Dear Editor
I want to talk about hate. And how we articulate it. My sister won’t give me the remote, I hate her. The emotion is transient, almost meaningless, harmless.
A criminal murdered a family member, raped my daughter, poisoned my dog: the hate is visceral, dark, and ultimately self-poisoning if not addressed. It offers the motivation and strength to react, to avenge, or punish the criminal.
Famously hate can persist over generations, and even centuries, when the original injury is long forgotten, Montagues and Capulets, the troubles in Ireland, feuding families in many places.
Hate is a normal response to events that hurt us, that channel us into behaviours we find inconsistent with our values. It is also a possible response to fear. We can hate people, groups, philosophies, ideologies, religions, music, art, war, and, tragically, even ourselves.
Love and hate are often companions. The boy-girl hatred that morphs into true love is a box office cliché; worse is the initial passionate love that morphs into indifference and hate over time as expectations are not met.
In short, hate is an emotion that wells up in us depending on circumstance. It is often cathartic to express that hate out loud, to begin the process of dealing with it, perhaps through avoidance, through confrontation, or through forgiveness.
Paul advised the Romans that it is right and proper to hate the things that are evil, and to cleave to the things that are good. This begs a question that I believe we must all answer for ourselves, “What is evil?” And, to go further than Paul, don’t we have a public responsibility to proudly and loudly articulate our hating, loathing, detesting, abhorrence, of the things we deem to be evil? Doing that exposes our feelings to others, who may show us why we are wrong, ignore us, or who, seeing why we are so exercised, may discover they share the same feelings.
In a world where mutually beneficial trade has largely replaced warfare and taking by conquest, hatred is decreasing, and efforts to maintain trade, especially with those we dislike, are in our interests.
The new legislation asks us about groups. Groups are in a sense emergent, forming spontaneously in our society. Families, companies, mutual societies, cooperatives, clubs, sports teams, pub teams, religions, choirs, cultural groupings, political parties, and within these groups or collectives the focus is on cooperation, the achievement of shared goals, passions, experiences.
Between them, especially the market-facing groups, there is fierce rivalry in the contest for customers, members, and resources. I cannot think of a single reason why any of these groups should be accorded special protection from the articulation of hatred if they have done or plan evil things. They can look after themselves, and in fact, benefit from seeing the emotions expressed by their detractors. It may even make them understand why they are detested.
So, in order to fulfil my duty of expressing hatred of things evil, before the laws prevent it, let me list the following:
I deeply, deeply abhor the immiserating ideology of Socialism, and would encourage, nay, everyone to vote against all those who offer socialist “politics of death”. This abhorrence is a result of seeing socialist countries in action: the warfare, the poverty, the killing of aspiration and innovation, the fear, the famines, the hunger, and the understanding that these are not bugs but features of this grim political system.
I detest the idea of the “great reset”, and “build back better”, which combine the features of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. When big government and big business get together, we absolutely know who will suffer.
I loathe individual evil academics who, being intelligent yet knowing of all its failings and issues, continue to support and teach socialism and its disciples Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, knowing full well just how badly things will turn out if they have their way. And doubly so if they fail to have their students read Smith, Von Mises, Hayek, Coase, Friedman, Sowell, Williams (to name but a few) and fail to show that, although flawed (mostly from State interference and cronyism), markets work.
I hate evil religions that demand submission, that regard other creeds as infidels, that treat women as objects, and that invoke the death penalty for what these days we regard as relatively minor sins. I wish to see more effort made to bring about a rapprochement, possibly trade based, that makes such religions more tolerant, and let go of their extreme views.
I loathe and detest all evil and arrogant politicians that “know better” than we do what we “little people” want and need. They don’t, and never can. Live and let live is a better philosophy, if combined with “don’t do bad stuff unto others”, and the corollary “do good things for others”. In politicians especially, hypocrisy is also a manifestly despicable trait and all too common. Hatred of such individuals is necessarily transient, as they can recant their beliefs so redemption is possible.
So there it is.
Hating is a normal response in humans to injury, insult or damage.
It can be very short term or last centuries.
And is in itself damaging to the hater.
Articulating hate is important, in order to deal with it.
We have a duty to hate and oppose those things that we decide as individuals, after considering the facts, are evil. Just as we have a duty to support those things that are good.
We should encourage, and engage with other people to consider our points and make their own decisions as to validity.
Exposing hate makes it easier to deal with when it does cross the line (where our current laws are).
To my brief list of the major evils I see in this world, I now add evil and subjective “hate speech laws” which will so easily be turned to the silencing of political opponents, of scientists who are not “of the climate consensus” or, as we see overseas, the jailing of doctors who are realistic about the risks of the Covid vaccination.
What other “hates” do we have a duty to clearly set out, constructively, before the laws change?
Signed
Brian
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