Category: PEOPLE WE SHOULD KNOW

Every once in a while, you see something that transports you so much you start to think maybe there is still hope for us homo sapiens.  Everything you thought you knew about hard work, preparation, capability and profound comprehension are shown by someone to exist at a higher plane than you ever thought possible.  That was my concert experience recently watching and listening to Augustin Hadelich perform Beethoven’s D major Violin Concerto with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.  One of those generational talents, Hadelich at a very young age appears to have grasped the dual oracles that are provence of only the greatest of performers, pyrotechnics and poetry, and welded them into an artistic whole.  We are consumed with the apparent demise of glorious, elevated expressions that seem to have faded from western civilization after a 500 year renaissance, and then someone like Augustin Hadelich comes by, and you realize we are going to go forward for a few years more.  That is why Augustin Hadelich is Ramparts People We Should Know #28.

Augustin Hadelich is an immigrant American citizen,  born and raised in Tuscan Italy by German parents.  It may well be that the cultural life forces that are Italy and Germany have infused themselves into a perfect concoction.  Sunny Italy with its romance and poetic view of the beauty of life.  Earnest Germany with its craftsman precision and its teutonic discipline.  Born in 1984, raised on a farm in northern Italy, Augustin showed prodigy talent in a musical family, but it took a catastrophic accident to bookmark a whole new level of genius.  At the age of 15, Hadelich was horribly burned over two thirds of his body, and for almost two years had to give up playing the violin, too painful to contemplate the difficult physical nature of the instrument. Like a Phoenix from the ashes, however, at 17, a completely new artist emerged, and a new direction as well.  Hadelich was accepted to Juillard, the citadel of budding performers, in New York, and trained under acclaimed teacher Joseph Smirnoff.  It was at Juillard that Hadelich credits finding his musical voice in the multiple chamber music opportunities that taught him how to play with an intimate tone, and once married to his prodigious physical gifts, his career has been thereafter on a rocket to stardom.  He won the 2006 Indianaopolis International Competition Gold Medal, the Avery Fisher Prize, and other major perfomance awards. He has already performed with all the leading orchestras in the world.  And when an adjective is looked for to describe his play versus the many other technically skilled artists now perfoming, it is one word -masterly.Augustin Hadelich is a true master in the classic sense of the word.  He can play everything, and he can play everything better than most.

Beethoven created his violin concerto for masters that did not yet exist. the first performance in 1806 of the concerto was not well received.  It was not understood by audiences that were not prepared to have the violin dominate  a piece the way that the piano was achieving at the time.  Beethoven, this most masculine of composers, briefly found himself in unusual territory of doubting his work.  Concerned that such a piece might be too big for the performers, he hastily transposed the concerto instead for piano, but that was even less successful.  It would take 40 years, for the great performers of the 19th century like Paginini and Joachum, to elevate the violin into a performance level like the piano in the minds of audiences, and with such talents, the Beethoven concerto began to soar, and never again was thought of in any way other than the zenith of performance concertos.

The D Major concerto carries the performer through the orchestral composition like no other, defining the melody, then framing it over, through and under the orchestra, emerging at times, like the most intimate of string quartets, singing like a celestial chime above, than at other times pulling the orchestra along with macho warmth and fullness. It  holds for the performer a restrained kind of fiendish difficulty, until the performer is exposed in the cadenza, the famous finale of the first movement, and reminds all of the enormous capacity of the violin instrument, and the technical skill of the performer. Some performers can play lyrically, some can show pyrotechnical brilliance, and some can emote great discipline, but Hadelich can do it all, and do it so effortlessly, that you wonder if this is what the greats in the golden age of classical music sounded like – the Joachims, the Krieslers, the Heifetzes.  Hadelich shines most at the upper range of the violin, that fiendish region at the top of the finger board with the sonic vibrations of notes differ minisculely, and the spaces between them for the fingers to function, even smaller.  The best players in the world can sound harsh and thin in this rarefied play area, toneless and cold. Not for Augustin – the quiet high passages ring like celestial chimes, with the purest of tones at the most pianissamo of play.  He is playing in the music of the other world, and inviting us to briefly to bask in its glory.

