We were told to protest violence. Okay…
Then we were told to protest slavery. Okay…
Then racial bigotry. Okay…
Good Americans should object to violence, like that committed by the villains of Chicago. We should object to slavery, both as once practiced by Democrats in the CSA, and as still practiced, today, in Muslim countries.
And of course we should object to racism, particularly in the United States, a country in which all citizens are intended to be equal under the law, with equal opportunity to succeed, in fact, to prosper… to soar up to whatever heights their own ability and drive propel them.
But now we are told to protest Hate.
Just Hate. In August, 2017, it’s “Down With Hate!” As if “hatred” were somehow a bad thing in itself.
Perhaps the modern American Left has just become so used to positive, unquestioning press that they have forgotten to take the time to think through issues before adopting them.
So now they lash out against “hate.”
Hate is a reaction, as is love, as is fear, as is revulsion, as is warmth, as is compassion.
Some things, people, ideas, and actions merit each of these reactions and many more. The thing to denounce may be what that hatred or love is directed toward, but maybe not. We need to know more, before we agree to accept the screaming Left’s cause du jour.
There is a popular Christian admonition: “hate the sin, love the sinner”… because there are times when hate is indeed the right reaction, and we need to be reminded to draw a distinction between the person and the action to be condemned. While many people do bad things, it’s sometimes just the bad thing that we should hate, not the person doing it. People can be redeemed, so we hope to give them a chance, just in case.
Now, there are plenty of things that many people wrongly hate, and yes, we may be right to denounce such wrong judgments, but there are also plenty of things that are rightly hated, things that should be hated, and society can only be worse, much worse, if we lose our hatred for these evils.
For example:
Naziism/Fascism, as developed and practiced in Germany and Italy in the 20th century, is socialism. It requires the concentration of all power in the hands of the government, and is used to oppress groups – from ethnic groups to social classes, from career to physical condition.
Nazis killed some six million innocent people in a dozen years just for being mentally handicapped, or for being Jewish, or for being Christian clerics… or for daring to help any of the above.
It is right to hate Naziism/Fascism.
Marxism/Leninism, as developed and practiced in the USSR, and Maoist China, and Castro’s Cuba and the Kims’ North Korea, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in the 20th century, is also called socialism. It also requires the concentration of all power in the hands of the government, and is used to oppress groups – from ethnic groups to social classes, from career to physical condition.
Communists killed a hundred million innocent people in the 20th century, all over the world. From the Khmer Rouge’s two million in Cambodia’s killing fields, to Stalin’s seven million kulaks in the Ukraine, to the countless millions killed by the wars that the USSR funded and Castro’s Cuban advisors fomented… communism holds the record for killing the most innocent people in the 20th century.
It is right to hate Marxism/Leninism.
Islamofascism, as developed and practiced all over the world by the global jihadist cause, also has many names. It ranges from raising small children to wear suicide backpacks onto tourist buses… to devout muslims who scream Allahu Akhbar (“my god is greater than your God”) as they drive vans onto sidewalks, or shoot up pizzerias, or blow up concert venues… to politicians who design repopulation programs that move millions of unassimilable immigrants into foreign destinations as a cultural invasion, intending to first undermine, then take over, new countries in their goal of a global caliphate.
The advocates and practitioners of jihad – whether called Shia or Sunni, Wahabist or Salafist – range from individuals radicalized by internet videos to attendees at physical mosques led by charismatic imams. They use guns, knives, water, cars, bombs, planes, rockets… even chunks of concrete as their weapons. Whatever is handy. Whatever will kill.
It is right to hate islamofascism.
Drug abuse – as sponsored and spread by networks of crime gangs – from old names like Sicily’s Mafia to new names like Central America’s MS-13 – kills millions as well. People young and old alike, sad, lost, worried, depressed, are easy targets for the pushers who hook them on the death sentence of illegal chemicals, snorted or shot, swallowed or smoked.
Drug abuse may kill one-by-one, not by the hundreds or thousands at a time like the political philosophies named earlier, but it is just as fatal, just as destructive, as it leaves human lives forever ruined in its wake, both the victims killed by quick overdoses or slow wasting, and their loved ones, who must live on with a hole in their hearts that can never be filled.
It is right to hate drug abuse.
This is just a start. There are plenty of things in this world, from individuals to philosophies, that are pure evil, and that therefore should be hated.
And we all know it.
So as we watch the protesters, and read their signs, and hear their speeches… and we analyze their admonition to stop “hating” – without specific definition of WHAT we’re supposed to stop hating… we should be very, very concerned.
Why do they want us to stop hating, when it is so clear that there are so many true evils in the world, so many enemies, both human and ideological, that we must fight, for the good of our own culture, and for the security and prosperity of our people?
Why do they attack hate – so often the correct, in fact, the imperative, response to the foes of our modern world?
Because this can only mean one of two things:
- Either they want us to become thoughtless sheep in a world in which words no longer have meaning (cf. George Orwell’s 1984), or
- They are striving to accomplish that enemy of truth – what Cardinal Ratzinger called “moral relativism” in the sermon that made him Pope – because they want to blunt our naturally visceral opposition to such clear and specific evils as those mentioned above.
And neither of these options is in any way consistent with being an American.
Copyright 2017 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based Customs broker, actor, and writer. For the past eight years, his columns have regularly been found in Illinois Review. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut, and the IR URL and byline are included.
