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H*te Conquers All (not really)—or “You’ve Got to be Taught”

By Kenneth LaFave

November 23, 2024

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Here is a riveting spectacle of losing Democrats screaming their h*tred at an image of Donald Trump: here. All right, it’s actually a scene from 1984 where the socialist population scream h*tred at an image of their No. 1 Enemy of the State, Emanuel Goldstein. But really, what’s the difference?

It is not intrinsically immoral to hate.

I promised to address the subject of hate, but almost wish I hadn’t. Hate is difficult to discuss because it is morally elusive. It is not intrinsically immoral to hate. One may hate sin and injustice, and in fact, Thomas Aquinas wrote that failure to hate injustice is a sin. (FYI, we use “injustice” here to mean something much broader and inclusive than the Left’s tiny mantra of “lack of equity.” For example, the theft of some people’s money to underwrite the lives of others, the waging of pointless wars, the tyrannical imposition of medical procedures… The list is long.)

It is this mass-identity form of hate that concerns us here.

There is a line to be drawn, however, between hating evil ideas and unjust outcomes on the one hand and hating people on the other. “Hate the sin, not the sinner” is the watchword of Christian belief regarding hatred. It is not always an easy distinction to maintain. We all hate Naziism. Why can’t we hate Hitler et al., as well? Where does one stop and the other begin? Yet, the difference is crucial, especially when it applies to groups of people. Hating Germans was never acceptable, even when the ideology many of them espoused led to nightmare. Generalizing according to race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or any other form of group identity is the most despicable form of hate, no matter who’s hating whom.

It is this mass-identity form of hate that concerns us here. Recall the song lyric:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

— Oscar Hammerstein II

This song from South Pacific refers, of course, to racial hatred. Lt. Cable in the musical has found it impossible to overcome the prejudice drilled into him by his parents and to marry a Polynesian girl. How could he tell Mom and Dad? Racial hatred has, thank God, greatly abated over the decades, but in his song, Lt. Cable hit on something that applies to all forms of hatred: It must be taught. Group-hate is not an inherent quality. We are not born with it. It is installed in us, instilled in us. It is carefully taught—taught by families, by nations, by cultures, by ideologies. Catholics were once taught to hate Jews and Protestants to hate Catholics and vice-versa. It’s not limited to the West. The massacre of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda was group-hate at its pinnacle, and while I am no expert on African tribes, I would bet good money that the Hutus weren’t born hating the Tutsis. They had to be taught.

The massive outpouring of hatred directed against Trump supporters by a large number of Democrats has not, and I pray will not, reach anything like the fever pitch of tribal slaughter. But it is nonetheless disturbing that a Yale professor has advised Kamala Harris’s supporters to cut off contact with relatives who voted for Trump—a position endorsed by Whoopi Goldberg; that according to ABC News roughly half the country regards Trump as a fascist (!) and by extension his followers fascists as well; that TV personality Jimmy Kimmel condemned millions of Americans for “voting for a criminal”; and that numerous videos of losing Democrats expressing outrage and in many cases suggesting violence against Trump supporters have appeared on social media.

Numerous videos of losing Democrats expressing outrage and in many cases suggesting violence against Trump supporters have appeared on social media.

Sometimes the hatred is potentially deadly. Consider Marn’i Washington, a FEMA worker who was fired recently for not assisting disaster victims if their property contained a Trump/Vance sign. This is an almost unbelievably evil act, tantamount to attempted murder. Washington was fired, but in an interview following her firing, she claimed that the word to avoid Trump/Vance houses came down from on high—from FEMA officials. This is being investigated, and if true, should result in prison terms, not just firings.

None of this should surprise, however, considering that the tens of millions who voted for Trump have been labeled “deplorable” and “garbage” by Democrat leaders.

A FEMA worker was fired recently for not assisting disaster victims if their property contained a Trump/Vance sign.

In short, to the Left we are deplorable fascist garbage who support a criminal president and deserve to be ignored by our families and by the government agencies charged with our protection. Oh yeah, we’re also white nationalists and a threat to democracy.

They hate us.

Furthermore, they hate us because we are “hateful.” Everywhere the Woke post on social media you see the word “hate” hurled against conservatives. We burst with hate. We thrive on hate. We HATE! HATE! HATE! and the losing side hates that!

But you know what? They’re right. We do hate. We hate their ideas and their actions.

They’re right. We do hate. Only we don’t hate them.

We hate their ideas and their actions.

We hate socialism, a failed economic system that’s killed more people than it’s fed.

We hate monetary policy that inflates the economy and leads to poverty.

We hate the idea that it’s okay for millions of people to flood our country without being vetted for criminality, disease, and child sex trafficking. We hate the fact that money is diverted from our own citizenry, from veterans and the homeless, to feed and house these flagrant lawbreakers, who are really nothing other than invaders without uniforms.

We hate sending billions of dollars to a country halfway around to the world to fight a losing war that only benefits American munitions manufacturers.

We hate abortion-on-demand, as if it were just another form of birth control.

We hate the absurd idea that the sexes are interchangeable, hate men posing as women in sports, and hate most especially surgeries on children that remove their sex organs.

We don’t hate the people who think and do these things, although we generally think of them as fools. We hate their foolish ideas and deeds that result in death, poverty, and moral collapse. This is the “hate” they hate us for.

So, I have a suggestion for the losing side: Stop hating us and stick to hating our ideas. In hating our ideas, you will need to come to grips with what those ideas are.

Stop hating us and stick to hating our ideas. In hating our ideas, you will need to come to grips with what those ideas are.

