It was with great sadness that I heard this morning Andrew Breitbart passed away from natural causes at the young age of 43. Our first thoughts turn to his family: his wife Susie and his four children. He loved them with the same passion he had for his crusades on behalf of freedom. The prayers of the Heritage family are with them.
This is a loss for the entire country. The cause of truth and freedom will be without one of its biggest champions.
Andrew was fearless. He took on the entrenched powers of liberalism in this country, whether they were in the media, academia, unions or elsewhere, with a zest that was infectious. He had the unmistakable mark of a leader, showing others where they needed to do battle through the force of his own example.
Andrew was also an intellectual, though, and that is indeed a very rare combination. In his last book, properly titled “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,” he shined a needed light on the origins of the leftist threat to our freedoms. One such example was the FrankfurtSchool, a mid-20th century invasion of European Marxist academics who realized that taking over our universities would be the first step in seizing our brightest minds. I remember him sitting with me in my office while he was conducting this research and telling me with his trademark fascination about all he was finding out.
But Andrew was eminently a doer, not an armchair intellectual. He will be perhaps best remembered for taking on liberals in the mainstream media, not just by exposing their corrupt biases while claiming impartiality, but by giving them competition through his Big Journalism, Big Government and Big Hollywood websites.
We all mourn Andrew today, but we can’t allow our sorrow to consume us. The challenge for us, for all conservatives, is to react to today’s sad event by following his example, by picking up the sword that lies on the ground before us.
Click here to view this post in Spanish at Libertad.org.