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Hate, hate-speech and hate-crimes
By John Ray (M.A.;Ph.D.)
"I knew that the wave of anti-Americanism that would swell up after the Iraq war would make me feel ill. And it has. It has made me much, much more ill than I had expected.
My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.... I hate feeling this hatred."
(Quote from English novelist Margaret Drabble from May, 2003)
As we will see below (and also here and here), Leftists are great haters and to cover up their own hatreds -- of America, the rich, WASPS, the bourgeoisie and anyone who is happily doing well for themselves -- Leftists are extremely punitive about any suspicion of hatred in others -- leading to the concept of "hate crimes" -- crimes which they see as deserving especially heavy legal penalties. John Hudock sums that concept up rather well:
I have personally never understood why it is worse to kill someone because they're gay or black than it is to kill someone because you wanted the $12.50 they had in their wallet. It adds a never ending and unnecessary complexity to the law, the natural result of politicians reacting to every news event with new legislation. I remember calls for special penalties for assault committed against teachers after some horrific school violence somewhere. It seems a direct violation of the principles of equal-treatment under the law when we start creating special victim classes
Fred Reed puts the case against the "hate crime" concept very simply:The continuing effort to expand laws against hate crimes is not, I think, good for either the police or the country. Let me tell you why.
To begin with, the effect is to create political crimes. In the past, if I shot a Vietnamese, or Mormon, or white Christian, or homosexual, the crime would be murder. My politics would have nothing to do with the definition of the crime. Whether I did it for fun, or because I didn't like immigrants, or thought Mormons were terrible people, would have nothing to do with it. The crime was killing, not disliking a group.
That seems to be changing. Political view now begins to define the crime. Killing a homosexual because I disliked homosexuals would be a hate crime, while killing a rich man or beggar because I disapproved of either would be ordinary murder and subject to lighter penalties. That is, hating some people is becoming comparatively acceptable under the law, while hating others, if not yet a crime yet in itself, makes a crime carry a heavier penalty. We are criminalizing thought, and giving added legal protection to some but not others.
This is an excellent way to undermine respect for the law, the courts, and the police.
I think we all understand that these laws are not aimed at hate, but at particular kinds of hate found disagreeable by particular political groups, chiefly on the left. (Note that the groups granted special privilege invariably vote Democratic.) That is, we all understand that a woman who kills a man because she hates men will not be guilty of a hate crime, as neither will a black or Hispanic who kills a white from hostility to whites, or a homosexual who, furious at heterosexuals for their lack of respect, kills a heterosexual.
We are seeing the continuation, by means of the criminal-justice system, of the Balkanization of the society that has long been otherwise advanced. It is most curious. We talk about how we believe in equality before the law, and that advantage should not be distributed according to race, creed, color, sex, or national origin. In fact we are on the way to making everything whatsoever depend on these things.
So one should face the basic question involved: Is a crime worse because it is directed against a minority member? "Yes" seems to be the universal claim of the Left. And that idea has been enshrined in law in various places -- notably in Canada and England.
But why a crime against someone who happens to be regarded as part of a majority should be treated more lightly never seems to be answered. If someone bashes me, do I hurt less because I am white and heterosexual? Is crime against me less important? One is reminded of Shakespeare's powerful reply to antisemitism in "The Merchant of Venice":
"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases. Heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?"
These days, one could substitute "white man" for "Jew" and "homosexual" for "Christian" in the above.
And on the real source of hate in politics, U.K. columnist Richard Littlejohn is succinct (Quote from The Sun of Oct. 12th, 2002):
The fact is that the real Nasties are all to be found on the Left. Most of the spite and class hatred comes not from Conservatives but from Labour, whether in the vindictive campaign against the countryside or the war on motorists. Or by deliberately trying to prevent private school pupils from getting to the best universities, regardless of how well they did in their exams. The siting of asylum seeker camps in Tory constituencies is another example.
I can't ever remember, in 18 years of Conservative rule, the Tories ever wanting to eliminate all Labour opposition. But Labour wants to drive the Tories into the sea, just as the Arabs want to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. I know from my experience as a columnist that if you attack any vaguely Conservative cause, the worst you can expect is a bit of grumbling and a few angry letters.
