Directionally-Challenged Hate

Nationally-syndicated columnist Deroy Murdoch recently wrote a diatribe against liberals. It seems that, after the right-wing Tennessee Center for Policy Research took Al Gore to task for using too much electricity, a bunch of leftist kooks sent particularly venomous emails in response.

Murdoch writes: "Such anti-intellectual intimidation reflects the high-octane hate that fuels so much Leftist discourse."

I can't decide if Murdoch is stupid, or if he is deliberately fanning animosity between political groups in this country.

Deroy, I don't know about you, but I learned back in grammar school that just because some Xs are also Ys doesn't mean that all Xs are Ys. Sure some liberals are unthinking jerks. But that doesn't mean that this reflects liberalism in general.

What if I were to use Deroy's own argument to define the right-wing mission based on the unthinking hate spewed by people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly (and, apparently, Deroy Murdoch). I might just say that such anti-intellectual intimidation reflects the high-octane hate that fuels so much Rightist discourse.

But that wouldn't be fair to my conservative friends, who in general are smarter than that.