There is a line in Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” where the great political thinker instructed that it is better for a leader to be feared than loved because people can choose to love you but they cannot choose not to fear you.

Blogger Andrew Breitbart apparently would agree.

The blogger and filmmaker who put out of business the community action group ACORN with a heavily edited video was in Little Rock Wednesday as a guest of KARN and Americans for Prosperity to talk about the media environment he is helping create.

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Breitbart said that conservatives need to create what the paper called “their own media empires,” which seems a little late because it seems to me that they have already done that.

The problem is that so many of those empires serve more as advocacy efforts than journalistic ones. I would prefer more conservatives attempting to cover the news fairly and objectively as a way to balance the mostly liberals who cover the news now with varying success at being fair and objective. I want conservatives in the media who ask tough questions of both Republicans and Democrats and examine issues fairly, not people who yell at me for three hours. Which is what I’ve got now.

According to the D-G, Breitbart said he learned this gem after a tough appearance on the show “Real Time with Bill Maher”: “The discovery that being hated by your enemies feels better than being liked by your allies.”

I would have trouble relating to a person who thinks that way, though I wouldn’t hate him.

Jason Tolbert has an interview with Breitbart on The Tolbert Report.