The shortcomings of Sean Hannity as a cable news host and interviewer are widely known, yet he deserves some credit for interviewing Dennis Michael Lynch, despite his network’s seeming embargo of any information critical of its CEO’s dogmatic open borders agenda, on the day America celebrated its independence from its colonial master, Great Britain. You can view part of this interview, and read a rush transcript, on the FNC website.

I urge you to pay particular attention to the discussion of the well-organized campaign by Soros-bankrolled, La Raza affiliates like Casa de Maryland to impute racism to the dissent expressed by patriotic American citizens. This tactic will be employed with increasing frequency as the cheap labor lobby and its allies redouble their efforts to push the Gang of Eight monstrosity over the finish line in the House of Representatives. Kudos to Sean Hannity for bringing this issue to the attention of a national audience, however belatedly.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of  a trend.

Remember 1986-an exceptional organization created to prevent history from repeating itself-is holding a nationwide press event this coming Tuesday! The public event in Arizona-the state whose courageous example inspired the creation of American Rattlesnake-is merely one of many being held around the country  to echo the sentiments of millions of Americans who refuse to accept the imposition of another legislative amnesty by an unaccountable Congress and White House.

Florida will be holding a funeral for the American worker, a species that is nearing extinction because of the avarice and solipsism of our elected officials; Americans will find it even more difficult to find  gainful employment once the Gang of Eight’s scheme is enacted into law. Despite the purposefully anodyne name, this is a potentially ruinous piece of legislation which will not only naturalize-as well as enfranchise-between 15 and 20 million illegal aliens, but also allow tens of millions more legal immigrants into the United States in the coming decades, despite overwhelming opposition to this policy by the American public.

When in doubt, shout ‘RACIST!’ The open borders lynch mob continues its uniformed, malicious smear of Jason Richwine, occasionally taking time to engage in subsidiary slanders against other scholars, such as Charles Murray, even after its campaign of defamation succeeded in forcing his resignation from the Heritage foundation. You can now read his  PhD thesis, instead of  relying upon the testimony of envenomed, doltish public relations hacks and ethnic spokespeople who long for the Bush Restoration. For those who can’t spare the time, I urge you to read Michelle Malkin’s spirited defense of someone who’s learned the danger of acting out the leftist nostrum and speaking truth to power.

Rush’s take is also worth reading, notwithstanding the unjustified-in my estimation-criticism leveled against him from some quarters. Finally, J. Christian Adams takes Potemkin conservatives to task for their eagerness to engage in racialized vilification-long thought to be the sole province of the left-in the cause of political opportunism. Put simply, our enemies are afraid. Their coalition is dissipating, both in Silicon Valley and among those who owe their election to the successful exploitation of race. Don’t let diversionary tactics about hate facts distract us from our chief goal, i.e. killing the bill!

President Obama has spent the past week trolling for votes among undocumented Democrats, purportedly as a way of strengthening historic ties between the United States and its neighbor to the south, which-as we’ve pointed out in the past-have always been a little tetchy. While the irony of issuing paeans to Mexico as a patriotic, John Phillips Sousa march plays him out is lost on Obama, some of us took note.

Of course, no Obama itinerary would be complete without some brazen dissembling about who is chiefly responsible for the wave of narco-terrorism sweeping that country. Hint: It has nothing to do with Barack Obama’s patently illegal, reckless gun-trafficking operation. Although many observers stateside have become inured to these lies, one wonders how the thousands of relatives of Mexican casualties feel about our President’s indifference to admitting culpability in this tragedy. Something tells me they’re not elated at his visit, despite the apologia included in the Los Angeles Times’s obsequious coverage.

So, instead of reflecting upon an historically marginal battle that’s insignificant to most people outside of the  state of Puebla, or imploring Congress to ratify and expand upon Barack Obama’s unconstitutional series of administrative amnesties, I say we join in appreciation of a great moment in American history. Namely, the day that Alan Shepard became the first American-and only the second person-to travel into space. In addition to watching the fantastic video above, I highly recommend reading a fascinating essay from The Atlantic which explores the way in which history and myth-making intersect, often in misleading ways. It’ll be a nice departure from how people traditionally celebrate this holiday.

