kerry?
Joe: Well, Bush may be a disappointment, but I'm downright afraid of a John Kerry Presidency. Kerry has given us every indication that he would address Islamic Terror against America the same way that most previous administrations have, as criminal acts rather than as acts of war. Now, if we weren't attacked on 9/11, and we weren't at war, I would vote for Kerry. Not because I like him, but to directly punish Bush for not keeping his word. This is what we did to his father. Remember, it was not the liberal voter that Bush Sr. lost (he never had them). It was the conservative base that he lost. He didn't keep his “No new taxes” promise, and it cost him a second term.
JSB: Is conservatism the sole domain of the Republican Party? Is it possible, for example, to be a conservative democrat?
Joe: Sure, look at Zell Miller, Democratic Senator from Georgia, Or Joe Leiberman. But your question is fundamentally flawed, because the Republican Party is not in the business of being conservative. They are in the business of getting conservative votes.
JSB: Last fall you wrote an article advising prospective Democratic candidates that the way that they could beat Bush would be to get the vote of people like you, and then went so far as to offer them an ironclad way to go about this. Can you summarize this?
Joe: Well, the full article is available online at www.thecriticalobserver.com, but in a nutshell, I suggested that the nominee accuse Bush of not doing enough in the war on terrorism and then promise to bring the war to the enemy by holding Saudi Arabia accountable. Whoever that Democrat was, if they did that, they’d win in a landslide.
JSB: Do you still feel this way?
Joe: Absolutely. If Kerry could convince me that he would fully wage war against our enemy, no matter what the political cost, I would vote for him. Hell, I would campaign for him. But I don't believe that he will ever address the problem in this way… But if he did position himself as a more ruthless wartime leader than Bush, I believe that he would win.
JSB: You live in NY, a state whose electoral votes the GOP seems to have all but written off. If you lived in a swing state like Ohio, or even a weakly-for-Bush state like Colorado, would you still vote for Nader?
Joe: No. As bad as Bush is, at least he’s engaging the enemy, if only in a limited fashion. To tell the truth, what we really need is a Democrat like FDR, or a Republican like Teddy Roosevelt. But I’d hold my nose while I voted.
JSB: Do you think that Nader will be taking votes from Bush…besides yours, I mean?
Joe: Yes, Nader will get more than few Conservative votes, but most of these will be from states where the risk of hurting Bush will be very small. I know people who think like I do, but we all agree that we couldn't afford to waste our votes on Nader in a swing state like Ohio or Florida. In the end, I think Nader will get far more votes in the solid "Blue" or "Red" states than he will in the "battleground" states. Hopefully the message will get through to the GOP; you do not own the conservative vote!
JSB: So, do you think that Democrats should be afraid of Nader?
Joe: No.
JSB: But if you really thought they should be, would you tell them?
Joe: No, probably not.