Libertarian Commentary #16-12C, By Nathan Barton

We’ve all seen it; sometimes daily. A headline on an alternate media site, or a vicious comment on a news story, or spoken in response to someone’s comment. It’s hate: pure-quill hate.

No, it isn’t those people who are rabid haters, like the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, or the Klu Klux Klan’s latest reincarnation, or skinheads or those sort. While we still have many of these people, for the most part they have learned to shut up, even on the internet, to avoid getting themselves branded as what they are.

What I am talking about is those who brand someone who says something that they don’t like, or does something that they don’t like, as haters. Call them the “hate-haters.” Or to be more accurate, call them the Chicken Little of hate. We know lots of examples, and here are just a few, some going back decades.

1. Best known are the hater accusation leveled against anyone attacking a policy of the person who has been living in the White House now for more than seven years, from Rush Limbaugh right down to the guy that sits in that corner table at the McDs.

2. The people who constantly play the “race card” in virtually any situation. If a black or Hispanic person gets cut off in traffic, it is because the offending driver is a hater, a racist, a bigot, a white supremacist.

3. Homosexual activists do include many people who see ANY objection or failure to “affirm” homosexuality as not just a “fear” of homosexuality (the so-called homophobia) but HATRED of homosexuals themselves: not just opposition but hatred. That label might be accurate with some (such as the Westboro people) but is applied to anyone who has an opinion which does not match the activist’s views.

It is damaging to society and to the day-to-day lives of many: it is by its very nature, repressive: it tends to repress free speech. It tends to divide us into smaller and smaller factions, and makes reasonable – even passionate – discourse more and more difficult.

Mama’s Note: The important thing that so many people either forget or can’t imagine is the fact that each human being has exactly the same “rights” as every other. I prefer to call it their natural authority over themselves, but the word “rights” is easily translated. So, there is absolutely no such thing as “homosexual rights” or “women’s rights” or any other such group of people. They all have the same “rights,” to life, liberty and property. And that is expressed by each person living and letting live in peace, without force, theft or fraud.

What the “haters” hate most is freedom. They can’t tolerate free people who refuse to assume the false guilt of their hateful labels – because what they want most is the power to control others.

But we have more of this today than ever, and as we can see it in the headlines.

Consider this one, on an (unnamed by me) news digest, headlining a story from the Richmond County Daily Journal. The headline? North Carolina: “Lawmakers convene special session to vote on just how much they hate trans people “ “The North Carolina General Assembly will reconvene Wednesday to take up legislation that would attempt to override Charlotte’s nondiscrimination ordinance, which also addresses transgender people and restrooms, legislative leaders announced Monday night. Social conservatives and many Republican lawmakers say Charlotte went too far with the ordinance, which was approved last month but takes effect April 1. In particular, they’re upset because it allows transgender people to use restrooms that align with their gender identity, and they say sexual predators will use it as pretense to enter women’s bathrooms.” Feel free to read the whole story. There may be a few people motivated, deep in their hearts, by “hatred” of the trans-gendered people. But most of these people are motivated by fear, fear for children and fear based on the propaganda and changes in attitude fostered by government. Their fear may be misguided or not, but to simply claim that it is hate (even on the part of legislators, whom readers know I don’t like to defend) is wrong and damages the discourse. The headline writers ascribe motives to the lawmakers without evidence, much less proof, of their accusations, in an attempt to denigrate them.

Frankly, I can see no reason to argue that someone who says, “I don’t want someone who obviously has significant physical and mental difficulties to invade the privacy of other men or women or boys or girls,” to be automatically condemned for HATING those people who have the problems. Nor can I see that hate has to motivate someone who does not want someone who APPEARS to be one sex, whatever they sincerely believe about themselves, and whatever medical diagnosis they have, to be in relatively close quarters and changing clothing or undressing with people of the seeming opposite sex, especially those that are (relatively) innocent OR those who are challenged by their body’s development and hormones.

To me, it is a matter of aggression and respecting the rights of other people. My right of privacy is violated if someone exposes himself, herself, or itself in a private setting, without my consent. Am I wrong in this?

