“But Beck’s predictions have been right throughout the last two years.  Why would you not at least give him a listen?” I questioned.  My Georgetown-educated cube-mate shot back: “Because most of the people that listen to Glenn Beck are uneducated mid-westerners.”  Infuriated, I protested “Do you have any idea how arrogant and elitist you sound right now?”  Leave aside the irony that I was attacking his condescension while as a colleague of ours pointed out, showing beneath my loafers were our company holiday gift socks dotted with various currencies.

As my cube-mate went on to say, though he conceded that government should not be all-encompassing, “I want smart people to make decisions for people.”  In other words, us silly hicks are incapable of governing ourselves.  This is the fatal conceit of which F.A. Hayek wrote that reflects the attitude of the intellectual class today.  Why is it fatal?

First, the “highly educated intellectual” today routinely receives a subpar education.  Believe me, I went through it at Columbia, one of the few remaining schools with any semblance of a valuable curriculum.  A real education is about teaching the pupil to think critically.  Routinely, education today is more about spending time in science classes listening to professors talk about the merits of joining the Peace Corps (yes, this happened to me), iconoclastic gender, race and political studies courses and cultural Marxist programming of the heirs apparent of the political, economic and cultural hierarchy of the country.

Of those who graduate from these institutions and matriculate to the political realm, the progressive ethic pervades.  And what is this ethic?  The elite must decide for the sheep.

Progressivism argues that man should play G-d, organizing society as he sees fit, “nudging” people as Cass Sunstein advocates towards making the right decision of a governmentally-defined set of choices and socially engineering swaths of society.

Never mind that central planning fails given that the planners can never make the decisions that self-reliant and self-interested individuals acting freely would make, and that central planners lack the specialized information of the millions of actors that make up the economy.  Never mind that even if you don’t buy this argument on theoretical grounds, every nation guided by central planning has ended in mass poverty, mass genocide or both.

The manifest defects of central planning are not nearly as bad as its dehumanizing nature.  For the progressive central planner is a regressive tyrant.  What he seeks to do by regulation is only different than what the master does by the whip in his coyness.  The progressive enslaves as he believes that there is no value in the individual — there are only masses of malleable animals that must be shaped and coddled by paternalistic wise men in government.  Egalitarianism must reign.  Natural differences, desires and ambitions must be discarded for the greater good.  Social welfare is but a small price to pay for the fat cat, selfish innovators, entrepreneurs, job creators and investors who subsidize it.  Forget about the fact that practically every good and service around us was provided by the very system the progressives seek to destroy, to the disproportionate detriment of the lower classes.

Yet the question is never posed, is such a system moral?  Should you by virtue of living in America be forced by law to live to support your fellow man through government?  Should you be an indentured servant for months each year in effect working for the government middle man so that he can bribe and satisfy his constituents?  Should the politician be able to compel you by law to plan your retirement by paying into an insolvent Ponzi scheme like social security; to at the point of the gun make you cut a check each year for failing public schools that teach the very principles to the nation’s youth that most disgust you?  And is it moral that these progressives who would be the first to attack religious advocates impose their own leftist religion through the involuntary mechanism of brute government force?

The progressive philosophy, an economic failure, is also a massive blight on our souls.  For it enchains man to his fellow man and impoverishes all of society by taking away man’s individualism, his sense of responsibility and his self-worth.  The progressive state dehumanizes and demoralizes man, leaving him an apathetic and impotent slave.  There is no compassion in such a system.  There is no morality in such a system.  All that there is is man ruling over his fellow man, throwing bread crumb benefits at various faceless voting blocs unable to see through such a scheme after so many years of socialist ideological subversion.  Shame on the progressives for their disdain for their fellow man, their hubris in thinking that they are right to rule over him and their disgusting glee in molding society for their own political gain.  And shame on us for sanctioning such a system.

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?

Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.

When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.

So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.

Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….

Oh, the tragedy of my life.

(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?

Read the entire review at RightWing News.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Last night, I was at the Jacksonville Landing, speaking at a rally held by the First Coast Tea Party that was keynoted by Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The weather was gorgeous with temperatures in the mid to high 70s and the mood of the patriots gathered there matched the sunny climate. There were skits and laughter amid the speeches that dealt with the solemn issue of fiscal responsibility.

This morning, I made my way from Jacksonville to Atlanta to Memphis to Chicago and then on to the icy Wisconsin war zone. The temperature hovered around freezing as I arrived in Madison. Bitter cold rain gave way to snow but that didn’t stop thousands of Wisconsinites from coming out to make a stand and hear from a number of great speakers including the woman I was privileged to introduce, Sarah Palin.

But there was another group also there to greet us; the shock troops sent by Richard Trumka and president Obama’s Organizing for America. This was my second trip to Madison in the last couple of months and the defeats that the union’s leadership have suffered in that time have plunged these losers into an even more animalistic state of frenzy. Still stinging from last week’s election reaffirmation of Gov. Scott Walker’s policy of requiring public sector unions to face some of the economic realities that the rest of us have to deal with, the counter protesters both homegrown and bussed in them were louder, ruder and more desperate than ever. Their goal is to be as intimidating as the Green Bay Packers offensive line and it’s one of the only areas that they’ve had success.