We don’t always recognize the Great Masters, but they are still among us. Taking life, and coloring it like a prism, sounding it like the oceans, describing it as one would the angels.  Augustin Hadelich is already a Great Master, and Ramparts People We should Know #28.  Behold – the Music of the Spheres.

In Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith goes to Washington, an American everyman Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington as an obscure replacement Senator from an insignificant Western state.  At a critical moment in the film, the inexperienced Senator Smith, under pressure from the corrupt establishment and facing personal damage to his reputation, determines to fight them all and stand up for the principles of democracy, and the people who he represented.  He gives it all up to filibuster a corrupt bill and, in the end, wins the day for all that is good and fair in America.  The establishment, so blinded by the way Washington works, sees ultimately in Senator Smith the essentials of America they left behind so very long ago, and there is a epiphany of sorts.  Well, on January 6th, 2015, another Western everyman was sworn in to the United States Senate and this everyman has done everything to set the current establishment on its heels.  From his first day he has stood athwart the efforts of the establishment to accede to the authoritarians of Iran in their relentless drive to obtain nuclear weapon capacity and threaten the world.  The new saga might be called Mr. Tom Cotton Goes to Washington, and this senator is rapidly becoming one of Ramparts People We Should Know.

Tom Cotton, like the fictional Jimmy Stewart, came out of small town America, born in the  small Arkansas town of Dardanelle, population 4745.  His parents were good Arkansas democrats and supporters of Governor Clinton.  Son Thomas however was a contrarian from the start, absorbing on his own the conservative wave effecting the South.  Small town or not, young Cotton was a unique intellectual talent, and his future course one of one achievement after another.  He was an outstanding high school student, and was accepted to Harvard in 1995.   He graduated  from Harvard and was admitted to the Claremont Institute for graduate studies, determining to return to Harvard after a year when he was accepted into Harvard Law School.  Graduating in 2002,  he clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, then entered into practice of law with a prestigious  law firm.  By 2004, the very different nature of this individual to respond to his internal sense of purpose led him to quit the firm and join the Army, at the very height of instability in Iraq.  He not only joined, but decided not to take the obvious administrative officer route of attaining a captaincy in the Judge Advocate Corps his law education positioned him for, but instead decided on a combat route, starting as a Corporal, and entering the US Army’s Officer Candidate School, earning a 2nd Lieutenant commission.  He then attended both US Army Airborne School and Ranger School, and was assigned to the 101st Airborne as a platoon leader in Iraq in 2004.  In 2006, Cotton became a 1st Lieutenant and was re-assigned state-side to Arlington National Cemetery as a member of the Old Guard Unit.  The restless Cotton pined to return to the front lines and was re-assigned in 2008 to Lagham Province in Afghanistan where he completed another tour. Having completed two combat tours, Cotton was honorably discharged in 2009, rejoining the US Army Reserves in 2010 and finally discharged as a Captain in 2013.

Tom Cotton by age 35 had achieved a lifetime of accomplishment.  Graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law. Two combat tours in the US Army. Airborne School, Ranger School and honorable discharge as a US Army Captain.  But Tom Cotton has only just gotten started.  His political persona and the unique personality that couples a formidable intellect with the willingness to speak his mind on principle regardless of the risk, first presented on his initial combat tour in Iraq.  In 2006, the New Times proudly published classified material exposing the government’s secret program monitoring terrorist’s finances.  An obscure combat Lieutenant in Iraq named Tom Cotton read the article and determined to let the world know that to front line soldiers, what the New York Times had done risked American lives and bordered on treasonous.  He wrote an open letter, a technique he would use in the future, to go around the establishment and get his opinion out directly to the public.  The letter struck a cord and was an internet sensation.  This obscure lieutenant became overnight an international figure, and an almost immediate thorn in the side to his superiors.  The need to speak his mind risked court marshal and given the political sensitivities of army hierarchy, the potential destruction of his career.  It might have been the first time that a letter on the internet required a decision by the Army Chief of Staff, but luckily for Cotton,  General Peter Schoomacher backed his right to state his opinion.

