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When It Comes To Hate, The Left Beats The Right, Hands Down

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This article is more than 10 years old.

My previous Forbes column went viral, attracting 360,000 views. I got some thoughtful objections, and I have replied to many of them in the "called out" comments section.

But I was also called a psychopath, a sociopath, a sick bastard, and "a leech on the ass of humanity."

And in emails I was told:

"You better watch your effin back wen you leave your house!! matter of fact am pretty sure that you wont be safe inside your house either." [sic]

"I can already hear the calls of 'off with his head.'"

"There will be a rope and a lamp post waiting for you."

Why? What did my "despicable" column call for? The return of slavery? Death to the Jews?

No, I called for two things: 1. a man's right to what he has earned in free exchange, and 2. honoring the great wealth-creators for what they have given us.

It was the second point that seemed to throw the Left into a rage. You can say anything on the web. You can voice the obscenity that America "had it coming" on 9/11--and no one bats an eye. You can vilify businessmen, call Goldman Sachs a "vampire squid on the face of humanity," and even the Right remains silent. But standing up for the producers who have created our standard of living--that's beyond the pale!

There's a lot of hatred out there in the Angry Left, and a lot of paranoia about sinister figures and corporations who "run things" for their own evil designs. This conspiracy-theory mentality used to be associated with the Right--the vast communist conspiracy, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Illuminati, the Jewish bankers. Now it's the Left that's conspiracy-minded.

But there's a difference. Most of the Rightist conspiracy-mentality (though not all) was a response to bafflement: an inability to account for the dominance of the Left. (That dominance is in fact caused by ideas--the altruist-collectivist ideas saturating our intellectual establishment).

The Left's conspiracy-mentality does not come from any sense of ideological impotence. The Left, after all, still controls the mainstream media and the universities. The Angry Left's vision of puppet masters who pull the strings comes from a deeper cause: a feeling of personal inadequacy. "Some sinister forces out there are robbing me of my just deserts."

When such a person finds one of his desires thwarted--when he doesn't get a promotion at work, when his "green" investments turn sour--he defends against it with his mantra: "The good have no chance in this world, the selfish bastards are  too powerful."

And when you see rage at the idea of honoring the successful, climaxing in death threats, you are witnessing the ressentiment of those who secretly regard themselves as failures, whatever their outward success, and are desperately struggling to bury the knowledge that they themselves are responsible for their fate. Hatred for the achievers is the outward projection of their own self-loathing.

More and more, you can see this rage breaking through, out there on the Left.

Here's a telling incident. During the invasion of Iraq, when the failure to find weapons of mass destruction was becoming evident, a man at a party I attended was loudly and obnoxiously proclaiming the "Bush lied" line. I interjected, "If Bush knew all along that no WMD would be found, why would he have launched an invasion based on a rationale that would then be exposed as false?" The man turned red and yelled back: "BECAUSE HE'S A MORON!"

Hatred from the Left is growing, but it's not new. Back in the early 60s, I attended a talk given by Al Capp, the cartoonist who did the Li'l Abner comic strip. Capp had recently switched his allegiance from the Left to the Right. He told the audience that when he was on the Left, he got hate mail from those on the Right. But it could not compare with the vehemence of the hate mail he started getting from the Left. I can believe him. Hatred on the Left goes down to the core of the Leftist's being.

This is one of the reasons that I'm so opposed to using the term "Liberal" to refer to the Angry Left. The old-style liberals were not hate-soaked. (The hate mail Capp received no doubt came from people much farther to the Left than the old Liberals). Unlike the Angry Left, the old liberals compartmentalized. They advocated the "mixed economy," and opposed communism. Today's "Progressives" (another term I do not use) are not advocates of the mixed economy at all. No, they are not communists, but only because they are too anti-ideological to recognize the fundamental meaning of their position.

The Angry Left can't be appeased, because its denizens don't want anything: they are nihilistic. They are not pro-Arab, they are anti-America. They are not pro-poor, they are anti-rich. They are not pro-equality, they are anti-excellence. They are not pro-charity, they are anti-achievement.

The only thing they are "pro" is state power--the power to bring down the achievers who stand as a reproach, a painful contrast to their own inner emptiness.

Philosophically, the doctrines of self-sacrifice and egalitarianism fuel the Angry Leftists' nihilist rage. For if it is evil to prosper and vicious to excel, then hatred of the extraordinary wealth-creators is justified. Capitalist profit-seeking cannot be reconciled with the collectivist slogan of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Some forty years ago, Ayn Rand wrote:

Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end--sacrifice as a way of life. It is man's independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy.

Imagine what she would write today.