Righteous Indignation - Hating Breitbart

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to escape the humdrum life of a domestic engineer and part-time book cover and website designer, in order to sit down and see “Hating Breitbart”. Despite calling myself a conservative and a member of the Dallas Tea Party, I’m not terribly active.  My “Don’t Tread On Me Flag” has been careful stowed away and while I speak up on the forums or Facebook, I’m not one for marches and rallies.  Being the stay-at-home dad of four children, only one of which is old enough to take care of herself, I don’t have much opportunity to get out there and agitate for change.  Mostly I sit behind a computer, read opinion pieces, and try to comprehend the facts behind the news reported by the main stream media.  Even more astonishing, I’m not a regular visitor to Breitbart.com, or any of the other websites that Andrew Breitbart established as part of his “war” against the left.

But I will be soon.

“Hating Breitbart” is the biographical documentary that chronicles the major stories Andrew Breitbart broke to America and the passion, force, and courage he displayed while doing so.  You’re probably familiar with most if not all of them.  First were James O’Keefe’s videos of Acorn employees helping a “pimp” to evade taxes and set up an underage brothel.  Later, Breitbart defended the Tea Party, accused by Andre Carson and John Lewis, two members of Congress, of shouting the “n” word at a rally in what eventually proved to be a manufactured lie to discredit the Tea Party.  Later Breitbart came under fire for his video of Shirley Sherrod, even though his original story and point were ignored by the media in order to denigrate and marginalize him. It was Breitbart who broke the story of Democrat Anthony Weiner’s online sexual conduct, so unbecoming of a US Congressman.  And so the name Andrew Breitbart should be familiar to almost anyone who watches the news.  The left revile him; the right place him upon a pedestal.

In general, I’m not a fan of “preaching to the choir” stories, and I’m about as hard-core conservative as they come.  I was expressing “tea party” views long before Barack Obama became president, even if we weren’t calling it that.  But the movie “Hating Breitbart” showed a man who went far beyond the arm-chair opposition that so many of us engage in.  We’ve been called the “silent majority,” but Breitbart was anything but silent.  He was an agitator.  He wasn’t content to merely roll his eyes at the liberal falsehoods that so perpetrate the news media and the Democratic Party.  He didn’t tune them out, turn on Fox News and hope for the best.  He went after them, exposing them, confronting them, his own honor and courage, the very moral fortitude of “righteous indignation” giving him a strength and power that not many of us possess.  Breitbart not only understood how the left worked, but how they thought.  He understood the strategies and villainy that so pervades the new Democratic Party – the party that millions of decent Democratic Americans have no idea has been hijacked by socialists and far left ideologues.  And what did Breitbart do about it?  Everything he could.

I came out of “Hating Breitbart” with just two things on my mind.  The first was that the conservative movement lost one of the great generals of our cause when Andrew Breitbart died on March 1^st, 2012.  His impetus, his forceful personality, his ability to confront the lies, totally unconcerned about what the left leaning press would do to his name, or how he would be vilified, standing in front of God and everyone, shouting at the top of his lungs, the very truth that he knew, is something to not only marvel at, but emulate.  In one of his speeches, he speaks of a new network – one created by us.  The New Media he called it.  And he challenged us to go out, video tape, ask questions, object, promote, and stand up for what we believe in with righteous indignation.

The second thing that crossed my mind when I left the theatre is that I can no longer sit behind my desk, typing away, and expect things to change.  We need more men and women like Andrew Breitbart. We need people who are willing to get up, to agitate, to stand for their beliefs. His legacy shouldn’t merely be a Wikipedia page, a few websites that serve the conservative cause, and the horrible commentary of the liberal left.  It should be us, filled with righteous indignation, stepping up in his place, ready to take on the left, their allies in the main stream media, and the Democratic Party itself.

If you haven’t seen “Hating Breitbart” yet, you need to go see it.  I suspect that it will move you as much as it moved me.  And if you happen to see a fortyish, balding, slightly overweight guy, wearing an American Flag shirt, with two little girls and a bouncing baby boy, all waving flags at the next rally, come on over and say “hi.”

Because that will be me.