With a little under a month remaining until Election Day, the Obama campaign has transitioned into full-blown hispandering mode. This week’s symbolically potent, yet empty, exercise in  gestural politics entailed President Obama designating the home of former California labor leader Cesar Chavez a national monument. The ostensible purpose of this decision is to rally support among one of his party’s most reliable voting blocs, i.e. Hispanic Americans. Because even though they still decisively support the President’s reelection, that support does not always translate into votes, as other analysts have trenchantly observed.

What makes Obama’s trip to California so fascinating though is not the seemingly transparent play for votes among an ethno-linguistic group already inclined to vote for his reelection, but the figure he chooses to honor in pursuit of this goal. It should be remembered that as head of the United Farm Workers, Cesar Chavez was militant in his efforts to increase the wage scale of California’s poorly-paid and exploited agricultural workers. And despite the fact that his legacy has been appropriated by radical open borders socialist Dolores Huerta-a co-founder of the UFW-Chavez was most militant in his actions against illegal aliens and the guest-workers from Mexico large growers relied upon in order to depress wages.

While today he is looked upon simply as a totemic figure for the left, to be utilized for whatever cause du jour-including comprehensive immigration reform-requires his unique biography, Cesar-or, as our President prefers to call him, (SEE-ZER)-Chavez began his labor activism in response to the federal government’s bracero program. His opinion regarding mass immigration-at least with regard to the agricultural sector-was the polar opposite of the contemporary Democratic Party. His views on illegal immigration were identical to that of today’s Minutemen, and expressed in a much more militant manner, it should be noted.

One of the chief reasons that farmworkers in California achieved parity with skilled workers in the manufacturing sector was precisely because of Chavez’s political efforts at restricting the inflow of unskilled, foreign workers to the state. Unsurprisingly, the steep decline in wages for this same cohort of workers-and the one that’s followed-tracked with the opening of our borders, including successive amnesties and manipulation of existing work visa programs by large agri-businesses. Agricultural concerns which still don’t believe there are enough foreign-born farmworkers in this country, despite the evidence that mechanization and innovation has actually improved farming techniques in the state of California.

You would learn none of this, however, if you relied upon the dominant media narrative for information about Cesar Chavez’s career, or gathered a fragmentary picture of  his life from vacuous, politically expedient gestures like this new national monument, or the christening of a warship in his name. However, my point isn’t that the mainstream media selectively omits certain facts and/or opinions when it suits their political purposes-which is something most of you already know-or that leftist, open borders advocates are willing to hijack the legacy of an iconic figure in order to see their ideological beliefs into law.

I raise this issue because it speaks to a gaping hole in this nation’s historical memory. The fact that craven politicians-of every stripe-will lie with impunity in order to advance their agendas is nothing new. However, the notion that they can so easily manipulate the public in an age where access to information is quite literally at the fingertips of each and every American, should be profoundly disturbing to anyone who values our republican form of government.

If the philosophy of such an historic figure-who was alive less than two decades ago-can be willfully distorted-despite the abundance of evidence clearly establishing his views on this subject-in pursuit of a tendentious agenda, then what hope is there for engaging in an honest, open debate during this most contentious of presidential elections? If the American public is not able to differentiate fact from fiction, then what hope is there that it will make an informed decision as our country casts its ballots this November? As the great Spanish philosopher, poet, and novelist George Santayana once wrote, those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.

Most of you are probably aware of Univision’s groundbreaking investigation of Fast and Furious, which aired last night. For those of you fluent in Espanol, you can watch the first part here. There’s also a Spanish-language interview of Univision’s two investigative reporters by Jorge Ramos, which focuses on the bloody history of Eric Holder’s anti-anti-gun trafficking initiative and includes a brief excerpt from an interview with the late Agent Jaime Zapata’s grieving parents.

You can read an English-language transcript of  a somewhat disjointed interview Gerardo Reyes conducted with Hugh Crumpler, an FBI informant currently behind bars, about Operation Castaway, which we’ve explored in the past. You can also listen to a brief sound file of Crumpler describing how he first involved himself with the ATF. Finally, you can read more details of the report and its potential consequences, in English, from Hot Air.