You will have to face the possibility that when you censor free speech, using “hate speech” as an excuse, it is your side that embraces fascism, not ours. You’ll have to explain why child sex trafficking is actually cool, and why people who have broken the law to enter this country deserve better treatment than our own citizens. You’ll be forced to defend arming a foreign country to kill people in another foreign country for no reason pertaining to our own freedom and security. You’ll need to consider the meaning of free enterprise vs. that of socialism with an open mind.

It would be a grand shift of focus if the Left were to engage with us intellectually rather than shouting their hatred at The Orange Man, just as the Ingsoc population in Orwell’s 1984 hurled hatred at the fictional Emanuel Goldstein. But I’m not holding my breath. Remember, “You’ve got to be taught,” and a large chunk of our country has been taught to hate all that Trump and his followers stand for. The indoctrination has been going on for decades, long before Trump made his appearance on the political scene.

I was a teenager in the late 1960s, when the seeds of this hatred were sown. Anyone who recalls that time will remember the sudden change that came over the country. The dividing line was the Vietnam War. Before that war, America was secure in its values, which included the rights outlined in our Constitution—the right to free speech, the practice of one’s chosen religion, the right to bear arms, etc.—and the idea that individuals were free to pursue their dreams based on their own merit. There were flaws, as there will be in any social system, the most serious of which was the undercurrent of racism. The turmoil of the ’60s brought racism and other previously hidden faults to the surface and made it possible to set a course correction.

Along the way, however, the idea set in that America’s flaws made her somehow irredeemable. American values “marginalized” the poor, and never mind that the country’s poor at the time numbered far fewer per capita than most other countries. American values idolized the family, which to the naysayers was nothing more than an institution for the enslavement of women. American values favored the independent and the industrious over the collective and the non-productive, a violation of socialist ethos. American values derived from Christianity, which was guilty of not being Buddhism, the chic religion of the ’60s generation.

To make taking sides easy for the uncritical mind, the Right-Left political spectrum, which had gone through myriad distortions since its origin in the 1789 French Revolution, was further distorted to accommodate two conflicting political stances at the same end of the spectrum. If you championed freedom from government-enforced social change, you were on the Right. But being on the Right also meant championing fascism, the very epitome of government-enforced social change! Freedom thereby became conflated with its opposite, and being on the “Right” came to mean both resisting state control and insisting on it.

Confusion sent unreflective people to the Left, since it was purported to be the more compassionate…and, well, at least it wasn’t fascist! Thoughtful people noticed that it was the Left, not the Right, that demanded government control of everything from business to morals, and that this was closer to actual fascism than the Right’s hands-off position. But thoughtful people were hard to find. Besides, it’s always much easier to acquiesce to what your society teaches you, and what ’60s society taught was that being on the Left was good, and being on the Right was bad. It was really that simplistic.

Those on the Left were also deemed (by the Left, who were in charge of the academy) to be intelligent, while those on the Right were labeled stupid and uninformed. In other words, “intelligence” came to mean the uncritical acceptance of whatever was said to be “on the Left.” If you challenged any ideas held by the Left, you were a “Right-winger,” and socially unacceptable as well as stupid.

I recall having what, at first, I thought would be a civilized conversation with two advocates of strict gun control. This was in the 1970s, when American values, including the Second Amendment, had already come to be considered equal to fascism. My two friends were staunch advocates of removing most guns from private ownership. “That won’t keep criminals from getting guns,” I argued, “and will only make it harder for ordinary citizens to defend themselves.” Instead of offering a counterargument, one of them turned to the other and said, “He’s really gone right-wing, hasn’t he?” That ended the discussion. Left is good, Right is bad.

From the ’60s on, “Being on the Left” became a path to automatic intelligence, instant moral rectitude, and fast-track political correctness. No thinking required.

From the ’60s on, “Being on the Left” became a path to automatic intelligence, instant moral rectitude, and fast-track political correctness. No thinking required.

And now the 2024 election has exposed the fact that a large majority of Americans never bought into it, never accepted Leftist hatred of their own country and its values. The Left may have taken over the universities, the media, public health and general society, but the spirit of independence—which from 1776 onward has been the core of the American experiment, whatever its errors along the way—endured beneath the cultural radar and came out November 5th en masse to restore American values to America. It was a kind of miracle.

Yet, we are hated by a minority that would upend the results of this election and call it “democracy.” They hate us because they have nothing else to justify their positions. They cannot defend the indefensible ideas they espouse. They don’t even try. They simply pronounce moral cliches about compassion and love and then turn with unparalleled viciousness against anyone who questions their automatic claims to virtue, starting with the Orange Man at the top, and working their way down to each and every one of us. If they were not fools, they would stop to ponder why intelligent, courageous Democrats like R.F.K. Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Naomi Wolf have seen through the charade and abandoned the Democrat party.

It has taken 60 years for the ’60s Leftist project to run its course. It is now spent, and its partisans have only hate in their arsenal. The brainwashed population in Orwell’s 1984 focused their hate on one fictional man because they had nowhere else to put it. The Left has for years used President Trump as the target of their hate, with “deplorables” as mere appendages. Now the hate has spread to the tens of millions of us who supported Trump. You hate us but we will not hate you back. We don’t roll like that. We know you are redeemable. We know you can change your minds if you are honest about what has happened.

But if you don’t, it won’t matter in the long run. We have truly turned a page. We have won and will continue to win.

 

 

This essay was originally published November 13, 2024, on War of the Words: Language, Lies, and the Left. It appears here with the permission of the author.

 

 

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