Sullivan Gets it Right

So I'm not a fan of Andrew Sullivan's style - lots of assertions, lots of indignation, not a lot of calm reasoning. Still, occasionally he gets it right, as in this post on Eugene McCarthy and Richard Pryor (a Peoria native). This is excellent:

"The great and too-often missed achievement of Western freedom is the way in which it allows true, eccentric, inspired individuals to rise."

Again and again, it's the eccentric people who advance humankind. Mendel comes to mind, although in a sense his eccentricity wasn't allowed to flourish. John Cleese and Douglas Adams also strike me as examples of this. Anyway, we live in a culture that celebrates and cultivates weirdness, to our credit and our advantage.