Our political opponent Andrew Breitbart leaves four kids and a wife in Brentwood. He was out for a midnight walk and collapsed. Life is fragile, folks. Tomorrow I will have major surgery for rectal cancer, as I have written in a recent diary, "ObamaCare Saved My Life". So I am seeing this through a different prism.
As much as Breitbart's work infuriated me, I remember at this moment the quote from St. Augustine loosely translated that I learned from the Quakers: "Love the sinner but not the sin". Or "Hate the sin, not the sinner". At a moment like this, we can say that one of our most disturbing political opponents is gone from the scene. We can choose to villify him, as he did of Ted Kennedy immediately after his passing.
But I would like to think that most of us will not sink to that level of behavior. We have an opportunity to build a movement that uplifts and inspires others--a movement that will truly represent the 99% of Americans and people the world over--or slash and trash our opponents, thus giving even more inspiration to the new Andrew Breitbarts who will take up his fight.
Maybe we can use this moment to renew our commitment to fighting for what we believe, with the degree of passion Breitbart had for his beliefs, but with the kind of messages and tactics that will draw millions more to our causes. I believe if we do so, our progressive movement will emerge from the 2012 campaign stronger than any similar movement in American history.
We have unprecedented tools to organize, communicate and mobilize that Saul Alinsky would have envied and Breitbart knew how to use so very well. Recall that Breitbart helped Arianna Huffington create her HuffingtonPost website, after she changed from being a Republican to a liberal Democrat, because they had been friends during her ex-husband's California Senate bid.
I prefer to regard Breitbart as someone who was politically deluded, whose assumptions about people and the world were radically different from mine, and whose tactics were often antithetical to the kind of political dialogue that sustains a free society. But I refuse to demonize him, particularly at this moment, because it demeans me as a human being and retards the growth of our progressive cause.