You can find out how to participate by accessing this link. Mr. Webb’s rationale for holding this rally is explained after the jump.

This is MY country … I built it

This rally is for several reasons.

Chiefly, we are tired of political correctness. We are tired of our primary industry, oil and gas, being maligned and lied about.

When President Barack Obama echoed Elizabeth Warren by saying “you didn’t build that” it touched a nerve.

Date: Saturday September 29th, 11am-1pm at the Commemorative Air Force Museum. Click for map and directions.

Speakers:

Ted Cruz   TX – US Senate Candidate

David Webb   SiriusXM Patriot Talk Show Host, Television Commentator

Peggy Venable   TX Director-Americans For Prosperity

Tim Macy   Gun Owners of America

In a season of political posturing, regular Americans in west Texas have decided that the greatness of America has been overlooked. The rally will remind attendees of what we all love about America and how there is hope for America’s future because of its great people and its commitment to Liberty.

Those of us living here do so because we’ve built this area. Not the government. We are yearning for the return of celebrating rugged individualism. We are yearning for a demonstration of pride in our country, patriotism, and a celebration of success. Our individual sacrifices and sweat over two centuries built this beacon of freedom to the world.

We believe in our constitution, and our Judeo-Christian values.

We are having a pro-America rally that embraces all of the above.

This is MY country… I built it, not a collection of behemoth government bureaucracies and programs. We will remind other Americans that it is great individuals that make a great America.

I’ll delve more deeply into President Obama’s Unemployment For Americans Act in future updates, but today I’d like to highlight a speech made by the intrepid Michelle Malkin at this weekend’s Right Online conference. It’s particularly apt in light of the President’s continued policy of lashing out at dissenters-not a new phenomenon, unfortunately-such as the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro.

Find more videos of Right Online at The Right Scoop.

This month’s Rattle brings us a host of stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover sufficiently-preferring instead to shower accolades upon the man responsible for abandoning immigration enforcement in the name of political opportunism. We’ll cover everything from the latest spate of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens to Barack Obama’s continued roll out of administrative amnesty, which now includes directives to ignore both interior enforcement and border security.

But first, we’ll examine this administration’s ongoing obstruction of Congress’s investigation into the ever-broadening gun-walking scandals. Courtesy of Sipsey Street Irregulars-whose coverage of Fast and Furious is non pareil-we learn that the White House is blocking testimony from Kevin O’Reilly, a former staff member of the National Security Council who wants to speak with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This administration’s invocation of executive privilege is just the latest example of obstruction of justice  relating to Fast and Furious.

It should be recalled that last July the acting head of the ATF told Congress that his agency was paying FBI agents to ignore the law in pursuit of this administration’s bizarre and opaque political goals. Immigration control, not gun control, is a solution that Barack Obama’s Justice Department dismisses out of hand. We can only hope that, as Katie Pavlich reports in Town Hall, Chairman Darrell Issa pursues this investigation to its conclusion, which hopefully will result in a more than a few stiff prison sentences. Speaking of Katie Pavlich, she has a fantastic new book about Fast and Furious entitled-appropriately-Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal, which I urge you all to read.

Obfuscation and evasion are hallmarks of this administration, especially as it pertains to immigration and border security, as an insightful commentary from Michael Cutler published by Fox News Latino illustrates. The former INS agent and current immigration watchdog points out that Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security is effectively “cooking the books” by relying solely upon  documented arrests-a misleading statistic-in order to pretend that this administration is cracking down upon illegal entry into the United States. FAIR’s Legislative Update further dissects this policy, which is drawing increasing scrutiny from Congress-particularly Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz- notwithstanding what Tom Tancredo accurately describes as a bipartisan conspiracy to hobble border security and immigration enforcement. By not logging and tracking the number of illegal border crossers who were not detained, Customs and Border Protection is painting a rosy picture of a much more dire situation.

