The dull, dreary drumbeat of leftism against "hate" does what every mantra of leftism always does: it replaces cognition with repetition and seriousness with hysteria.  So the silly pseudo-campaign of leftism against "hate" is not a real campaign against hate at all, but more the mindless hatred of everything that does accept every line of the Left's long and rigid catechism. 

Does the Left ever defend America from those who hate it?  Does the Left ever condemn the fifty-year feminist jihad against men and boys, which has savaged and destroyed so many tens of millions of lives?  Does the Left champion the vital values of Christianity from those who mock and sneer at it?  Does the Left censure the growing global pox of anti-Semitism? 

No, the Left simply tries to caricature anyone and anything that opposes it politically and philosophically as "hate."  Nothing the Left says or does can ever be "hate" even when it manifestly is hate.  So when Obama in the salons of the wealthy refers to those who he wishes to govern as people "bitterly clinging to their guns and religion" or when Hillary calls the hardworking people of Flyover Country "deplorable," that is never seen as hate. 

Leftists view "hate" as leftists view everything: it must be something "collective" or "social."  So certain people, simply by belonging to a particular race or sex or faith or class, are either official victims or official victimizers, and anyone who challenges that gross lumping together of individuals is targeted by the Left as someone motivated by "hate."

All collective or social judgments of individuals are wrong.  That talisman that seems at times to mesmerize even otherwise sensible people, "social justice," is among the greatest evils of all.  Nazis, Stalinists, fascists, and every other totalitarian monster of the Left genuflected reverently at the altar of social justice.

All justice is individual justice, or it is simply injustice.  All responsibility is personal, or it is instead irresponsibility.  Conservatives and other normal people grasp this fact and generally behave accordingly.  We are not conscript masses in some vast rhetorical war, but rather people with minds and hearts and consciences.    

One of the reasons the Left is so drawn to non-competitive organizations that are either an arm of the state or a variety of monopoly institutions (like academia) is that these allow individuals to be clumped together and treated as those who "hate" and those who are the victims of this imagined "hate" — or to be otherwise treated as things instead of individuals.   

These types of organizations also allow anyone who varies from the lunatic leftist narrative of "hate" to be hounded and harassed, which is why professors, for example, never dare to suggest that "hate" is largely subjective and that identifying classes or races or sexes who are supposed to "hate" is both wicked and stupid.  There are few prison walls as closely guarded or as brutally enforced as those enclosing expression and opinion in universities.  Because the Left deems it impossible to be unfair or bullying toward its official class of "haters," environments controlled by the Left like college campuses are abusive, threatening, and even violent toward those it philosophically opposes.

What can be done?  The cure for almost every disease of leftism is the same.  Compel these leftists to live in the real world.  This is done by dismantling as many as possible of the institutions that artificially prop up the groupthink of leftism and compel individual thinking and action without the faceless mobs of leftism to blur thought and action.

Academia is a complete failure in most respects, so end government student loans, and instead provide systems for anyone to earn most types of college degrees by simple testing.  Abolish all government offices whose purpose is to protect "oppressed" groups from "oppressing" groups, because government must never take sides on "social" issues, but only on behalf of the individually innocent or against the individually guilty.  You get the idea.

What are the chances of these sorts of actions being successfully pursued?  It would be nice to be optimistic, but the grounds for optimism require a leap of faith increasingly hard to accept.  More and more of our children simply cannot think outside leftist mind control or are scared to try.  That real hate — that visceral hatred of decency and integrity — seems to grow day by day.

Image: Marco Bellucci via Flickr (cropped).