What Andrew Breitbart Understood About The Media - And Why He Waged War Against It

Put very well here.  It helped me understand the source of some of my own anger as well:

One thing that he [Breitbart] and Bill [Buckley] shared was this basic contempt for the premise that the mainstream liberal elite institutions in the United States are in a position to judge and adjudicate the worth of conservatives. That they are in a position to judge our souls. That if we disagree with liberals, that proves that we are somehow wanting or lacking in compassion; lacking in humanity. That is a fundamental thing that enraged Andrew, this idea that if you disagreed about public policy, if you disagreed about how to organize society, that proved you were a racist. That proved you were a fascist. That proved you were a homophobe. It was the fundamental bad faith of the leading liberal institutions that controlled the commanding heights of this culture that infuriated him. And he refused, at the most basic level, to give them that authority over him or his ideas....


Seems like Andrew learned one of he great lessons of Atlas Shrugged, about not accepting the moral code of those who use it to oppress them:

The sanction of the victim is the willingness of the victim to accept the moral terms under which he or she is accused. This willingness allows the oppressor to coerce the victim through guilt and obligation. Rational people will withhold their sanction when they do not accept the premise under which they are victimized. If their own moral code is not the code of their oppressors, they are not obligated to participate under the oppressors’ terms or to validate the oppressors’ position by accepting it as rational...

Of course, the actors of Rand's novels had one way of fighting back. Breitbart had his own inimical style. Matt Labash tells the tale:

Breitbart once asked me to teach him to fish as a much-needed de-stresser, then thought better of it, “since every time I see a tree, I just want to kick its ass.”

I miss him already...