The legend of Cotton was born at that moment in conservative circles, and he became a future star to be nurtured.  When a House of Representative seat opened up in 2012, Cotton’s political career began with a run for the seat, and he was elected to Arkansas’s 4th Congressional District in 2012, defeating his opponent 59% to 37%.   With the Cotton resume now in national focus, he was immediately appreciated for his intellectual and rhetorical skills on the House floor, and his reputation grew well beyond typical freshman status.  By 2014, a vulnerable democrat Senator Mark Pryor was in Cotton’s sights, and a similar electoral wuppin’ took place, with the ever more popular and skilled Cotton defeating Pryor 56.5% to 39.5%.

Now Senator, Tom Cotton has focused his attention with laser beam focus on the Obama’s administration’s focus on overturning thirty years of American policy toward the theocrat dictators of Iran and their desire for nuclear weaponry.  In typical Cotton focus, where the rest of the establishment political crowd has passively stood by as Obama. determined to get an agreement at any cost,  has given in on one critical issue after another to Iran, Cotton has singlehandedly manned the rhetorical and constitutional Ramparts against the administration’s appeasement.  Using his now famous Open Letter technique, Cotton published a letter to the Ayatollah countersigned by 47 other senators, that any executive agreement presented by President Obama designed to subvert the constitutional treaty process mandated in the Constitution would not have the obligations of a treaty:

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

Like Cotton’s previous letter, this brought faux outrage from opponents, and particular disdain from the President, who has sought extra-constitutional actions as his modus operandi again and again.  Despite the enormous pressures applied from all directions, Cotton as usual remained non-plussed. Cotton has been the direct visible opponent of each  Obama appeasement to Iran – from sanction removal to anywhere anytime site inspection to centrifuge research to release of a monster cache of frozen funds to, the final outrage, the furtherance of Iran’s ballistic missile systems, thus improving Iran’s capacity to threaten the world with weapon deliverance, once they have nuclear weapon capacity. Throwing aside President Obama’s usual deceptive tactic of stating the opposite of the obvious to a superficially attentive population and media,  Cotton has become a pillar of strength in the effort to protect the world against the Iranian threat.  He has proven he can hold his principled opinion even under the challenge of hostile media.  Cotton did not rest when the President and the Secretary of State attempted to present the agreement as a fait accompli.  He has led to organizing of the Senate to review document in its entirety, including side deals with Iran the administration had purposefully obscured from public notice as they ran contrary to the narrative of a “tough” deal.

Senator Tom Cotton is 38 years old, the youngest Senator in the US Senate, and already is the stiff backed principled opposition to the idea the  United States is a has been power that must except its decline, and subject itself to decline as a punishment for the “wrong” it has done as a superpower. Harvard Law graduate. Combat Veteran. Captain in the Army.  US Representative. US Senator.  Lion in the defense of America and her unique constitutional design promoting limited government and individual freedom.  At 38, the future sky’s the limit for Senator Tom Cotton.  Resoundingly, Tom Cotton is Ramparts People We Should Know #27 .  If Frank Capra,were to make the movie now, Mr. Tom Cotton Goes to Washington very likely would have an even more impressive sequel to come.

 

On the most important day of the Christian calendar,  the day in which faith triumphs over reason, and reason becomes  faith, we celebrate the miracle that was the culmination of a Supreme Being’s promise to His creation.  With the triumph over mortality itself,  a reason for being, beyond an accident of nature, was revealed and life gained ultimate worth. The next two thousand years became a burst of passion for knowledge, exploration, expression, and discovery directly linked to renewed pact man held with his Creator, and his attempt to live up to the promise of that miracle.

The very success of man’s discovery of his capacity to understand, led, by the twentieth century, a willingness to suggest alternatives to the faith residing in the miracle of Easter, and to the question the very existence of, or fundamental need for, a Supreme Being.  The development of newer philosophies, materialism, atheism, and scientism, proceeded to put forward the idea that man’s development had superceded the validity of any “stories” that once provided answers to the mysteries of the universe and our place in it.

