Commentary The privilege to hate

One of the pitfalls of being from the good ole U.S. of A. is that we are not supposed to be bigots.

We are not supposed to hate Blacks because they are black, Jews cuz they're smarter than we are, Piautes cuz they're Native Americans (my grandfather's favorite), Japs cuz they bombed us without our expecting it, or Chinese cuz there are so damn MANY of them.

Nope, we here in the "Melting Pot" aren't supposed to hate people cuz of who they happen to be and we are not supposed to blame races or nations for the acts of individuals.

But what are we supposed to DO with all that pent-up bigotry and racism and hate? It's not like a few million years of suspicion and fear of those who are different can just be dropped now that we are all civilized and it is, you know, INCONVENIENT.

That was the great gift Al Qaeda gave us. A bunch of thugs committed a crime so unspeakable, and hate us so unreasonably, that we can hate them right back and be JUSTIFIED in doing so.

Hallelujah! We don't have to apologize for our hate, nor think too hard about the pure, elegant simplicity of our hate for the TALIBAN! OSAMA BIN LADEN! AL QAEDA!

Toward them we direct our blind rage and give it all we've got, like the guy with the giant wooden hammer at the fair, trying to ring the bell.

Then Steve Earle wrote a song about the young Taliban from San Francisco, John Walker. Influential disc jockeys said they would never again play a Steve Earle song. In a professional hatchet job, The Wall Street Journal said Earle did it for his career.

Has anyone at the Wall Street Journal really been listening to the songs Earle has written for a couple of decades? Do his songs really echo down those halls of financial power?

Mr. Earle was not defending the Taliban. He wrote a song about a confused young man. But it stirred up the self righteous because it called into question the self righteous' claim to justifiable hate.

"OH NO! Now we might have to ask WHY they hate us, how a young man from OUR culture fled into THEIRS!"

Of course, John Walker also raises the question of how we make a distinction between a young American who joined Al Qaeda, and young Arabs who did the same.

When Timothy McVeigh was executed, there was much of the same rage. The self-righteous reviled anyone who said the act of McVeigh may have been evil, but the man was true to principle, warped though it was.

The non-justification of McVeigh drew howls of protest from those who did not want to think about why he did what he did.

Those who are most vitriolic in defense of ideology, Taliban or Al Qaeda or American hate mongers, do not want to think too hard about the deeper issues.

They don't want the understanding that might come from a song or a poem.

They want to hate. They have a seemingly justifiable target of their hate. They have a privilege to hate. And they hate anyone who would take it from them.

But hate is not necessary to defend ourselves. Those who blindly hate are not champions of liberty. They are more like our enemies.

We do not need to silence the poets or the song writers. We do not need to take refuge in bigotry.

Bigotry makes us less effective as warriors. The poets and the song writers can bring us understanding of ourselves, and our enemies.

Understanding does not make us weak. It makes us strong. In defense of liberty we may kill those who believe our liberty is evil, but it is not weakness to understand them.

It is not weakness to respect our enemies, even to love them. It is strength.

It is still possible to kill an enemy that you respect, and even more sacred to love one who seeks to kill you, that you intend to kill first. The understanding that comes from love makes a warrior most terrifying.

Singing songs of love, reciting poems of praise for an enemy under the sword shows the greatest respect for God.