Mama’s Note: Seems to me that there are a lot of ways to accommodate everyone here. First, nobody else is responsible for your privacy, any more than they are responsible for your safety. Second, we might consider the definitions. There are many different and overlapping definitions of “gender” identification, some are based on scientific/medial causes, and many are simply a matter of how a person sees him/herself and how they feel. The problem isn’t how people see themselves or how they feel… it is how much they want to impose that on other people, and even make such things a matter of law. Others want the weight of law to control where and how the transsexual/gender person conducts his or her life as well. Nobody has any right to impose on others.

The single person “restroom” is the best idea where practical, since any person can use it in perfect privacy. Locker room showers and dressing areas could be set up the same way instead of trying to force everyone to be exposed to others. It would be more expensive, of course, but the whole idea that such “public” facilities have to be provided FREE is ridiculous anyway. Most of the countries of the world have few or no “public” facilities such as this, and many which do, make no provisions for privacy at all. “Pay” facilities are quite common outside the US.

The person entering such a non-segregated place has the choice to do so or not. And that’s really the bottom line.

Or consider another example, not of the headline writer/editor having this hate-hater problem, but a story reporting on Chicken Littles: The headline is: Minnesota: MN: Parents rally behind teacher suspended for “racist” posts  and is a story put out by Fox News. “Calls for the resignation of a Minnesota superintendent grew on Monday, after a high school teacher was suspended for social media posts deemed racist by the Black Lives Matter activist group. Theodore ‘Theo’ Olson, a special education teacher at Como Park High School in St. Paul, Minn., was placed on administrative leave March 9 over two posts he wrote on Facebook about student discipline in the school district. The posts were deemed offensive by former school board candidate turned Black Lives Matter activist Rashad Turner, who reportedly accused Olson of being a racist. Turner said Olson’s posts show he is ‘the epitome of a bad teacher’ and a ‘white supremacist,’ EAGnews.org reported.”

Here we have several people (or groups) I’m pointing my finger at. First is the BLM or whatever organizations condemned the teacher for the posts. I read the posts, and they address the “public school to prison” pipeline, and attack the education system (government-run, tax-funded schools) for doing things (and NOT doing things) that might prevent such large numbers of youth from becoming criminals. The BLM crowd claims the teacher was stereotyping students of color, even though the postings did not make any reference at all to color or race.

Second, we have the idiotic superintendent who may have let the fear rule, and suspended the teacher for the remarks. And third, we have the parents who demand exactly the same thing, as they race to the aid of the suspended teacher: they do exactly the same thing that the BLM and the school system did.

Again, this sort of accusation and reaction does nothing but make a bad situation worse.

A third example comes from this year’s political race. Now, I don’t like Bernie Sanders. Not because he isn’t a nice guy, friendly and passionate and sincere, but because I don’t like his views (does that make ME a hater)? I don’t like what he says he will do as Massa, and I don’t like what it appears that he WOULD do as Massa. But here we have this headline, at Jewish Press, ‘Bernie Sanders Turned to the Dark Side.” Now, Sanders is a Jew; a CULTURAL Jew and not a RELIGIOUS JEW. But he has said negative things about the State of Israel. This, in the eyes of some other Jews (including the staff of Jewish Press) makes him ANTI-Jewish (“Anti-Semetic”)- A Jew-hater. I can see no indication that Sanders’ comments were based on a hate for other Jews (and it is certain that he doesn’t hate himself!). Once more, an already emotion process is in danger of being highjacked because of unfounded accusations.

As I wrote above, this seems to me to be a form of aggression: false accusations are an attack on the person being accused: an aggressive attack that can in no way be claimed as self-defense, or at least not a VALID self-defense. Yet I see so many who claim to be lovers of liberty who use this nasty technique, joining with those of all three other parts of the diamond (the diamond chart of the Advocates for Self-Government) in doing things like this.

It seems to me, at best, to be hypocritical, and damaging to their cause. At worst, it seems to be a pragmatic demonstration that the ends justify the means.