The deceit of this administration extends beyond the CBP and encompasses virtually every aspect of immigration enforcement, both at the border and inside of the United States. Even though ICE is touting the Cross Check raids it initiated earlier this month-intended to apprehend ostensibly violent criminals, absconders and  fugitives from justice-this is merely a political expedient designed for election year consumption. The truth is that Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty proceeds apace, with four cities ordered to halt deportations, according to the Dan Stein Report. Remarkably, the Executive Office for Immigration Review has closed San Francisco’s immigration court and plans to completely halt its proceedings for the entire summer. Jim Kouri reports on yet another component of Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty, the decision to suspend deportations of illegal aliens with “families,” inside of the United States.

And while illegal aliens are not being deported, they will be able to enjoy state-of-the-art detention facilities, including some new amenities such as beach volleyball and cable TV. Lamar Smith excoriates this administration for its skewed priorities in a must-read op-ed published in The Hill. Although this new detention manual  might seem farcical, it’s far from a laughing matter. As Jim Kouri points out in his Examiner column, the Department of Homeland Security has taken virtually no action against foreigners who overstay their visas. This negligence persists over a decade after the September 11th massacres, which were committed by a cadre of jihadists whose visa applications are symptomatic of our country’s dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy. This is not merely an hypothetical problem, even after the destruction of the World Trade Center, as the case of illegal alien Amine El Khalifi demonstrates. The fact that this indifference to the lives of American citizens continues unabated, despite repeated pressure exerted by the GAO serves to illustrate this administration’s fundamental lack of accountability.

Even as it lags behind in locating and detaining criminal aliens, the administration of Barack Obama has deigned to grant Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrians living in the United States. As we’ve pointed out in the past, Temporary Protected Status is anything but temporary. In fact, it is merely another expedient used to grant de facto amnesty to a group of illegal aliens who can prove “hardship” circumstances, most of which persist indefinitely-making their stay in the United States permanent. This is even more disturbing when juxtaposed against the State Department’s recent decision to bar inspection of a visiting Egyptian delegation consisting of Muslim Brotherhood officials. Of course, Egypt isn’t the only country where the Ikwhan has a strong foothold.

The problem is that Barack Obama’s ostensible opposition, i.e. congressional Republicans, are doing virtually nothing to investigate the egregious overreach of his administration on immigration matters. Quite the contrary, some are hard at work developing proposals that would only worsen the situation, such as DREAM Lite, in hopes of  cultivating the ever-elusive Hispanic vote. Republican leaders in the states are not faring much better in this regard, as the difficult struggle in New Hampshire to prevent illegal aliens from capitalizing upon in-state tuition benefits demonstrates.

In an update to a story that we’ve covered recently, the North Carolina General Assembly held another hearing on illegal immigration and potential enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, according to NC Listen, it was dominated by illegal aliens and their supporters in the legislature, including some of the very people who had disrupted a previous hearing about these problems. Heading further south, we learn that the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act has been killed in the Mississippi State Senate. Apparently, Judiciary Chairman Hob Bryan has caved knuckled under to the Mississippi Poultry Association and its desire for cheap labor, notwithstanding the harm such a decision may inflict on innocent Mississippians. Its neighbor to the East, Alabama, has revisited HB 56, the landmark legislation that targeted illegal aliens living in that state. Rep. Micky Hammon has decided to alter some of the provisions that have been enjoined by a federal court, but maintains that he and his fellow Republicans will not repeal the law, which is welcome news.

In not so good news, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has decided to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement and refuse detainer requests for criminal aliens housed in her county’s jails. Saul Chavez is one beneficiary of Preckwinkle’s benevolence, having fled the country upon being released from jail after killing William McCann. The carnage our government’s policies wreak is not limited to the odd vehicular manslaughter though, as the massacre at Oikos University in California makes clear to any impartial observer. Limits to Growth has an insightful story about mass-murderer One L. Goh which explains the circumstances surrounding his rampage which the main stream media willfully ignores. Oikos was apparently more concerned with harvesting tuition payments by foreign students-often with loans backed by American taxpayers-than ensuring the safety of its student body. It brings to mind  9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose entrance to the United States was facilitated by a campus administration eager to recruit students from the Middle East, heedless of the potentially deadly repercussions.

