Andrew Breitbart, conservative raconteur, tea party icon and political hell-raiser, passed away on March 1st, 2012, a dozen years ago today.  When I think back I don’t really care why he died, or how he died—I only care that he died, that his voice was silenced, and his death left me with a curiously hollow feeling, a nagging emptiness in the pit of my stomach. That he was never replaced in the political landscape was neither shocking nor unexpected, because Andrew Breitbart was unique.

My sorrow over the loss of this young man was and is deep, and when I found myself with a few moments of privacy in the days after he left us, the tears on my cheeks were real. I met him once, at a tea party event in Philadelphia, and still have on my desk a photo of us smiling, with his arm around my shoulder. The tea party movement of the time, indeed, all of conservatism, had lost its Samuel Adams: Breitbart didn’t just speak the language of liberty—he thundered it. His importance as a leader in the existential battle for the soul of America cannot be overstated.

Personal photo provided by author

Andrew Breitbart was not content to poke the belly of the beast; he sliced it open and spilled its foul contents for all to see, and the Left hated him for it—because then, as now, the one thing they fear above all else is exposure. They hide comfortably behind political smokescreens while the mainstream media envelop them in a sort of foggy, feel-good legitimacy… but they never fooled Breitbart. He went right after them, fearlessly and confidently and with great, good humor, and showed the world their true nature, their culture of stultifying collectivism and control, their aversion to true liberty and oh, how he made them scream. And in their rage, in their foul-mouthed rants, they simply proved his point.

Fittingly, he spent his last few hours sipping wine in a bar near his home, genially debating politics with some folks he had just met, and not long after he left he was walking alone in contemplation of things perhaps great, perhaps small. We’ll never know what he was thinking or feeling or planning in those last moments, because at 12:19 AM he walked into the arms of God, where he will rest in peace forever.

Andrew Breitbart, dead at 43.