Andrew Breitbart Dead at 43

The Breitbart legacy will not be defined by his beliefs. It will be defined by the spitefulness of his tactics and by his willingness to inflict tangible, lasting damage on the lives of the innocent in his lust for influence and power.

ACORN was an organization with a rich history of helping the people at the very bottom of our socio-economic food chain. These were people with no money, no resources, no influence, no power, and damned few friends. Andrew Breitbart and his henchmen kicked the chair out from under them, like so many affluent suburban punks wilding through downtown late on a Saturday night looking for a homeless drunk to beat up.

It is obvious enough to say that there are good people and bad people in the world. There are those whose lives are devoted to improving the human condition, to leaving their corner of the world a little better place than they found it. Likewise, there are those whose only care is for themselves, men and women who find nothing wrong with trampling others to get to the top.

It is the difference between self-interest and what de Tocqueville called ?self-interest, rightly understood,? which was the quality that he thought set the young America apart and made it great. Sadly, there are also those who seem to take self-satisfied glee in the misfortune of others. Ayn Rand, the patron saint of the sociopathic modern right and the role model for a generation of Breitbarts, was just such a case.

I hate grave-dancing. I?ve always felt that our human potential was somehow diminished when we found satisfaction in the death of another, even if that person was a bin Laden or a Saddam Hussein or a Stalin or a Hitler or a Pol Pot. Perhaps it?s because, growing up Southern Baptist, I was taught that there was always hope for a soul, no matter how evil it was, but once death arrives there?s nothing left but an eternity of torment for someone who could, perhaps, have been saved.

I don?t believe any of that anymore, but I still avoid celebrating the deaths of even our worst fellow humans if I can. And no, I don?t think Andrew Breitbart was as bad as any of those I mention above (even as I?m aware that he and his people, were they to decide that I needed to be destroyed, would have no compunction about decontextualizing, re-editing and generally cheating my words to make it appear that I did).

No, it?s much simpler than that, as simple as the objective fact of this morning?s news. Andrew Breitbart is dead, and there?s one less noise merchant, one less liar, one less empathy-challenged activist willing to stomp the last hope of the poor.

Some people are saying that the world is a better place because of it, but the truth is that the world is a worse place today because, for these past few years, all of Andrew Breitbart?s considerable energy and talent was harnessed to the task of harming instead of helping.

We must do better.