The fact that there are visa mills exploiting the F-1 Visa program should come as no surprise to people who are aware of the extensive fraud and exploitation present in the legal immigration system. Just as in Canada-which recently charged attorney Sandra Zaher with inventing false refugee claims-the United States is plagued by immigration fraud so pervasive that the conviction of Earl Seth David, aka Rabbi Avraham David, head of a New York law firm, headlines an ICE press release. The irony of an agency headed by John Morton-who’s tasked with expediting illegal immigration-spotlighting the conviction of someone for immigration fraud is apparently lost on this administration.

In another prime example of abuse, a lawsuit by two former employees of Larsen & Toubro InfoTech Limited Inc alleges systemic fraud at the India-based IT firm for which they once worked. Joining an earlier class action filed against the firm, this suit asserts that the plaintiff was forced to not only forge documents related to H-1B visas-a program rampant with corruption and fraud-but told not to report the crime to outside authorities. Read the sickening story for yourself, if you feel you have the requisite stomach. The baffling purposes of the H1-B visa program weren’t illuminated by a recent decision by Judge Gregory Frost, who ordered suppressed almost all information related to the case of  Geza Rakoczi, who is described thusly,

…a young alien man with a mysterious legal status, probably an illegal alien, who has a bachelor’s degree from a marginal educational institution, a private one that accepts all applicants, and his employer, a mortgage finance company in trouble in two different states.

Putting the lie to the idea that these visas are reserved for “highly-skilled” immigrants. More often than not they are merely convenient bodies used to replace the more demanding, highly-compensated Americans who they’ve made redundant. If you don’t believe me, just ask the wife of unemployed semiconducter engineer Darin Wedel, who is still waiting to hear back from President Obama. But do not fear, the virtual border fence is back on track,which I suppose is small comfort to the thousands of hard-working Americans like Mr. Wedel.  However, India is not the only nation to take advantage of the nebulous, easily exploitable H1-B visa program. As Phyllis Schlafly  points out, the Islamist Gulen movement in Turkey has used these same visas in order to indoctrinate Muslim students in American charter schools. The dangers posed by the Gulen movement have been explored ad nauseam in other forums, but it should be noted that even if you ascribe the most benign of intentions to the Gullenists, the idea that fundamentalist Muslim teachers are somehow highly skilled workers is implausible on its face.  Focusing on yet another rising Asian power, the New American has an interesting story about the PRC’s use of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program in the state of Idaho which is well worth reading.

Returning to more timely issues, we discovered this past week that it’s not all that difficult to register to vote using a fabricated identity, or even assuming the persona of the current Attorney General  of the United States. Thanks to James O’Keefe we’ve discovered how simple it is to game the system, although officials at the increasingly misnamed Justice Department don’t seem to agree. Of course, acknowledging that vote fraud exists would require the Obama administration to prosecute those responsible for it, which wouldn’t bode well for the electoral prospects of Barack Obama’s party. From New York to Florida, from Indiana to Arizona, stealing elections has become quite commonplace, even as the White House-and its complaisant cronies in the media-scoff at the notion. Some Democrats, though, readily admit that trying to manipulate the outcome of elections is a routine practice, and a few even have the integrity to support measures that would rectify this betrayal of democracy.

In an ironic twist, labor unions-which were some of the most vehement supporters of President Obama’s Stimulus plan-are now complaining about some of the jobs stemming from stimulus projects going to Korean workers. I suppose the lesson is to be careful what you wish for, especially if it is over 700 billion dollars worth of taxpayer-financed boondoggles.

In more border violence, two illegal immigrants were murdered just northwest of Tucson on Thursday by two camouflaged gunman, echoing an attack that occurred  near the same city in 2007. This sort of bloodshed is rare but not unheard of in Arizona, especially in the Tucson sector, where over forty percent of this nation’s  illegal aliens come through. It is yet another reason why the constitutionality of SB 1070 must be upheld by the Supreme Court, in spite of the hostility of open borders dogmatists such as the misleadingly named Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Our final story is related to our relationship to the state as individuals, and how that relationship is changing as a result of our government’s decades-long recalibration of this country’s demographics. Courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center, we now know that over seventy percent of Latinos want the government to provide more services to Americans, not less. Limits to Growth has a fascinating summary of the survey’s other findings, which include a belief among Hispanics that they should learn English in order to succeed in the United States, but not in order to integrate into the broader society. The findings about faith in government are worth exploring though, because they reinforce something that our side has been saying for a very long time. Namely, that Hispanic voters’ support for Democrats and generally left wing political candidates has very little to do with the GOP’s position on immigration, but a lot to do with their endorsement of redistributive economic policies.