The TV cameras showing the speech caught little of this phalanx of thugs that we had to walk through. Middle fingers flew and the trendy talking point insult of “Koch Suckers!” was everywhere. Sarah Palin was called names that made me wonder if Bill Maher was writing for this mob. Apparently, women-hating sexual mockery is acceptable if directed at the right, even if that woman’s children are present.

The Wisconsin Tea Party supporters made it all worthwhile. These are men and women who have braved a battle and come through victorious not by bullying but by being part of the silent majority willing to support tough-minded, adult decision making. The message from speaker after speaker was that Wisconsin’s example of not being intimidated by the bankrupt tactics of the left is something that all Americans need to hear.

Of course, don’t expect that message to come from the mainstream media, whose sentiments are more with the union driven threat machine than the taxpayers.

As I took to the stage, the shouting from those trying to disrupt the Tea Party intensified. Inarticulate shouting becomes their last weapon as their policies crumble. I thought of the hypocritical calls for civility amidst the dishonestly cynical opportunism of blaming Sarah Palin who shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. I thought of the smug entitlement of government workers demanding to keep their gold and benefits packages while the nation tightens its belt. I thought of the business owners and politicians being bullied in an official capacity by the unions and then actually threatened by zealots who took the union policies to their only logical conclusion.

I’m proud of what I said. I told the sanctimonious shouters promoting class warfare to go to hell.

There may be those on the left who really want civil discourse. It’s possible there are some who realize that our national debt is, in fact, out of control. There’s a chance that sane debate is the actual goal of a number of self-proclaimed liberal activists.

But I didn’t see any of those people in Madison on Saturday morning. I’m not going to pretend that I did. It was a mob, whipped up by the divider-in-chief and his cronies who live off of union dues and taxpayer funded handouts. And in case any of you in the back row missed it , I repeat – go to hell.

“Make no mistake: America is in a media war.”  ~ Righteous Indignation

If you ever watch the news, listen to the radio or check the headlines on msn.com, you must read this book.

I’ve been telling y’all this for weeks, months now. There is a battle going on for the information gateway of our country: the news media complex.

And the great general leading the charge, the brilliant strategist who has been literally on the forefront of this fight and has seen it from the inside-out and the ground-up, who makes it possible for you and I to literally hear “the rest of the story”…. is Andrew Breitbart. And his latest book, “Righteous Indignation,” was released last Thursday.

I’ve mentioned Breitbart on here before, mostly in passing or in reference to his Big sites (linked on the right). Anything we know today, about the JournoList, about ACORN, about Pigford is directly because of Andrew Breitbart. (And if you don’t know about any of the things I just mentioned, start researching, because this affects YOU)

And, on a personal note, I had the great pleasure of meeting Breitbart a couple of years ago, when I went to LA with Sister. Granted, I just shook his hand and then stood in the group listening to him talk, but you’ve never met a more approachable, friendly guy who’s excited and passionate about what he’s doing. Any media portrayal of him as this frothing bitter-clinger makes me laugh and roll my eyes.

“Righteous Indignation” is part memoir, part treatise, part history lesson. It begins with the infamous ACORN sting investigation, in which James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles went to multiple ACORN offices around the country and asked ACORN to help them find tax breaks for their brothel, in which they claimed to employ underage illegal immigrants. Yes, they explicitly stated that was their business – underage human trafficking.

And Breitbart dropped the videos, one by one. Aside from the moral repugnance of the actions of the ACORN offices, the bigger story was that ACORN was doing this using taxpayer dollars. Within weeks, Congress unanimously voted to defund one of the largest community activists groups in the country.

All because of some bloggers and a couple of kids with a camera.

Continue reading the entire review here.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

You won’t find too many people who are indifferent toward Andrew Breitbart. But love him or hate him, you can’t ignore him. With his ever-growing collection of “Big” websites (Big Government, Big Hollywood, Big Journalism and Big Peace so far), Andrew has redefined how the political right views and uses the Internet. He makes no apologies for his “in your face” style, nor should he. That style has won him many victories and many enemies. He seems to occupy the time of a disproportionate number of left-wingers, including many employees of the ultra-left-wing censorship factory called Media Matters. Those “senior fellows” are about to have their weekends ruined as Breitbart moves from the virtual world to the book world with Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World (2011 Grand Central Publishing) this Friday, April 15th.

If you know Andrew, or have ever cornered him for a few minutes of conversation, you know his brain is like a shotgun — going a thousand miles an hour in every conceivable direction at once. He attributes this to ADHD, but constantly being pulled in 50 directions at once by everyone in the room doesn’t help either. But in Righteous, Breitbart is more focused than he’s ever been. He has a tale to tell — three, actually.

Righteous is three books in one, each self-contained. Together, they weave a narrative that will remind many readers of their own lives. Even if you don’t share all of Andrew’s political beliefs, you will find yourself identifying with at least some of his story and conclusions. The book is part biography, part history lesson, and part manifesto, and it flows with clarity of purpose from one page to the next. It subtly draws you into a narrative, strung through the whole book, where he meticulously makes the case against the media and pop culture, which, he argues, help spread and normalize the liberal agenda. He also explains how to combat that agenda.

Read the entire review at The Daily Caller.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.