Vincent Rossmeier: Scarborough: Krugman foments "left-wing hate": I'm not sure who Joe Scarborough is or where he's coming from, but his reaction to Paul Krugman's "The Big Hate" column (cited in the previous post) is knee-jerk juvenilia: you know, the sort of retort that seeks to answer a charge by simply repeating it, only louder. I don't even know what "left-wing hate" could mean these days. After all, for several decades now liberals were routinely lambasted for caring too much (especially for the poor), for being soft on crime and too chickenshit to stand up and fight the nation's wars, for wanting to offer therapy when punishment is called for, for being icky blobs of peace, love, and understanding -- and now, all of a sudden, those same people have turned into virulent haters. Why? Well, just because a couple of gun-toting psychopaths took their deep beliefs in right-wing causes a bit too far and went out and killed people, and now the formerly wishy-washy left has the gall to suggest that the right-wing pundits and politicos who championed those same causes, and who themselves have consistently supported all sorts of wars and repression, bear some responsibility for their followers.

It's certainly true that people are more sensitive to hatred directed their own way than they are to hatred of third parties, but if Scarborough thinks Krugman hates him he's being awfully thin-skinned -- suspiciously so if he really is a conservative. After all, look at what conservatives believe: that the poor deserve their fate, that trying to help people put their lives together is a hopeless indulgence, that our way of life can only be defended with overwhelming military force, that if in applying force we inadvertently kill innocent people matters little if at all, that government should never limit the rich in their pursuit of more riches (especially over things like pollution and global warming), but they have no qualms about using the government to prohibit private indulgences that they disapprove of (like drug use or sex). As this list shows, real conservatives are pretty tough characters. You'd think they'd be able to handle some hate, because they sure can dish it out.

On the other hand, when you see their pet projects result in an event of unseemly violence, what else can they do? It's not like we've seen any conservatives back off from their anti-choice stance, least of all to show the likes of Scott Roeder that their crimes will have no effect. No, they wrap themselves up in a ball and pretend to be the real victims, accusing other people of hating them. That ruse is both dishonest and irrelevant. It's dishonest because hatred and violence are so fundamental to the right-wing mindset, as least as currently manifested in the US. It's irrelevant because no matter how disgusted people of the left (at least as currently manifested in the US) get with some right-wingers, they never carry those feelings to the point of committing violent acts -- because, well, we don't believe in violence.

Hatred is a useless emotion for anyone committed to nonviolence, but calling a leftist's disgust and opposition hate may be the only way a right-winger can relate to it. That is one of the maddening things about the right: they can't just dislike something without feeling compelled to prohibit it; they can't stand to give anyone else a break without feeling cheated; the idea that we might be better off helping each other than ripping each other off is one they can't conceive; and when things don't go their way, they turn into shameless prevaricators, denying themselves even the honesty of their misconceptions. Still, the problem isn't that they are dumb and mean. Leftists generally respect people's right to be wrong. The problem comes when they seek the power to force their dumb and mean ideas on others -- especially when they do so on no more authority than possession of a gun. Then the least we can do is point out how the whole sick ball of wax is stuck together. Too bad if that hurts their feelings.

So chill out. Try to find a copy of Bill Sheffield's "I Don't Hate Nobody" (on Journal of a Shelf). The worst thing a leftist can do, after all, is to pick up some of the bad habits of the right.