It's a law of nature. Bear fans hate the Packers, and Cub fans hate the Cardinals. Hatred is a powerful and destructive emotion, but oh how we love to hate..!
What's more we don't hoard our hatred. We spread it around. One of our favorite targets is our presidents. Not just Obama. For all his shatterbrained haters, Washington, Adams, Lincoln and FDR had two and three times the number. It's symptomatic of democracies where everyone is told he or she is constitutionally entitled to their hatred. (To give it a nicer touch, we call it the 1st Amendment).
Democracy's defenders say hating our presidents this way may be messy, but it's healthier. It represents a free collision of views in the marketplace of ideas. Better, they say, than all the hatred just coming from one place -- a dictator. And they have a good argument. Only democracy's defenders have never quite figured out the line at which democracy becomes mobacracy. They say that's the court's job.
True, our constitution and our courts have struggled mightily to find and draw that line. Fo example, they allow public protests, but only with specific distances between protestor and president, preacher and abortion clinic, Holocaust victims and Nazi marchers.
These and other "lines" have been scrupulously designed to keep our right to hate within reasonable limits. However, in this latest tsunami of presidential hatred, the haters are not so much dangerous as they are silly. Obama's Nobel Prize has driven them absolutely nuts. Why? "Because the man hasn't done anything to deserve it!!"
What's silly about that is "doing" is not simply a present action. Anymore than seeding the fields in springtime is of lesser value than harvesting the results in summertime. It takes the first to accomplish the second. Hello....?
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DOOD FRIEND JACK
ReplyDeleteSome comments about what you describe as "the freeedom to hate."
1-As a history teacher you are aware that the amendment protects the freedom of speech. True, speech uses words of hate as well as criticism, support, another point of view, and of course, among other feelings and emotions, love.
2-While it may well be that among the critics of the Nobel Peace Award are those who "hate" Obama, they also include supporters who disagree with the decision. I agree with you in the opinion that his words, eloquent ones at that, merit the Award. However, reasonable minds may disagree without fear of being designated as "haters."
3-To describe the 1st amendment as a right to hate, belittles the essential importance of the amendment for a free and representative society.
4-Last but not least, my sense of literary equivilence demands you recognize the appropriate parallel for Packers is White Sox, not Cards, disliked as the latter may be.
Leo
Well, the 1st amendment DOES allow the right to hate. Not only that, of course, but it is the hating to which I was directing this piece. Especially as it applies to Obama. My final sentence was my way of reminding the haters to get a life.
ReplyDeleteBut as for the Packers, gee I admit I can't follow your logic. Why would baseball fans "hate" a football team?? Kindly enlighten me.
Good Friend Jack:
ReplyDeleteOne hates evil, Hitler and others like him regardless their ideology and I am sure you and your readers could add to the list. Yes the 1st amendment protects one in doing so within limits. My objection is you make the amendment appear to be no more then this, i.e.,protecting haters.
You pair the Bear-Packer rivalry with the Cub-Card rivalry. It should be the Cub-White Sox rivalry-Right? Bear fans hate the Packers the most. Cub fans hate the White Sox the most.
Leo
The 1st amendment is vital to our democracy, granted. But at the same time, mustn't you grant that this freedom is interpreted as free to feel & express virtually anything one wises?? If so, then hatred is one of those protected feelings. I don't disagree the amendment protects many other feelings, but here I was narrowing my aim specifically to the Obama haters who lately use this noble freedom to give credence to some of the most appalling -- and silly -- feelings imaginable.
ReplyDeleteNow as for the freedom to hate teams, I won't argue with your choices. I mean, in sports HATING is an all-American past time!