Conservatives must have an evil enemy to exist. Bill Buckley.

[Hamlette]

I thought of the following article after the Elizabeth Edwards/Ann Coulter dust up today. Ann is filled with hate, Elizabeth is not. How stark that contrast was/is.

There is a great, short article about journalist Johann Hari going on a National Review cruise. I'm sure you've seen it quoted as it is hysterical in a terrifying way. This part got me. The author went to interview Bill Buckley after Buckley stood up to Podhoretz here's the quote:

"President Bush described today's American conservatives as "Bill's children." I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for forty years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

What is it about the right, about conservatives, about Ann Coulter that they must HATE something? I'm pretty pissed about Bush et al but what really motivates me is to try to build a better world, to help the poor, heal the sick (or help anyway) NOT my hatred of conservatives.

Is that why we are so different? Is that why they can be ruthless? It's not just being better than someone, its actually hating someone that motivates them.

Is it always the right that hates? Because trying to sell someone on keeping things as they are (true conservative thought it seems) just doesn't work? How can we expose this?


Here's the Hari piece....not long...read it, its good stuff. Mostly about the split among conservatives, the old guard vs neocons. The neocons are scary (Bork, Dinesh D'Souza, Podhoretz, Bernard Lewis and Kate O'Beirne. Why did you know O'Beirne's husband was Rumsfeld's personnel director? Don't you think we should have been told that when she was brought on TV to spout her defense of the admin? They all believe we are winning in Iraq, he did have WMD and the only reason we will fail is because of the evil liberals...just like Vietnam.)

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070702&s=hari070207

[liberal N proud]

1. By having that evil enemy they are projecting their actions on others

They are the evil ones and they continue to spin the tales to make others look like the evil they are hiding from.

[Hamlette]

2. you're probably right...I sure as hell don't get it n/t

[Jade Fox]

3. People who need an "other" to hate.....

have a strong need to project their own badness, real or imagined, onto someone else. Or they can only feel good about themselves in relation to someone who's worse, real or imagined.

The themes here are lack of introspection/self-examination and low self-esteem. Conservatives are not real big on those.

[MuseRider]

4. Not just conservatives.

Not you, not everyone but I doubt it is every one of the conservatives either. All I have to say is Ralph Nader or Repukes to make my point. How about DLC or "purists". We are not angels we just like to think we are. Everyone likes to think they are.

I think it is just human nature myself.

[Hamlette]

8. I don't think it is human nature...or at least not all of us

the right wing people I know are consumed by hatred. A woman I work with went insane at the mention of the name "Jimmy Carter" who she considers the most evil man who ever lived. She could not shut up about it.

I think it motivates people like her. While I'm plenty pissed at Cheney defeating him is not what motivates me.

I get the Mud Sill Theory (you need someone to look down on) and I will cop to that (I'm smarter than your average Rush Limbaugh type) but hate doesn't animate me like Buckley said.

Some cultures seem more hate filed than others (Balkins) but I always argued the thing that this country had going for it was we didn't have a history, or at least not one old enough to harbor that stuff but it is starting...or we uncovered it.

Maybe its just that a certain percentage of us feed on that kind of hatred and that kind is attracted to authoritarianism.

I need to read Dean's book again. It calmed me down the first time I read it knowing it is a personality defect of theirs and I can't change them.

It would help if we kept calling them on it. Like Elizabeth did to Ann today.

[MuseRider]

9. I believe I said that

not everyone was like that but I do not believe it is something only seen in the RWers. I see so much of it here and everywhere else. It is also not new. Better dead than Red? I grew up on that one and I do not remember it being specifically a Republican thing.

That is OK, you just keep calling them on it but be sure you are wearing your white hat.

Personality defect only found in RWers? OK.

[EST]

5. Radical "conservatism"

must have an enemy to exist. Hitler's program directors pointed that out, John Dean and several others, the thinking ones from previous administrations, have confirmed that history.
Even bush's soul mate, "Vilad-mur Pootypoot," pointed out, on his ascension to his own presidency, that America was now going to go through some rough times, without the Soviet Union to focus on. As I recall, he was making a thinly veiled prediction that we were going to chew, gnaw, and digest ourselves, rip our own guts out in a search for a new enemy.

This, I think, is one of the fundamental differences between those of us who need a daddy party to serve us after we reach adulthood and the rest of us, who would prefer to create a just society which is designed to nurture and bring out the best in that society and its individual members.

[TlalocW]

6. I remember a political cartoon

Of a couple of cavemen standing over a dead T-Rex with a spear in it. The dino was labeled, "Communism." One of the cavemen is saying, "Dino not fun to attack any more." The other one replies while gesturing at a third caveman, "Let's go after Oog - he's gay."

TlalocW

[MuseRider]

7. How true.

It is always like that. We are all part of the problem just as we can all be part of the solution. I wish your cartoon description did not make me laugh but it is just too true.