Somebody sent me this short essay titled "The Truth Cannot Be Hate". Unfortunately, I have erased the name of the author; I assume, though, I have his permission - and I think I know who it is. (If attribution is desired, please holler...)
Here goes:
The indiscriminate use of the word "hate" has lately crept - some would say, stormed - into the language of western European nations.
This new usage has interesting properties and definitions.
By the existing definition, hate is a state of mind. Knowledge of that state of mind requires either a specific statement to that effect by the person or an act of mind-reading by others.
"Hate" is a word that only minorities can apply when they are angry at majorities. Protected minorities cannot commit them. No minority has the ability to speak hate, while any real or perceived majority can be accused of it.
The political usage of hate lies the creation of "hate crimes" laws which are the cudgels to be applied to "hate speech". As Joseph Sobran observed with regard to the charge of antisemitism, the person making the accusation has absolutely no risk of being harmed by making a false allegation. The person accused may be harmed.
In the United States - though many people predict: not for long! - speaking the truth is still an absolute defense. Not so in Canada. Not so in Germany.
In countries without the US tradition, speaking the truth can be considered a violation of law. Under a specifically Jewish-protecting variation of this type of law in Germany, David Irving discovered that speaking the truth is punishable.
"Hate laws" get established in backward countries first because the precedents can then be used to move those laws into more advanced, sophisticated countries.
(Ingrid's comment here: Actually, the first law punishing the questioning of the Holocaust was passed in Israel in the 1980s and in Germany in 1985. France, Switzerland and other European countries, with the exception of England followed thereafter).
In the US, those who would restrain freedom, by calling it hate, love to reveal their misunderstanding of court decisions by pointing out that one can not shout fire in a crowded theater.
Were that the law, and strictly observed, many more people would have died from fires in theaters for failure to report real fires. The court decision clearly presumes falsely shouting fire with the intention to cause a panic. Later decisions have specifically narrowed the earlier decision to an intention to immediately cause harm in a foreseeable manner.
Let's assume that there exist a people who have done something wrong. They don't want you to talk about it, because if you knew that they did something wrong, you might be inclined to dislike them.
If it were a serious wrong affecting your and your children's well-being, you might even hate them. You cannot have that. Hate is a bad, bad emotion that should only be used on people like Nazis.
It is okay to hate them. In fact, you are expected to hate them.
In the matter of this holocaust(K) we are struck by something quite perverted about the dead still being in our face condemning us for speaking negatively of the dead. Even more perverted, the living are condemning us on behalf the dead for saying they are undead.
Germany, for instance, will not have you be speaking of life rather than death as "speaking ill of the dead."
Now there might be a "you lied to me" response and rightly should be. Unlike Christians, however, Jews recite every real and imagined slight (they have suffered) over the last 3600 years in a single breath - and then claim to be the most persecuted people in the world.
Thought for the Day:
"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings."
(William Blake)