Confronting  the intense arguments of Nietzsche, Freud, and others, and the seeming lack of God in the dominance of the individual by the superstate, a few articulate men were able to weave modern concepts into the fabric of the ancient miracles, and show that God was even more apparent in the modern interpretation of life.  Of particular note was the genius of C.S. Lewis, whose stature has only grown some fifty years after his death.  C.S. Lewis, who as a philosopher recognized that logic and reason, faith and miracle were not incompatible, and had the brilliant literary prose to articulate it for everyone, is to be celebrated on Easter as Ramparts People We Should know – #26.

C.S. Lewis holds a special place in the discussion of a divine  providence not because he was an unquestioning, fervid believer in the Almighty but rather because he was the opposite.  By age fifteen, convinced of science objectivity and armed with an already impressive searching intellect, he announced his atheism to his family and friends. He served in World War I, was seriously wounded and only further confirmed his conclusion that man was an accident of evolution, and nature the format for chaotic, random occurrence.  It was at his obtaining a professorship at Oxford where he met a group of intellectual contrarians know as the” Inklings”, led by JRR Tolkien (better remembered as the author of the saga Lord of the Rings) . Tolkien, a strong Roman Catholic, interlaced Christian principles of good, evil, temptation, and redemption through his writings.  Lewis stated the conversion to Christianity for him was not immediate.  He described being brought “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting my eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.”  But his philosophical bent continued to cause him to ask question after question as how things exist and how randomness utterly failed to explain so many things in creation.  Being a modern man, he did not deny the answers of science, nor fall meekly upon the stories of creation to explain the way things were.  His was an intellectual journey:

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too.  If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.  And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s.  But if their thoughts – i.e., Materialism and Astronomy – are mere accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true?  I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.  It’s like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

C.S. Lewis

Progressively, he organized his thoughts on paper, and armed with a prodigious literary talent, left us a beautiful tome of literature to understand how well belief in the Divine stands up in the modern age.  Books such as Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and The Screwtape Letters are considered not only great paeans to Christian apologia but also great literature.  His children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia, proved to be one of the most popular best sellers of the 20th century and have been celebrated in cinema.

Although he was a practicing Anglican, C.S Lewis  has sustained popularity some fifty years after his death for the universality of his message, the insightful logic of his arguments, and the beauty of his prose.  For an age, he inspires a love for the magic that underlies life and creation that few others have been able to achieve.

In so many ways., C.S. Lewis is an appropriate soldier of the Ramparts and People We Should Know.  On this beautiful Easter day, let us celebrate our faith, but take additional pride in the continual example of that faith’s vitality and pertinence in this modern world of ours.

      The 2013 Marconi Award for contributions to information technology and communications science was awarded on April 5th, 2013 to a 20th century giant of the information revolution and its a reasonable certainty that you have never heard of him.  Martin Cooper, a Chicago born Illinois Institute of Technology trained engineer, however, probably did more to affect the way you live today than you can possibly imagine.  Martin Cooper will receive the Marconi Prize in October in Bologna, Italy for his critical vision and work in inventing and developing an indispensable modern tool, the mobile cell phone, and like his award benefactor Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio transmission, forever changed the way information could be shared  and propagated, to the everlasting benefit of humanity. For devising a practical tool  that has brought the world to any individual wherever they may be, Martin Cooper readily deserves to be Ramparts’ People We Should Know #23.

Imagine a world without your cell phone and the bounty of links to the world it provides. The phone allows you the power of a computer, the access of a communicator through phone and voice mail, the precise awareness of your location in the world around you through GPS, the networking capability of texting and e-mail, all provided in a device that fits into a shirt pocket.  Martin Cooper visualized it when the world of communication tethered you to a phone number linked by wire to a location and limited to the capacity of the wire to transmit sound or information, but not both simultaneously.  This was the world of 1973, when Mr. Cooper,an engineer for the Motorola Corporation, proved that phone communications could be transmitted in wireless fashion through a portable device powered by its own battery.

