Ben Shapiro - Bullies: How the Lefts Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans

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TO MY FRIEND AND MENTOR, THE IRREPLACEABLE ANDREW BREITBART

O n March 10, 2011, President Barack Obama led a White House conference on a crisis plaguing America: the crisis of bullying.

In the middle of the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, with American soldiers involved in two wars overseas, with Iran on the brink of nuclear weapons development, the White House was focused, laserlike, on kids getting thrown into lockers.

There had been no measurable uptick in school bullying across America. In fact, by all available statistics, bullying is down across the board, with young Americans demonstrating particular tolerance for those of different backgrounds. All Americans, virtually without exception, hate bullies. But President Obama felt the necessity to call leaders across America together to decry bullying.

Bullying isnt a problem that makes headlines every day, the president said, his sonorous baritone trembling with emotion. But every day it touches the lives of young people all across this

Obama didnt stop there. He appeared on Cartoon Network to preface a documentary on bullying, solemnly intoning, I care about this issue deeply, not just as the president, but as a dad.... Weve all got more to do. Everyone has to take action against bullying.because God knows that HHS shouldnt be utilizing its resources on, say, fighting cancer. Obama even cut videos on behalf of anti-bullying groups like the It Gets Better campaign.

So, what prompted President Obamas sudden recognition, two years after taking office, that bullying was an issue worth tackling? Jonathan Capehart, an Obama administration ally at the Washington Post, asked White House senior advisor and Obama mentor Valerie Jarrett exactly that question the day of the White House conference. Taking on bullying, Jarrett admitted, was part of the presidents Winning the Future campaign strategy. In fact, the goal was to recruit all Americans as part of Obamas anti-bullying campaign: The purpose here is to engage people in that conversation and to give it the spotlight of the White House so that perhaps people whove been ignoring this issue or werent aware of itwe can capture their attention.... Everybody in the community has a role to play. Not just parents and students.

What could a childless eighty-year-old shut-in from Hoboken, for example, do about bullying? Obama and Jarrett never made that clear. What they did make clear, however, was that bullyingnot just school bullyingwas something that had to be fought. Americans had to take up the challenge. America had to become an anti-bullying country.

This was a weird pitch, to say the least. After all, America has the greatest anti-bullying record of any country in human history. America hates bullies. Over the course of the twentieth century, America defeated Nazism and communism abroad, Jim Crow and sexism at home. Why would AmericansAmericans, of all people on earthneed a remedial course in anti-bullying?

We didnt. We just needed a bit of Obama reeducation.

The strategy here was simple. Obama and his friends in the media and on the organized left picked the one thing all Americans can agree on: bullying. They strategically placed President Obama at the head of the anti-bullying cause. Then came the brilliant gambit: they appropriated bullying to apply only to anything remotely conservative.

The Tea Party? A bunch of bullies. Religious people? Bullies. Global warming unbelievers, defense hawks, venture capitalists, fans of voter identification or traditional marriage, opponents of affirmative action, right-to-work advocates, supporters of Israel, haters of Glee ? Bullies. Those who dislike President Obama? They were the biggest bullies of all. Liberalism and anti-bullying, it turned out, weremiracle of miracles!one and the same.

Their twisted logic was deceptively easy. Liberals claim that they are all about protecting victim classes from bullies. Conservatives oppose liberals. Therefore, by definition, conservatives must be bullies. And bullies must be stopped.

This was the Obama campaigns entire reelection strategy. Everyone is against bullying; unite Americans behind Obama on bullying; then redefine bullying to include everything that Obama and the left oppose. Voil! A unified coalition against bullying becomes a unified coalition against conservatism. Leftists, by definition, become anti-bullying pugilists standing up for the little guy; right-wingers, by definition, become bullies who ought to be punched in the mouth.

The Obama embrace of the anti-bullying cause, and the subsequent linguistic trick of conflating anti-bullying with anti-conservatism, is the single best bully tactic in the history of American politics. The liberal anti-bullying campaign justifies every leftist thug tactic theyve ever embraced.

Its not a new tactic. Victims hold a cherished place in the liberal heart. With victimhood comes moral power, and the power to extort the supposed victimizers. Liberals have always claimed to be fighting bullies. The only difference is that now the president of the United States openly conflates opposing his agenda with bullying.

To that end, President Obama routinely plays the victim. Hes told useven as he plays the race cardthat people treat him differently because he has a funny name and because if he had a son, hed look like Trayvon Martin. He trots out race flaks like 9/11 truther Tour to suggest that white peoplethe same white people who idiotically voted him into officehave been turned violent by the rise of a successful black man. Hes got Tom Hanks narrating a campaign video in which he suggests that Obamas failures are due to this nave, beautiful waif of a man facing down the harsh realities of scum-sucking Republicans who oppose Glorious Change. No wonder Obama looks like hes lost weight. Hes been lugging that gigantic cross around for the last four years.

But, says the Obama campaign, there is a way to end Obamas victimization. Vote for him. And destroy anybody who opposes him.

See, thats the dirty little secret: buried beneath all of the lefts supposed hatred for bullying is a passionate love for bullyingthe use of power to force those who disagree to shut up, back down, or face crushing consequences up to and including loss of reputation, career destruction, and even death.

The lefts anti-bullying stance is an enormous lie. It is a purposeful lie. It is a lie designed to disguise the fact that leftists are the greatest group of bullies in American history.

The day before Andrew Breitbart died, he was obsessing, as he often did, about Media Matters for America, the George Sorosfunded, Obama-connected think tank dedicated to pressuring its opponents into silence. Andrew had recently dictated a column to me in which he ripped the founder of Media Matters, former conservative turncoat David Brock. Media Matters, Andrew wrote, was a mechanism to promote a special brand of David Brock career-enhancing blindly self-motivated political assassinations.

Brock and company, Andrew would point out again and again, were the worst kind of bullies.

And Andrew hated bullies.