But turn against the Left on Palestinian homicide bombers, illegal immigration or fox-hunting and the hate mail and death threats have to be read to be believed. Challenge the smug New Labour/Guardianista axis and expect a barrage of lies, smears and character assassination in return.
But the big recent demonstration of how close to the surface hate is among Leftists is of course the absolute frenzy of hate exhibited towards the very moderate and centrist President George W. Bush, not only among American Leftists but among Leftists around the world. The most often-noted expression of such hate is an article by the supposedly moderate American Leftist Jonathan Chait.
Jeff Jacoby comments on Chait and political hatred generally as follows:
"A popular conceit of the left is that political hatred is a sickness of the right, one to which liberals are largely immune. "Just who are these Clinton haters," asked Time magazine in April 1994, "and why do they loathe Bill and Hillary with such passion?" It answered, in effect: That's just the way conservatives are. The article quoted historian Alan Brinkley: "Liberals tend to value tolerance highly, so there's a greater reluctance to destroy enemies than among the right."
That was a whopper even in 1994, a year when Republican leader Newt Gingrich was routinely vilified as a McCarthyite and a racist. Ten years later, with a storm of Bush hatred raging among liberal Democrats, the notion that the left is too high-minded to savage its opponents is about as plausible as the claim that the moon landings were staged in Hollywood. The left's bitter fury toward Bush is more than just atmospherics. It is the big political story of the past two years. The visceral revulsion Bush provokes in so many Democrats fuels the passion that has had such a seismic effect on the presidential campaign....
In a startling article in The New Republic last year, Jonathan Chait made what the magazine trumpeted as "The Case for Bush Hatred." He opened with a declaration that until recently would have been unthinkable in a respected journal of opinion: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it." Bush's policies, Chait wrote, "rank him among the worst presidents in US history" -- but "I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. . . . I hate the way he walks. . . . I hate the way he talks. . . . And while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more." Chait went on to make a factual, detailed case for his poor opinion of Bush. But what does "I hate the way he walks . . . I hate the way he talks" mean, if not that the facts and details don't really matter? Bush hatred isn't a considered judgment. It's a distemper; a derangement".
In addition, Powerline is one of many who showed in detail how item after item in Chait's supposedly "reasoned" explanation of his hatred is a distortion of the facts. The response is entirely emotional, not rational. It has a very close parallel in something I consider in detail elsewhere. One would think that a President who oversaw a major expansion of welfare, deposed a Fascist dictator and gave unprecedented prominence to blacks among his senior staff would be greatly respected by Leftists but the opposite is the case where George W. Bush is concerned. It clearly shows that the issues that Leftists publicly espouse are not remotely what really drive them.
And even after Bush was well into his second term and thus incapable of being re-elected, the hatred continued. The hate could achieve nothing but still it came bubbling up. For instance, when Richard Cohen, a Washington Post "liberal", said in 2006 that a comedian who had criticized Bush was not funny HE became the target of the hate. Cohen writes:"Then I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House Correspondents' dinner. Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face'') and ended with Ron (``Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER'') who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius.
"Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden sewage right in the face. I'd quickly delete the thing, like closing a manhole cover, and move on, trying to figure out how to peek into an e-mail without getting the full, ugly message. No way....
"The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
"The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during anti-war demonstrations."
And an earlier (2003) article by Jeff Jacoby was also very good on the endemic hate-speech of the American Left:"I had noticed that when a prominent Republican or conservative said something offensive about liberals, it typically set off a storm of media condemnation, while an anti-conservative smear voiced by a liberal or a Democrat rarely drew any protest."And he goes on to give a heap of examples.
But a 2006 article by Jeff Jacoby captures best the sheer insensate hate of the American Left for their GOP President. A small excerpt:
Six years into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink? George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.
And Alan Bromley gives an hilarious account of unreasoning hate among grassroots Leftists. And Michelle Malkin has felt the hate personally.
