For years now, those on the left have conflated resistance to any item of their agenda--high taxes, extravagant spending, laxity on crime, what have you--with motives of a dark nature: racism, nativism, fear of "the other," and various species of "hate." Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, a reaction to overregulation, stagflation, and the foreign policy failures and weakness of one James Earl Carter, was described as the bigots' revenge for the civil rights era. The midterm elections of 1994, a reaction against Hillarycare and the Clintons' malfeasance, were seen as a Confederate renaissance.But now the situation has evolved to the extent that no action or statement on the part of conservatives is required. Democrats simply assume evil intent in anything said or done on the right.
The left, which invented first "hate speech" (opinions they didn't like) and then "hate crimes" (crimes judged less on the criminal's actions than on what he was presumed to be thinking), has now gone on to its epiphany, which is "hate" defined not by your words or deeds but by what other people have decided you really think. "Hate" is no longer what you do or say, but what a liberal says that you think and projects on to you. You are punished for what someone else claims you were thinking. It hardly makes sense, but it does serve a political purpose. You could call it Secondhand Hate.Emery's point -- that this is simply bigotry, and a frightening form at that -- is a good one. Darleen Click, however, suggests that the tactic is so over the top and offensive that the public is starting to catch on to its use and as that happens it will cease to be politically effective. [here] Let us sincerely hope so. This is dangerous stuff.
UPDATE:
There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on a group of southern scholars who are of the opinion that the Civil War was more about nationalism and centralization of power than about slavery; that Abraham Lincoln was one of our worst, rather than one our greatest, presidents; and that secession was a constitutionally valid right. They have been meeting for years, but keeping a very low profile, because to go public would jeopardize their academic careers, expose them to charges of racism, and make of them social pariahs. Now that they have been outed, they have come under attack by left-wing organizations like the terminally despicable Southern Poverty Law Center as, you guessed it, racists who "are just trying to revise the history of the South in favor of whites."
Read the whole thing here.