The Motorola Corporation was a great exemplar of the power of private capitalism to innovate, something that has been lost in this modern time of government overbearance with shepherding new technologies with companies  such as Solyndra.  It is estimated that Motorola invested over a hundred million dollars in 1970s currency value in Mr. Cooper’s team of visionaries from 1965 until 1993 when the first dollar of profit was finally realized in Cooper’s creation, without a hint that the technology would actually take hold.  Mr. Cooper’s team worked to convert ideas into practical devices.  He stated a large part of his inspiration was the entirely fictional device known as the hand held communicator, a device conceived out of fantasy by Gene Roddenberry, the producer of the Star Trek television show, to allow its fictional characters to communicate with each other and with their ship effortlessly.

The challenge was immense. What passed for the zenith of mobile communication was the car phone, a device that needed engine power and over thirty pounds of installed equipment to work, not exactly the kind of technology that would appeal to the individual walking about. Cooper’s first device was a behemoth, weighing 2.5 pounds, 10 inches long, with a charge lasting twenty minutes and requiring a ten hour recharge, and was indecorously referred to as the “box” or “shoe” phone. But in the fateful year of 1973, Mr. Cooper walked the streets of New York in a public demonstration of his phone, wirelessly called and wirelessly received a phone call, and personal communication was changed forever. From the first practical application of Motorola’s first successful models in the late 1980’s, morphing into the spectacularly successful “flip phone” of the 1990’s, to the incredible power of the iPhone today, dramatic advances in battery capacity, solid state, broadband capacity, and miniaturization were required. But in the space of thirty years, Martin Cooper converted the world to the idea that all information could follow an individual wherever they were, and to the immeasurable benefit of their personal freedom.

Want to know the effect of  Martin Cooper’s vision on our way of life?  The International Telecommunication Union estimated by 2012 that there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions in the world and that the developed world had achieved the saturation point  of over one mobile subscription per person.  87% of the world now has mobile communication capacity and over 73% of what was once referred to as the developing world.  Martin Cooper’s vision  has helped make mobile communications indispensable, practical, and affordable to almost every person on earth that desires it.  It looks like that 100 million spent by Motorola on Martin Cooper was a very good bet indeed.

One can never fail to be amazed at how humans create reality out of fantasy through the simple but magnificent force of their will and intellect.  Martin Cooper, Ramparts People We Should Know #23, proves again that solutions to overwhelming problems are best served by getting out of the way of the incredible capacity of the marketplace to invest in and vet ideas, without the bias of governments that seek to politically control the process.  Despite the billions and billions of tax dollars spent to “invent” a cure to fossil fuels, the likely solution will come from some unknown, obscure thinker, who was inspired by ideas entirely of their own creation, and driven entirely by their own intellectual need to solve the problem.  Somewhere out there, the next Martin Cooper will change the way we live forever.

       With the recent election, the relatively brief period of assumed responsibility of the United States of America as the world’s hyperpower has been firmly shorn by the voting public.  Confirming a “lead from behind” strategy of global diplomatic consolidation with other fading powers, the U.S. will becoming progressively reactive to the burgeoning influence of the world’s new dominant economic force, China, and the time is therefore apropo to look closely at China and its conceptualizations about leadership.  Unlike America, which has leaned progressively on societal security with the alignment of its resources toward that goal, China has been single minded on the conversion of its national energy to growth and prosperity.   The United States will spend the next ten years looking inward as the financial wherewithal for investing in expansion will be limited by the constraints of an ever burgeoning debt owed to others. China’s challenge will be making the shift from the world’s secondary to primary influence in a peaceful fashion respected by its neighbors and competitors, and secure the equality of prosperity at home. This coming week will see the elevation of Xi Jinping to the Presidency of China, succeeding Hu Jintao.  This culmination of career through the difficult and secretive politics of the Chinese Communist Party to the position of ultimate leadership in China, makes Xi Jinping a worthy addition to Ramparts – People We Should Know.

