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The Insanity of Bush Hatred
Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.
BY PETER BERKOWITZ
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law.
When two parties debate a position and one side has intellectually lost, a common tactic is to look only as far as any discernible emotion on the other's part and not dare look beneath it to see if that emotion is justified, or to dig up a few weak underlying "reasons" just as Berkowitz has done. Since those "reasons" don't justify the vitriol, the vitriol is therefore irrational. Further, the implication is that one cannot use a tone that shows anger even if there is also excellent justification for it in the same communication -- because it might be dismissed as irrational.
Bush hatred is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.
Well, hatred is neither good nor bad; rational or irrational. It's a natural, automatic human response to a perceived injustice. The moral evaluation begins only when you evaluate the underlying cause. Does the cause make sense? Are there good reasons for it? Does it justify the anger? Since there is no associated act, however (unless you punch someone) -- the reason for the anger still can't be fully evaluated in a moral sense.
This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr's excellent new book, "Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism." To put in context Prof. Starr's grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.
To get the conversation rolling at that D.C. dinner--and perhaps mischievously--I wondered aloud whether Bush hatred had not made rational discussion of politics in Washington all but impossible. One guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, "What's irrational about hating George W. Bush?" His vehemence caused his fellow progressives to gather around and lean in, like kids on a playground who see a fight brewing.
Reluctant to see the dinner fall apart before drinks had been served, I sought to ease the tension. I said, gently, that I rarely found hatred a rational force in politics, but, who knows, perhaps this was a special case. And then I tried to change the subject.
But my dinner companion wouldn't allow it. "No," he said, angrily. "You started it. You make the case that it's not rational to hate Bush." I looked around the table for help. Instead, I found faces keen for my response. So, for several minutes, I held forth, suggesting that however wrongheaded or harmful to the national interest the president's policies may have seemed to my progressive colleagues, hatred tended to cloud judgment, and therefore was a passion that a citizen should not be proud of being in the grips of and should avoid bringing to public debate. Propositions, one might have thought, that would not be controversial among intellectuals devoted to thinking and writing about politics.
And so, I told my Princeton audience, in the context of a Bush hatred and a corollary contempt for conservatism so virulent that had addled the minds of many of our leading progressive intellectuals, Prof. Starr deserved special recognition for keeping his head in his analysis of liberalism and progressivism. Then I got on with my prepared remarks.
Hatred addles minds? That's new to me. Most people I know can keep their hatred controlled and actually think at the same time. I dunno, maybe Berkowitz is coming from the New Testament somewhere. You can't hate, you can't be angry, you can't lust, you can't feel desire or envy or jealousy or pride.
In other words, you can't be human.
...they argued that Bush hatred was fully warranted considering his theft of the 2000 election in Florida with the aid of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore; his politicization of national security by making the invasion of Iraq an issue in the 2002 midterm elections; and his shredding of the Constitution to authorize the torture of enemy combatants.
Ignoring, of course, the massive fraud perpetrated on Congress and the American people to wage aggressive war; innocents as "enemy combatants," illegal wiretapping and a long list of other crimes and abuses of power. Berkowitz, lawyer that he is, utilizes the old trick of: When you attack others and have a weak position to begin with, bring up their "side" in as weak a fashion as reasonably possible and credible.
Of course, these very examples illustrate nothing so much as the damage hatred inflicts on the intellect.
Heh. This reminds me of a modern verision of that old film "Reefer Madness" with all the depraved, maniacal-looking figures on the poster. Reefers as well as anger will make you INSANE!
And lord knows the Bush administration has blundered in its handling of legal issues that have arisen in the war on terror.
"OOOOOPS! We blundered into the massive fraud we perpetrated on the world to get us into a war! And the death and destruction and our torturing and wire tapping and no habeas corpus too! We didn't mean it! They were just oversights! Boy, is our face RED!"
You could easily overlook that in our system of government the executive branch, which has principal responsibility for defending the nation, is in wartime bound to overreach--especially when it confronts on a daily basis intelligence reports that describe terrifying threats...
Yes, see Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, for example -- that provided us with just gobs and gobs of pre-war "intelligence" that allowed Colin "Don't look at me, I didn't do it" Powell to do his Oscar-caliber performance for the United Nations in February, 2003.
In short, Bush hatred is not a rational response to actual Bush perfidy. Rather, Bush hatred compels its progressive victims--who pride themselves on their sophistication and sensitivity to nuance--to reduce complicated events and multilayered issues to simple matters of good and evil. Like all hatred in politics, Bush hatred blinds to the other sides of the argument, and constrains the hater to see a monster instead of a political opponent.
Okay, Bush, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Attila and Idi Amin are all "political opponents." None could be "monsters" because we just don't have the full context yet. Maybe Stalin was also short as a child and was beaten up a lot. Maybe Hitler's rejection from art school should be considered before we dare evaluate him as a monster. Maybe we can NEVER evaluate him -- or anyone, for that matter -- as a monster because we just don't know all the reasons why he did what he did.
Or maybe we can't evaluate them as monsters because we're just too angry right now for a rational evaluation. Maybe with Bush in another ten years when we've calmed down and taken care of our anger issues we'll be allowed to evaluate him properly and objectively.
Prof. Starr shows in "Freedom's Power" that tolerance, generosity, and reasoned skepticism are hallmarks of the truly liberal spirit. His analysis suggests that the problem with progressives who have succumbed to Bush hatred is not their liberalism; it's their betrayal of it.
Tolerance! That's it! Bush needs our toleration and generosity. He deserves our toleration and generosity.
Maybe I should look forward the day when can I be tolerant and understanding towards Bush. I will lose my anger and therefore -- BY THAT VERY FACT -- claim the righteous mantle of being rational.