The findings of the Pew Hispanic Center demonstrate that the cause and effect most often cited in declining Republican Party affiliation among Hispanics-embodied by the specious narrative about Pete Wilson and the waning fortunes of the California GOP-is reversed. Hispanics do not support the Democratic Party because it advocates open borders, the Democratic Party supports open borders because it enhances its ability to win future elections. In effect, what is happening is that the political elite is electing a new people. This dynamic needs to be remembered whenever we hear mealy-mouthed Republicans exhorting us to abandon any attempt to impose reason upon an anachronistic immigration system that is designed to thwart the wishes of the vast majority of the American public.

It’s going to be a long, tumultuous election year.

Update: Our friend Anthony Bialy also had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Breitbart during his cross-country tour for Righteous Indignation. Read his account of Monday’s tribute at Conservative Commune.

Thanks, Karol! 

Monday night I had the honor of attending a tribute to the late Andrew Breitbart held in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the evening, but what happened is something that can’t quite be put into words, although I’ll try my best. Over the course of three hours, over a hundred people filtered into a cramped, slightly raucous Manhattan bar that-as one of my friends remarked at the time-Andrew himself might have enjoyed. After all,  he spent more than a few pages of Righteous Indignation cataloguing the extracurricular activities he engaged in while matriculating at a university in the heart of the nation’s party capital, New Orleans.

This was not a party, of course, nor could it have been given the circumstances. Yet, you couldn’t help but feel the joy-however subdued-present in that room filled with friends, followers and comrades-in-arms of the man who revolutionized how grassroots activism and citizen journalism were practiced in this country. No one was more dedicated to altering the status quo of society, a state he termed default leftism, or educating the public about their power to illuminate (deliberately) hidden truths than Andrew Breitbart. He was driven by a passion for truth and justice; not justice as conceived of by society’s levelers, nor truth filtered through the prism of an historically marginalized gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation extolled by critical studies departments in order to diminish our national heritage, but common sense, bourgeois, patriotic, universal values that were instilled in him as a child and which were shared by millions of Americans who feel disenfranchised by what they see on the nightly news and read in their daily newspapers.

This passion was leavened by a richly sardonic vein of humor familiar to anyone who read his work or heard him speak. That’s why the witless postmortem attacks on Andrew-which, as Mickey Kaus points out, have nothing to do with his combative persona-need to be put into their proper context. Breitbart was an individual who reveled in the contempt of the institutional left, and embraced the slanderous broadsides of his most febrile stalkers for what they were, i.e. proof that he was doing his job! The hatred he attracted was, in a perverse sense, a compliment. It was a testament to Andrew Breitbart’s skill at exposing the malefactors in government, the mainstream media, and bottom-feeding political factions like ACORN that earned him this bile. That is why one of the most rabid, obscure left wing talkers is positively overjoyed at his death. If Andrew could see some of the reactions to his passing by his avowed enemies he would impishly grin-and probably retweet some of the more bilious attacks-while being discomfited by the startlingly civil reaction by Media Matters for America, his notorious bete noire.

The gathering in Manhattan commemorating his legacy was necessary, but it was also edifying in the sense that it illustrated how broad Breitbart’s reach was, how unifying his message was-notwithstanding the libelous attacks upon his character-and why his death is such a profound loss, not just for his widow, his four children, and his father-in-law Orson Bean, but for all of us. In that small, cramped bar there were white, black, and Asian friends and admirers of Andrew’s that were there to pay tribute to the man who brought them together.  Mormons, Catholics, Jews and people of no particular religious affiliation mingled amiably while focusing on our commonalities, not their religious or philosophical differences. Neoconservatives, libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, as well as everyone from brilliant policy wonks to the self-described “morons” who form the online community known as Ace of Spades interacted  with each other and debated various issues without a hint of reproach or acrimony.

