By NICK STONE

FORT LAUDERDALE – The Angry Left doesn’t have conservative commentator and author Andrew Breitbart to kick around anymore. I’m sorry to admit I never considered the legendary blogger a hero until he was gone. But his absence hit me and the country with a deafening thud.

Breitbart dedicated himself to the cause of bringing to light the hypocrisy and vulgarity of the so-called “progressive” left.

He wasn’t about to let them get away with pretending to be open-minded and accepting of individuality. He knew the dark history of the Left and its members’ penchant for the politics of division. Thanks to his work, many of us know the truth, too.

Sometimes Breitbart got it wrong when breaking a story. With his flair for the dramatic, he would occasionally overplay a nugget of truth as though he had the scoop of the century. But along the way, he did uncover some doozies and got Americans talking about some previously unspoken political truths. Beyond muckraking, he used his larger-than-life personality to rally unlikely groups to the conservative brotherhood.

Breitbart was a man of inclusion. He served on the advisory council of the gay Republican group GOProud and was known to have many gay, liberal, and minority friends. While this fact rarely caused right wing outrage, it did spark a meltdown on the left.

The rumor mill spat vile epithets at Breitbart, accusing him of being a closeted gay, predicting that he would die of AIDS, rot in hell, etc. In his lighthearted fashion, Andrew would re-tweet the messages as an homage to and reminder of the true nature of the left.

Breitbart urged conservatives from all walks of life to keep focused on opposing the radical (read: entire) Left, rather than each other. At a recent gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), he admonished the GOP faithful to rise above personal differences for the urgent cause of defeating the political opposition.

“The Republican Party and the conservative movement is not what ABC and CBS puts up on the screen,” Breitbart announced. “They try to portray you in the worst possible light. And when I walk through CPAC or I travel through the United States and I meet people in the Tea Party who care–black, white, gay, and straight–anyone who’s willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive Left, I will be in that bunker.

And if you’re not in that bunker because you’re not satisfied with this candidate, [then] more than shame on you. You’re on the other side.”

In some strange way, Breitbart made it “cool,” or at least acceptable to be conservative.

Was he a gay hero? For those of us who want to see both parties fighting for inclusion and equality, maybe he should have been. The truth is that the world at large was a much, much better place with him in it.