The right wing is especially good at the art of projection, that special thing where they pin their own behavior on others. Let's all cry for the persecuted Breitbots. Big, drippy salt tears.

Breitbrat Ben Shapiro, who has been with the Breitbart site for awhile and represents the Young Turk-style Smartass Breitbot, has written a book all about mean lefty bullies.

Evidently it's not bullying to intentionally edit videos to make it look like people who did things right actually did them wrong. Someone should ask Shirley Sherrod, or the ACORN folks, or even Nadia Naffe how the Breitbots stand up against the bullies.

Nay, nay, it's all the meanies on the left. What a bunch of whiners. From Shapiro's article:

Obama isn’t against bullying. Neither is the left more broadly. After all, when someone stands up to a bully – say, Israel standing up to Islamic terrorists, or even George Zimmerman standing up to a young bully pounding his head into the pavement – the left goes berserk. Actually, the American left has become the greatest purveyor of bullying during the last half-century. That’s the dirty little secret: buried beneath all of the left’s supposed hatred for bullying is a passionate love for bullying—the 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. In order to accomplish their bullying tactics, however, the left has to portray itself as the defender of victimized groups. Those who oppose their political agenda are then portrayed as oppressors of those victimized groups, morally deficient folks who deserve to be run out of town on a rail. The agenda supposedly starts with anti-bullying. It ends with bullying the hell out of everyone on the other side of the aisle. The left’s goal is to shut down the political debate by decrying their opponents as victimizers. They label their opponents racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, benighted, backwards bitter clingers. They liken them to Nazis, KKK members, terrorists. Then they cast them out like lepers from the political debate. Because who would bother debating a Nazi, or a KKK member, or a terrorist?

Yes, because our founding fathers clearly thought it was fine to call someone a slut on national radio. Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. That's not bullying. Not at all. No, that's liberty, by Breitbot standards. Liberty, my ass.

This, more than anything is what makes me sick. Shapiro ends his little book promo/rant by claiming that the LEFT has divided the country.

Because the left decided Obama should be a one-term president?

Because the left told uninsurable people to STFU, sit down and die?

Because the left blocks every single thing, no matter how trivial, no matter how small it might be?

Because the left nearly blew up the economy and the recovery in 2011 over something routine and is threatening to do it again?

No, the LEFT did not do this, Ben Shapiro, you little twerp. The day Barack Obama was inaugurated you TeaBirchers crawled out from under your rocks in the form of Breitbots and wingers and decided you were going to drive everyone in the country onto one side or the other. Pick sides? Oh hell, yes. The day you all told me to shut up and die with your umpty-zillion attempts to repeal Obamacare you forced me to pick one side, and so it is with me, and with many, many others.

My spouse gave up hating four years ago, which is why he also gave up conservatism as a political philosophy. He was tired of the hate and the vitriol and the lies, which the right wing relies on as the grist for their hate mill. Right-wing hate is destroying conservatism and rendering it irrelevant. Shapiro is reacting to that, not any real bullying.

Ben Shapiro will probably sell a few copies of his book, and the wingnut welfare fairies will buy up a lot more so they can push it up the bestseller lists. But it doesn't change the fact that it's nothing more than a self-indulgent whine which is a waste of the paper used to print it.

Conservatism and libertarianism fail because they do not understand the concept of living in a society where people act for the good of that society. Witness the meltdown at FreedomWorks, and subsequent dirty laundry airing, including the wingnut welfare for Rush and Beck. When everyone serves no one but themselves, there is no loyalty to anyone else, and so Dick Armey felt perfectly justified in doing damage to the organization he helped to create.

As for Ben Shapiro, one day he will probably discover that "I" is a lonely state. It's achingly selfish and banal. At that point, perhaps he'll understand what it means to have a government of, by, and for the people. Also? Learn the definition of bullying before you try and write a book about it.