I received The Joy of Hate for Christmas yesterday, and devoured it in a day. It’s a quick read, and most of it tells me something I learned long ago: that “tolerance” is a rhetorical slight-of-hand whereby progressives grant themselves a license to demonize, terrorize and condemn. So to the extent that it didn’t reveal anything to me, I was disappointed. One encounters this in reading books by conservatives and libertarians: a lot of “Right on, brother,” and very little “I did not know that.”

Plus, I was looking for something on the order of the book’s tag line “How to Triumph Over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage.” Most of the book served to point out the phony outrage, which, as said, I didn’t quite need.

The final chapter “The End of Hate,” however, came close. An excerpt:

A few months ago, I came up with something called the Mirror Jerk Effect. This is how it works: Let’s say Ed Schultz makes a crack about Sarah Palin that I don’t like, because I like Palin and I don’t like Schultz I create a mirror effect. I say to myself, What if, instead of Schultz and Palin, it’s Rush and Garafalo? If I don’t care about Rush’ opinion of a silly lefty, then I shouldn’t care about a lefty’s opinion of a conservative I like. This little mental exercise eliminates so much wasted energy that I now have time to help the poor and needy (i.e., myself).

For the most part you gotta think like one of those lions on the Serengeti, which I beleive is in Canada. Conserve energy and then expend it when you need it most. Responding toe very stupid remark or caustic joke will wear you down. That’s why bitter people look decades older than they really are. I’m told Ed Schultz is really twenty-six.

That’s the kind of happy-warrior mentality that Breitbart, who gets a chapter devoted to him, exemplified. Breitbart didn’t just attack the news; he made the news. He didn’t just snipe at the media; he made them dance to his tune. And they hated him for it, and he reveled in their hate.

This is the lesson that the tag-line promised: the triumph lies in absorbing your enemy’s rage and continuing on anyway, because for all their fury they remain powerless to stop you. Sandra Fluke was supposed to end Rush Limbaugh; he’s still there.

Determine yourself. Know who you are and what you are about. Figure out what you will and won’t stand for, and then the Great Hypersensitive diminish to the background noise in the annals of history that they truly are.