The Chinese Communist Party for the past 30 years since the death of Mao Zedong and the elevation of Deng Xiaoping has been all about preservation of the party while unleashing of economic potential.  This has resulted in leaders with a certain pedigree and Xi Jinping fits the mold precisely.  Xi has the critical family pedigree.  His father was one of the mythical leaders of the initial Communist victory over Nationalist forces, and then just as crucially, was discarded by Mao for his “reactionary” flaws in the 1960’s Cultural Revolution, for the crime of suggesting small market reforms in the face of the horrific forced starvation of millions of  Chinese by Mao’s catastrophic edicts to preserve his version of the revolution.  Xi therefore started his life in the dangerous world of being a member of an enemy family to the Revolutionary Guard, and his survival was at times a matter of luck.   With the progressive weakening by Mao by aged infirmity and collapse of the Chinese economy, small windows of opportunity were seized by rejected “reformers” and Xi began to be cultivated like a potentially star athlete for eventual leadership.  Xi was educated at China’s most prestigious university in the hard science of chemical engineering, then sent through a series of developmental resume building projects, including a stint in military organization and period of overseas exposure in agricultural management, spending time with a family in Muscatine, Iowa.  He returned to begin the climb through a series of provincial Party positions, becoming governor in the vital eastern provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang, where China’s economic miracle was exploding and the critical questions of the relationship of Communist Party dominance and free market activities were under continual fulmination.

In 2007, Xi was elevated to China’s ultimate administrative leadership structure, the nine person Politburo, as First Secretary, a direct line to the ultimate leadership position.  From this position he ran the highly successful Beijing 2008 Olympics, China’s coming out party, and crafted a reputation for having an open ear to reforming China’s inevitable inbred corruption problem , fused to the monolithic party structure.  Critically, it appears he became the favorite of China’s kingmaker, former President Jiang Zemin, while not alienating the current leader, Hu Jintao, an impressive high wire performance.

This week, Xi will assume the Presidency of China, at the zenith of China’s thirty year history of progressive ascendancy.  Although Chinese leadership selection process is cloaked in byzantine processes, murky vetting, and unknown strains, Xi is reported to be a modern conceptualizer.  He is comfortable on the world stage, personally open and confident, and seemingly concerned with addressing Chinese internal issues before they become structural dangers to the leadership.  In a crucial window into the thought process that lead to the elevation of Xi, the exiting President Hu Jintao provided a valuable clue as to the internal problems, declaring the Party’s incestuous corruption is the single greatest risk to the survival of the Chinese Party’s continuing survival and China’s ability to navigate its ascendancy to the primary economic force in the world.

Make no mistake, Zi Jinping is carved of the same stone as each of his preceding Presidents.  He is a stalwart of the Chinese Communist Party and will cotton to no weakness in Party dominance in Chinese society.  Unlike the American President, he will be laser focused on Chinese national self interest as the one and only determinant in policy, and though he may show a welcoming personality, the concept of American politicians that it is important for America to be liked in the world in order to be respected, is completely foreign to him and all Chinese leaders.  China will continue to make its decisions on relations, economy, trade, environment, energy, Taiwan, and ultimately military security questions based on what is best for China.

As the Chinese and American destiny ships cross in the night, you can be sure that Xi Jinping will quietly but confidently ask the American ship to yield right of way.

 

    The Lion sleeps tonight.

     Andrew Breitbart passed away yesterday at the too young age of 43, an age when the clarity as to what in the world your purpose might be on earth begins to gain real definition.  At just such an age Andrew Breitbart was every day re-writing and re-framing his own definition of worthy activity and purpose. It is a nearly intolerable loss to the fragile movement to restore the concept of intelligent and healthy skepticism to a world that has fallen in love with “settled” science, political correctness, and self loathing for the great achievements of western civilization.  Andrew Breitbart’s enormous contribution to defining and constructing a media platform for universal availability of information and insightful opinion, and the courageous exposure of those who would seek to pervert and exploit the government’s progressive power to control individual expression, makes Andrew Breitbart an archangel of the western ideal,  a passionate defender of the Ramparts ,  and #20 of Ramparts People We Should Know.

