Andrew Breitbart, 1969- [Truman North]

I don’t have a personal anecdote to share about Andrew. I only admired him from the flickering half-light at the edge of the campfire of conservative new media; a campfire built by Andrew and a very few giants like him.

What I learned from Andrew is that there are cultural issues (not necessarily any particular social issues) that are inseparable from fiscal issues. He showed me that the ruling class has attempted make itself indispensable to greater and greater numbers, in order to ensure its perpetuity, by incrementally re-making and re-defining culture. This re-definition of our culture is done through a gay little marriage between low expectations, lack of personal accountability, and the government-supplied safety net which makes it possible for people to live well even while making poor decisions.

I see his broadsides against the left and the elite media fundamentally as attacks at their cultural foundations. I saw he had the strength and humility to strike them with kindness and good humor, without succumbing to the mincing equivocation of most modern men. He understood not only that they were wrong, but that nothing we could do would staunch the tide of their long march if he agreed with their unspoken premise: That it was solely the liberal elites who would define what which is good and legitimate. Unlike a whole generation of our conservative leaders, he refused to accept their premise. And he showed me that it is okay, that is essential, that we must reject their judgment, too, if we are to win the war for our Republic.

What I’m taking away from Andrew’s life is that his was not a lone strike against the titanic edifice of the government-media tyranny, but rather an example for the rest of us to follow in striking against that faceless, uncaring titan. For if it is Legion, then we must be myriad.

I don't have the media savvy or charisma of Andrew. What I have is a decent grasp of history and a fist full of jokes about the human anus. While both of these will doubtless be vital assets in our war for the Republic, the following effort will rely on the former and not the latter.

The following is largely stuff you already know but I’m going to lay it out again in simple terms. Use it as a blueprint to explain to your liberal, unaffiliated or uninterested friends just why it is important for us to change our culture in order to change our Republic’s fate.

The cause of our huge deficit can be explained in terms of efficiently-functioning markets: Markets of morality as much as of economy.

People like things. Politicians have figured out how to sell things to people in exchange for their votes. Politicians like votes. By trading votes for things, both the constituents and politicians benefit.

But where do the politicians get the things they sell? The government is a unique entity because it has a monopoly on the authority to use deadly force. Therefore, politicians can simply make laws that take things away from people who create them—other Americans.

In the beginning, this was difficult, since there were prohibitions against bills of attainder (essentially, taxes on specific groups or specific individuals) or levying income taxes. But when Progressives succeeded in eviscerating the Constitution in any number of ways, through a combination of subterfuge, brute-force judicial activism and ignorance of the populace, these old checks on government power had been abolished.

Therefore, politicians then for many decades, have simply taken by force the created wealth of a minority of people and gave it to a majority in exchange for the votes of the latter. Everybody wins, except for the productive citizenry.
At times of national crisis and particularly during World War II, the US began running significant federal deficits. At first, these deficits were financed largely through debt offerings to the public, and largely held by Americans.

But over time, and particularly starting in the 1970s, debt spiraled out of control. While there were indeed crises caused by feckless foreign policy under Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, and the cost of winning the Cold War under Reagan, much of the public debt was sold abroad and used to finance the welfare state which politicians counted on to buy the votes of their constituencies.

You may ask: why issue debt that constituents would eventually have to pay back? The answer is this: It is easier to demand wealth from future generations, who have neither franchise nor voice in the present, than it is from citizens who exist now and could, ostensibly, work against those demanding the extracted wealth. Working as we do against government expansion for the sake of those future generations, our position is a fundamentally moral and righteous one.

For many reasons, it took almost 40 years for the passions of the wealth creators and the mothers to future Americans to match the cunning of the wealth-transferring class of politicians. The TEA movement has been born. Its vilification by elites of both parties and the media hints at the threat it is to the power of politicians who self-perpetuate by means of transferring wealth—from those who are creating it now, and from those who are yet to be born—to a growing class of dependents. This dependent class grows still and will continue to grow, regardless of who is in the White House, unless we become an army of Andrews to a greater degree than we have thus far been.

This was one aspect of Andrew’s genius: he saw what we see, but he knew where to attack it in order to do the most damage. And he taught us how to replicate his attacks. Teaching, that’s what gave him the energy to do what he did: it was his quest to show us how to beat back Leviathan. It’s why we know that when we attack the elite institutions which have all but guaranteed our nation’s demise, we do so with confidence, from the shoulders of a giant.

While his mortal shell has expired, you can't kill the Big Idea that Andrew taught us, not really. You can only allow it to die, by doing nothing.

posted by Open Blogger at 01:00 PM

| Access Comments