Breitbart: Being hated feels better than being liked

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.

Column: Hate crimes a slippery slope?

My Arkansas News Bureau column is about hate crimes legislation. Is it a slippery slope?

Last week, two men, Frankie Maybee and Sean Popejoy from Green Forest, became the first in Arkansas to be convicted of hate crimes under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The two men used their pickup truck to run five Hispanic men off the road, injuring all of them and putting one into a coma, after taunting and threatening them because of their ethnicity.

Of course Maybee and Popejoy should go to jail, but not for “hating.” They should go to jail for aggravated assault and battery. How they feel about a particular group is irrelevant.

Hate crimes legislation punishes not only actions but thought. I think it’s a dangerous path – one on which European countries and Canada already have traveled farther. America shouldn’t follow.

Here is the column.

The right muzzles Newt Gingrich

“I am not a member of any organized political party,” American humorist Will Rogers once said. “I am a Democrat.”

That’s one of Rogers’ most famous quotations, and it is as true now as it was when he said it. It’s one of the reasons Democrats have had such trouble creating a coherent message to counteract the “less government” message Republicans have been preaching so successfully since the Reagan years.

Republicans have a different problem – they are too organized, as Rogers pointed out. He also once said, “Democrats never agree on anything. That’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.”

Now more than ever in my lifetime, Republicans demand almost lockstep conformity on just about every issue – as Newt Gingrich is finding out.

Gingrich, the party’s leader during the mid-90s, is trying to revive his political career with a presidential bid that is going nowhere. On Sunday, he criticized Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan as “radical” and “right-wing social engineering.”

I don’t know about “right-wing social engineering,” but Ryan’s plan is pretty radical. He wants to replace Medicare as it now exists with a voucher program that gives senior citizens $15,000 a year to buy their own health insurance. It certainly deserves a healthy debate – both within the Republican Party and outside it. In fact, a healthy debate would actually help its cause. A new poll shows most voters oppose any cuts at all to Medicare, which shows how little they understand the budget realities the country faces. A healthy debate might educate them on those realities.

But Republicans are cutting Gingrich off at the knees, and, regrettably, he has already backtracked.

Republicans have always talked about being a “big tent party.” If Newt Gingrich isn’t welcome inside, that’s a pretty small tent.

Here’s the poll I mentioned.

Libertarians turn in sigs; should be on ballot

A core belief of independentarkansas is that the political system is broken and unable to reform itself.

That’s why the news that the Libertarian Party of Arkansas seemingly has gathered more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot is welcome. The party announced that it has gathered 16,139 signatures, far more than the 10,000 required. No Libertarian has ever run for elected office in Arkansas except for president of the United States.

Libertarians fill a niche neither of the two parties currently fill – they are economic conservatives (like Republicans) and social liberals (like Democrats). Its candidates will be for lower taxes and pro-choice on abortion. Having never had power, they tend to be consistent in their views – and occasionally extreme, to their detriment. They’ll have to decide to moderate their views, or at least their rhetoric, if they want start winning elections.

Regardless, they are welcome on my ballot and might get a few of my votes if they run the right candidates. The best way to reform the two major parties is to make them afraid candidates who are not a part of their duopoly might actually win an election.

Can Arkansas’ schools be as good as Finland’s?

Dr. Tom Kimbrell

My column this week is about Arkansas Education Commissioner Dr.Tom Kimbrell’s recent trip to Finland, which has one of the world’s best public school systems, and how it compares to Arkansas’, which, well, doesn’t.

Kimbrell’s surprising finding was that Finnish schools aren’t terribly different than Arkansas’. Students are in class 190 days a year, which is comparable to Arkansas’ 178, and learn while sitting at desks in classes led by a teacher.

There are differences. Finnish culture puts a high emphasis on education and accords teachers with great respect. Also, schools in Finland emphasize foreign language attainment. Most interestingly, schools build breaks into the school day where students actually play – unlike in America, where recess has been downsized.

Here’s the column.