And what is the difference between hate and chronic anger? Not much in practical terms at least -- as far as I can see. So the following passage is of some interest:
"The tendency to righteous indignation was curbed through most of his years on the High Court bench but came to characterise his term as president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He described it in the following terms: "I have never felt better. It has something to do with getting angry. Friends say: 'You never used to be so angry.' I can't help it. Sometimes I have difficulty signing my name because my hand shakes so much.""
So who was this anger-consumed man? It was a very Left-leaning judge of the High Court of Australia, Sir Ronald Darling Wilson, AC, KBE, CMG, QC. His "compassion" may perhaps be judged from the fact that he very nearly managed to send to the gallows a totally innocent deaf-mute. Or perhaps his total abandonment of judicial principles in finding Australian governments guilty of imaginary crimes against blacks might give an idea of his character. Details here
Even though the person just mentioned was a man of considerable distinction in his community, it might be objected that the Leftist haters so far described are minor figures not representative of mainstream Leftism. So what about the national leader of the major Leftist party in a long established Anglo-Saxon democracy? Would he be representative enough? Let's read about the man who became Federal leader of the Australian Labor Party in 2004, Mark Latham:
"He has never resiled from the class warrior's description of himself he gave The Bulletin: "I'm a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them, the more I hate them."
Although it's not the way well-adjusted people work, Latham -- who once described himself as "a maddie" -- sees it as normal. "Well, everyone's got hate in their lives. I mean, it's just part of life ... I hope my little boy hates a Liberal prime minister who sells out our national interests.
"I grew up in a family that used to hate Bob Menzies. You know, my grandparents and their first education they gave me in politics, you know, what's wrong with having those feelings about people who you think are hurting the country? If you are a good Australian, that's a natural feeling, I would have thought."
Along with tribal hatreds, licensed violence is part of being a good Australian. "Look, this idea that politics can be too rough and too personal is a bit rich. I can take you to any sports field any Saturday morning and show you parents getting stuck into it. Having a go at the ref, yelling abuse. It's part of the Australian way. We're not a namby-pamby nation that hides its feelings. I think we're a nation that's willing to call a spade a spade and, if need be, to pick up the spade and hit someone over the head with it.""
(Quote from here or here).
Most Leftist leaders are more cautious in what they say about themselves than that -- though their deeds are often eloquent enough (Stalin, Pol Pot etc.) -- but his Australian bluntness and outspokenness make inference about his motivations unnecessary with Latham.
But perhaps the clearest evidence of the ferocious hate that burns in many Leftist hearts is the way groups that ought on theory to be highly critical of Islamic fundamentalism are in fact supportive of it. The most spectacular example of that is probably this:"Homosexuals face terrible persecution under the Palestinian Authority and yet, there are actually groups like "Queers for Palestine" that go to anti-Israel demonstrations to shout slogans in support of Palestinians and then they get roughed up and shouted down by the Muslims at the demonstration. There is something very mind-boggling here, and it is connected to the radical feminist who shows up almost nude at an anti-war demonstration taking the side of militant Islam, when the fact is that if she even showed her face under some of the regimes she supports she would be mutilated or raped or killed or burned alive."
Clearly, their burning hatred of their own society and what they see as its "establishment" blinds them to all else. And who would have thought that people as anti-religion as most hard-core Leftists are would be so protective of what is probably the most ferocious form of religious fundamentalism there is -- Islamic fundamentalism? Only their relentless hatred of their own society makes sense of it.
When confronted with the sort of discreditable Leftist attitudes and behaviour that I have referred to above, a common ploy for American "liberals" is for them to to disown their Leftist brethren and say that they are different. They say that the people I am talking about are extremists and mainstream "liberals" are not like that. I will believe that the day I hear American "liberals" condemn a certain Communist tyrant by the name of Castro but in fact we don't even have to look as far as Cuba to see the falsity of the claim. The man who was at one time front-runner to become Democrat candidate in the U.S. Presidential election of 2004 was Howard Dean. And here's a choice quote from him uttered during his successful campaign for the office of Democratic party chairman in 2005:
"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization," the failed presidential hopeful told the crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel, where he and six other candidates spoke at the final DNC forum before the Feb. 12 vote for chairman.