     Andrew Breitbart’s singular skill has been a savant’s understanding of the power of the Internet.  A classic collegiate underachiever who self-admittedly majored in partying in college, Breitbart was a liberal supporter of the usual college causes, but had his eyes opened by the Clarence Thomas inquisition as to the inherent hypocrisy of those who loudly proclaimed the accepted litany of racism or sexism, than turned around and attacked individuals on the basis of race or sex, simply because they had differing personal stories or philosophies to the accepted mantra. It didn’t fit Breitbart’s gut sense of how individualism should be celebrated, not categorized, and it forever changed him.  Recognizing the potential of the infant internet, in 1995 he got himself introduced to Matt Drudge of the Internet pioneering Drudge Report, and proved to be a natural at understanding the internet’s incredibly brisk pace, huge store of information, and universal access.  He became an editor and headline writer for the blog post and was so impressive, that Drudge introduced his talents to others seeking a start in the new world of alternative media. He was hired by Arianna Huffington to help her structure her internet media site and with Andrew Breitbart’s help, managed to achieve a dominant status in alternative media as the Huffington Post.  It became clear to many that Breitbart had special skills and he found himself writing for many online outlets, including National Review Online and the Wall Street Journal.

     Andrew Breitbart was certainly not satisfied to be just your average quality editor and blogger.  He began to synthesize his personal vision of alternative media to what he viewed as the corrupted and stilted viewpoints of traditional media.  It started with his own internet news site, Breitbart.com, and his big ideas grew into a multifaceted platform for the sifting of information on entertainment, government, foreign policy, and media itself.  The Breitbart empire grew into an aggressive counterview to the prevailing liberal inflection to every news event.  Then, the moment of transition when Breitbart went from passive reporting to active exposure of injustice and hypocrisy.  A child of television and familiar with traditional media’s predilection for gotcha news with hidden cameras, (such as the stings venerable 60 minutes was renowned for), Breitbart devised a sting operation in which he arranged to have an absurd proposition be proposed to the notorious community activist group, ACORN, to expose their flagrant lack of morality in the service of organizational power.  A fake pimp and prostitute presented themselves to ACORN representatives as desirous of setting up an underage brothel to be supplied by illegal alien conduits.  Absurd of course to everyone but ACORN, an organization positioned to filch from the American taxpayer a cool billion dollars in support of such incredible immoralities.  Breitbart played the hidden video releases serially like a concert maestro, letting traditional media outlets put up excuse after excuse for ACORN’s actions, only to have each reaction destroyed by a further Breitbart videotape.  It caused the exposure of the blatant partisan nature of ACORN, and forced the Congress to de-fund it.  It made Breitbart a mega Internet star, and forever, the devil incarnate to establishment defenders. 

     The ACORN sting was followed by others, and Breitbart became the internet face of the mad as hell we are not going to take it anymore crowd.  He found his special muse in the actions of the Tea Party, enamored with their spontaneous rejection of governmental dominance, adherence to the fundamental founding principles of the republic, and the visible hatred they engendered in the traditional media, for simply declaring their rights to disagree and organize opposition as Americans.  Breitbart traveled the nation speaking at Tea Party gatherings, supporting the cause, and defending agressively against those that sought to do damage to the movement.  Breitbart had become this generation’s Teddy Roosevelt, using his bully pulpit to re-align American thinking, and defend American exceptionalism.

     He was nowhere near tapped out in ideas or energy when the great warrior’s heart began to fail him.  Friends have suggested that Breitbart had sustained a significant heart attack just a month ago, but had ignored warnings to rest or reduce his crazy schedule.  He was preparing to present his latest internet vision this month when his heart failed him and put out his light.  The incredible flurry of responses, both laudatory and savage, showed the tremendous impact he managed to have on the dominant informational source of our times, the Internet, and the emotions he stirred.  His mind was a creative one, and his soul visionary.  We have managed to lose one of the great defenders of the Ramparts, at a moment western society needed him most.  Although Andrew Breitbart will live on through his creations, the voice of those of us who hope for a world where  individual capacity is elevated, not oppressed, was diminished measurably.  Andrew, travel the river Styx in peace – we the forever indebted will make sure there is money for you for the boatman.