Article VI Blog

None of us here knew Andrew Breitbart beyond his work product.  I know it was my intention to sit the sidelines of this mourning period out of a lack of anything to contribute and respect for those that had lost a friend – they are the ones that need to mourn.  But in his newsletter, The Morning Jolt, this morning Jim Geraghty reacted to much of the left’s reaction to the news and it is just too pertinent to this blog to pass up.  I hope Mr. Geraghty will forgive this extensive quotation:

You probably heard Matt Yglesias’s first response on Twitter: “Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.”

I don’t usually suggest physical violence toward others. That’s certainly not the way I want to see myself or the kind of example I want to set for my sons. But, if you’re going to say things like that — just an hour after word arrives that a man suddenly died, leaving his wife a widow and his children fatherless — I don’t think you should be terribly shocked that some folks will want to register their disapproval over the bridge of your nose. And you’ll have it coming.

Really, holding one’s tongue, offering even disingenuous expressions of sympathy, typing the letters “RIP,” when did that get so hard? When did that bar become too high? We have these cultural traditions for a reason. (A quite conservative sentiment, I suppose.) We have them for many reasons, high among them, avoiding mourners’ registering their objections across the noses of the snide and obnoxious. (It’s one of the reasons I strongly suspect that if some grieving parent were to machine-gun a whole flock of the Fred Phelps funeral protesters, every witness would suddenly get struck blind and every jury would remain stubbornly unconvinced.) We shouldn’t suggest that mocking the dead in front of those mourning a loved one is an invitation to violent retribution; the American people are a kind and patient people. But even the most kind and patient people have their limits.

I had observed, yesterday, that there were not merely a handful of folks on the left sneering about how happy they were that Breitbart had suddenly died. There were gobs and gobs of them, all over Twitter and the web at large. If you need examples, Charlie Spiering collected plenty here, though I’d urge most of sound mind to avoid putting themselves through reading that.

You can call this whatever you like — the Daily-Kos-ification of the Left, perhaps — but it confirms what many of us suspected and/or feared. I didn’t want to believe it, really. I personally know too many people I’d identify as Democrats, if not liberals, who are too decent to ever express such raw hate and cruelty. But a large chunk of the rank and file of the Left — way more than a small percentage — really don’t believe that their opponents deserve anything resembling basic human dignity or respect.

We’re not really people to them. It’s not an accident that New York Times columnist referred to his critics on Twitter as “right-wing lice.” They’re not good, decent Americans who just have some different ideas about how to make the world a better place. They run on hate. It appears their entire sense of self-worth is driven by demonizing those who disagree with them and celebrating their political viewpoints as the cardinal measurements of virtue and good character. They are positively energized by the thought of lashing out at those of us who have the audacity to think differently than they. They really do project and accuse the opposition of all their worst traits: rage, closed-mindedness, cruelty, intolerance, bigotry, and an inability to empathize with others. And they completely lack self-awareness. They are blind to the irony of their actions. As someone said on Twitter today (I can’t find the comment now), “How many of the people celebrating Andrew’s death have a ‘NO H8′ icon on their avatar?”

If, in their minds, we’re not deserving of that respect they clamor for endlessly — if their instinct, upon seeing us mourn is to “get in our faces” (a phrase that our president once strangely used) — they really cannot be entrusted with any power. They really would do away with us if given the chance.

Most of us of faith hold our faith as preciously as we hold the lives of our friends.  It is not just something we think, it is a part of the fabric of our deepest being.  The left finds Andrew Breitbart wrong, but decency towards those that survive him mandates a certain decorum, as Geraghty so rightly points out.

Well whether from the left or the right, if you find someone’s faith wrong, they deserve that same level of decorum.  When we have seen Twitter feed in the wake of last Tuesday’s results as snarky as Lowell documented Wednesday, then you know such decorum is not being accorded.  (Twitter as a medium is becoming deeply concerning to me – snark is easy in a sentence, respect and decency not so much – but that is a subject for a different time.)

Set aside for a minute political strategy, constitutional provisions, theology and just think about human decency.  Geragthy closes his news letter with this:

As Thursday wore down, several conservatives remarked that they felt more unified than they had in a while; our mutual shock, grief, and admiration for Andrew reminded us all how much we share with each other — after a primary season in which it has often felt as if we’ve all been at each other’s throats.

I hope that’s true!  Those of us of faith have that faith to mold us into people for whom human dignity is a foremost concern.  It is not just a hope, but a prayer that one of the goods that comes from the tragedy of Andrew Breitbart’s demise is that our side, at least, brings simply human dignity to the forefront.  It’ll be the best thing that could happen to this nation.

POSTSCRIPT: Right after I hit “post,” I read Peggy Noonan this morning:

I had criticized Andrew last year in a column. A few weeks ago we bumped into each other at an airport, arranged to sit together on the plane, spoke our peace, hashed it through, and wound up laughing. He was endearing because he was exposed: If he felt it, he told you.

Afterward I thought again of something that has been on my mind the past five years or so. Longer, actually, but more so with time. In a way the argument between conservatives and progressives is that for the left, everything is about politics. Because they seek to harness government and the law in pursuit of what they see as just and desirable ends, everything becomes a political fight. Conservatives fought that narrow, constricted, soulless view of life: “We are not only political, we have other spheres, we are human beings.” But in their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time. Friendships were based on it, friendships were lost over it. “You agree with me? You’re in. You don’t? You’re out.” They became as good at ousting, excluding and anathematizing as Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, as Jacobins. As self-righteous, too, and as adept at dehumanizing the enemy.

It is not progress when you become what you hate, when you take on its sickest aspect.

Andrew and I talked about this that day on the plane. I agreed with his passion: We’re in a big struggle, we have to fight. His argument was in a way like Flannery O’Connor’s: You have to push back hard against the age that is pushing you. But he agreed too that politics can leave you twisted and deformed inside, that fighting those who would impose their will can leave you as consumed as they are. You have to be careful and not let political struggles take over your life, your affections—your soul.

We were not built to be all about politics. Empires rise and fall, nations come and go, but the man who poured your coffee this morning is eternal, because his soul is eternal. That’s C.S. Lewis. I don’t know if Andrew was a religious person or a believer, but I know he respected faith, understood it, felt protective of it. For which good on you, Andrew, and thanks. Rest in peace.

Important lessons from both Noonan and Geraghty.  Listen to Hugh Hewitt’s last two interviews with Breitbart.  Breitbart described himself as an agnostic coming to God.  If these are the lessons of his death, then in my opinion he did exactly what he said he wanted to do – “bat clean-up for God.”

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, News Media Bias | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Recently Posted:

• For A Subject That Is “Off-Limits”…
• I blame Mitt Romney
• The Media Double Standard and The Incredible Chutzpah of The Obama Administration
• The Return of Wright
• More Religious Values That Matter – Right and Wrong Turns