As Captain's Quarters comments:
"Oh my. Does the DNC want the Democrats to become the Party of Hate? And just what kind of faith does Howard Dean have that requires him to "hate" Republicans? I have no problem with opposition; that's the basis of free speech and democracy, after all. But to have someone who wants to claim the leadership post of one of the two major political parties tell the nation that he hates a plurality of Americans would disqualify a Republican candidate immediately. Apparently, over at the DNC, that's their primary prerequisite.
Dean and his followers demonstrate the illness that has infected the American Left since the 1960s. They don't just oppose -- they hate. They hate Republicans, they hate suburbia, they hate just about everything America has done. They also hate it when people point out this rather obvious fact, claiming that their critics engage in censorship and McCarthyism. However, it's pretty damned difficult to maintain that facade when Dean gets up on a stump and says, "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for."
And, despite the ferocity of Leftist hate, there seems to be a rather amazing convention among prosecutors that Leftists are immune from sanction by the hate-speech laws which they themselves have crafted -- as Robert Kelly points out:
"Most states now have hate crime laws that have been carefully tailored to meet the politically correct tests that were imposed by the above-mentioned Supreme Court decisions. The People's Republic of Massachusetts, of course, is a leader in this respect with its hate crime laws that cover race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and, presumably, the eating of sweet pickles.
When a crime motivated by hate is committed, it is true that hate speech is often the most important match that ignited the deed. We see that example every day in the Middle East where endemic killing is fed by huge daily doses of hate speech in the media and, most importantly, in mosques. Young Muslims do not emerge from the womb as killers-to-be any more than do young Americans or Jews. But after years of hearing hate speech they look at Americans and Jews with hatred so instinctive that it needs only the slightest excuse to explode into an orgy of killing.
But because hate speech can have such terrible consequences does that mean that it should be criminalized even when no provable criminal act took place? Apparently the answer to that is yes and no. It all depends upon who is doing the hating.
For example, the Congressional Black Caucus concluded its four-day, 35th Annual Legislative Conference in Washington on September 25, 2005. In addition to the members of the black Caucus, Democratic Senators Clinton (NY) and Obama (IL) attended and heard (and did not disassociate themselves from) the remarks of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) who, among other things, said that President Bush is the modern day version of Bull Connor (the poster-boy bigot from Birmingham, Alabama, who in 1963 turned a fire hose and attack dogs loose on a black protest march led by Martin Luther King, Jr.), and that being poor and black in the United States is "not an inconvenience - it's a death sentence."
Rangel conveniently overlooked the fact that Bull Connor, two of the most racist governors of the time, Wallace (AL) and Maddox (GA), and Senator Robert Byrd (W. VA - with a Klu Klux Klan background) were all Democrats, or that the Civil Rights Act that gave political life to blacks would not have passed if Democrats of the day had their way.
Rangel is a demagogue and a hypocrite. And the congressional leaders who, by their silence, accepted Rangel's distorted opinions regarding America and its president share his guilt. Hundreds at the conference heard Rangel's remarks plus, according to Caucus leaders, another 100,000 over a live Web cast. Millions more became aware of his comments through the general media. Young blacks are listening to such demagogues - and reacting.
Rangel and others have peddled racism for 40 years. He and his ilk are a powerful deterrent to the progress of the people that they allegedly represent because they feed their trusting constituents a steady diet of hate speech. And they are living insults to those who have through their taxes have spent billions to assist black Americans and who, through their generosity, are doing the same today in the hurricane-battered cities of the Gulf of Mexico.
But Rangel and other America-hating left wingers are not accused of hate speech. How come?
Double standards, anyone?
So let us conclude this article by listening to the words of one of the most enduring heroes of the Left:"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become ."
The words of Che Guevara
So Leftist accusations of "hate-speech" are just camouflage for who the real haters are.
So what should we say to Leftists about that? I think this is pretty apt:
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam [is] in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye".(Matthew 7: 4,5)