This sort of ecumenism is something that would never have come about had Andrew Breitbart not been willing to join the cultural maelstrom that many traditional conservatives have either ignored or consciously abandoned. He not only engaged in a war with the left-successfully refuting nostrums that it long ago stopped defending on empirical grounds-he defeated the left on its own territory, inspiring new generations of conservative, patriotic activists who are using the model he devised. Breitbart refused to cede the moral high ground to people whose fundamental philosophy was immoral. He was a happy warrior, but a warrior all the same, a dichotomy epitomized by his orgy of truth-telling at the Netroots convention, a forum that provided him with the opportunity to not only expose the hypocrisy of his ideologically blinkered detractors, but also to engage in a surprisingly substantive debate with one of the “progressives” willing to listen to his point of view. For all the talk of Breitbart being a provocateur, he probably engaged in more robust, legitimate debate with those who disagreed with him than any of his perennial critics, who continue to misrepresent what he stood for, even in death. That’s because he believed that the best means of changing this country for the better was through open and honest intellectual combat. The theatrical trappings Andrew Breitbart assumed were merely intended to emphasize fundamentally sound principles he sincerely believed in.

That’s why honoring him this week was so important. Karol Markowicz-who, along with David Bernstein and Robert George, did a fantastic job of successfully orchestrating what was by necessity a last-minute event-spoke for many of us when she gave an impromptu speech that touched upon both the tremendous personal tragedy represented by this evening, but also the tremendous loss Andrew Breitbart’s absence represents for both the immediate and distant future of the conservative movement. She vocalized the thoughts of many of those gathered in that bar room-most of whom are either in the same age cohort or slightly younger than Andrew was when he left us-by reflecting upon the fleeting nature of life, as well as the necessity of capitalizing upon our short time here, a concept no one was more aware of than Andrew himself.

Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, picked up on that theme as she spoke to the crowd, emphasizing the necessity of continuing the fight that Breitbart began, and of not letting America’s critics monopolize the public sphere simply because one of conservatism’s most resonant voices has been prematurely silenced. Pamela demanded that we all be Breitbart, as she pointed to the suddenly iconic gravatar that has come to symbolize the movement he spearheaded during his tragically brief life. She recounted how Andrew came to her defense even when other conservatives abandoned her out of self-serving “prudence” and fear of the potential repercussions to their own careers. Then she brought the discussion back to the present, invoking the unyielding guerilla campaign by the left to silence Rush Limbaugh, the most widely-heard and popular conservative voice of the past two decades. She averred that Rush “wasn’t controversial,” but that it was Katie Couric and the drive-by media-which form the consensus of elite, Beltway opinion-which should be viewed as controversial and beyond the pale.

It should be noted that this crusade doesn’t merely involve a relentless campaign to mau mau sponsors and syndicators of Rush’s program-which, though perfectly legal, serves as a rough indicator of the left’s tolerance of dissent-but a concerted effort to use extraconstitutional arms of the government to suppress his First Amendment rights.

Pamela made the trenchant observation that Andrew would have been the first to defend Rush from the Gramscian left, which not only wants to compel you to pay for their “choice,” but wants to prevent anyone who disagrees with this policy from voicing his or her objections in the public arena. This Catch-22 was something with which Breitbart himself was intimately familiar, as followers of the numerous boycotts initiated by official grievance mongers against Andrew’s presence anywhere will recall. He would have not taken the sustained propaganda campaign against another conservative icon lying down, but would have instead fought tooth and nail to debunk the lies and half-truths being propounded by Rush’s antagonists. Breitbart would not have relented until the truth outed.

And that is what we must keep in mind as we recall Andrew Breitbart. He never slacked for a moment when he saw good people’s reputations besmirched, or when the media narrative of a news event contradicted reality. His intensity was not a pose or an affectation adopted for the cameras, it was a fire born of genuine conviction and the knowledge that life is permanently impermanent. The best way of honoring and perpetuating the legacy of Andrew Breitbart is by continuing it in his spirit, and standing up for what we know to be right while we still have the privilege of doing so.