Leftists love to obsess about hate.  It seems to be on their tongues all the time, and it may have already surpassed racist as their expletive of choice to hurl at conservatives, traditionalists, Middle Americans, and other folks they detest.  You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand the meaning of projection—that, when people obsessively accuse others of something, they are likely guilty of it themselves.

And indeed, in today’s America, it’s not hard to see where most of the hostility is coming from.  If you happen to express an opinion counter to politically correct orthodoxy, expect swift retribution from the Talibans of left-wing tolerance.  You may have to apologize to angry inquisitors, lest you lose your reputation and job.  Or you might just lose them anyway.

Then there’s the issue of physical violence.  Leftists speak on campuses with few incidents, but when Ann Coulter and similarly prominent conservatives go to our halls of higher learning they sometimes need a platoon of bodyguards.  The left spares no venom against the Tea Party, but instances of Tea Party violence are rare.  The leftist Occupy Wall Street protests have been less than peaceful on more than a few occasions.  A poll of OWS protestors in New York found that 31 percent supported violence as a means to attain their objectives.

So why is the left so likely to harbor hostility?  One reason, suggested by James Kalb in The Tyranny of Liberalism, is that leftists truly believe that the goodness of their cause, equality and freedom for all, is self-evident.  If anyone opposes that cause, the only possible motive he could have is pure malice.  Thus, for the leftist, a deep hostility for such a person does not seem inappropriate at all.  And, as Kalb points out, the Christian commands to love one’s enemies and examine one’s own sinful heart do not pertain to leftists.

The leftist takes it personally when presumed moral inferiors challenge his system.  Much of his identity and self-esteem derives from his righteous conviction that he is morally, socially, and intellectually superior to the Middle American Untermenschen whom he so regularly excoriates.  It is an insult to his dignity when denizens of this lower order dare to question his stainless ideals and character.

Leftists rage because they are certain that they’re right.  Paradoxically, they may rage even more fervently because doubt underlies their certainty.  Hostility toward critics so shrill and unbalanced hardly speaks of genuine confidence.  If they were truly secure in their beliefs, perhaps they could be a bit more relaxed in the face of disagreement, still showing contempt, but at least not quite so bitter.  Their rage, however, makes more sense if, deep down, they harbor suspicions that the benighted right wing isn’t always wrong.  That rage against outer critics likely serves to silence their inner doubts.

Outwardly, leftism is a mighty fortress, but its foundations are a morass of contradictions.  Perhaps the most fundamental of these involves the unshakable belief of leftists that truth is relative, and that morality is simply a personal preference.  Yet they dogmatically assert that their views are the only true, moral, and acceptable ones.

Other fundamental contradictions involve the left’s veneration of freedom and equality.  If human beings are naturally unequal, as genetic science certainly suggests, then truly it is tyranny, not freedom, to try to make them equal.  And when egalitarians assume the role of tyrants, or even a more benign class of social engineers, surely they defeat the equality they espouse.

And these are by no means the last of the contradictions involving freedom and equality, with the issue of immigration offering more illustrations.  Leftists maintain that all peoples and cultures are equal, and that all have the right to move anywhere they please.  No harm will result: In fact, the cultures of the receiving nations will be “enriched.”  Nevertheless, the unenlightened can’t help but wonder how a culture can be enriched if all cultures are inherently equal.  These heretics might also inquire as to how it is self-evident that haphazardly mixing vastly different peoples and cultures together will yield the “strength of diversity” and harmony.  Simple reason and logic, derived from human experience, would say otherwise.

Increasingly, the dominant p.c. wing of the left simply dismisses reason and logic, which are, after all, nothing more than white male social constructs designed to thwart social justice.  Where once the leftists made their case on the supposedly scientific claims of classical Marxism, they now often presume that truth, such as it exists, is whatever they say it is.

With no objective truths to restrain them, the p.c. leftists focus on the issue of power and how to wield it.  Fundamentally, they believe that their ends justify any means necessary to bring them about.  Nevertheless, they are quick to reassure us that they only use power to make people free and equal.  And if people don’t want that, it is only further proof that they are in need of re-education and firm direction.

From their Marxist heritage, leftists appreciate the power that comes from demonizing the opposition.  As Vladimir Lenin once stated, “We . . . must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion [and] scorn . . . toward those who disagree with us.”  One great advantage leftists derive from aggressively accusing others of hate is that it preempts the charge of hatred that their victims could properly make against them.  By striking first, leftists appear to occupy the moral high ground.  This puts the victim on the defensive and further conceals the source of the real malice.

The pithiness of the word hate makes it an ideal trigger for the Pavlovian conditioning that the left exerts though its media.  Those media constantly plant images of unsavory and vicious conservative “haters” in the minds of target audiences.  Later, when leftists shout “hate,” those images come alive in peoples’ minds, and they respond accordingly.

One more benefit to the left from accusing others of hate is that many of their targets are Christians, or at least cultural Christians, and accusations that they are evil and malicious are truly painful.  Many imagine that no one would make such charges unless they had at least some truth to them.  This in turn makes these targets highly introspective, and they wonder if the proper anger they feel against leftist outrages is in fact sinful hatred.

Saul Alinsky once said that humor and ridicule are the most effective weapons against an entrenched establishment.  With this thought in mind, we might give a derisive name to the left’s favorite smear tactic: hate hype.  One gains power over a behavior by putting a label on it.  That’s why the left constantly slaps its labels—intolerant, xenophobe, bigot—on conservatives.

What might we call a practitioner of hate hype?  What about a hate-hype viper?  Definition: A small and highly venomous reptile, pink to red in color, and quite slimy.  Habitat is the entire Western world, but it breeds in greatest profusion in foundations, campuses, newsrooms, and other fetid swamps and backwaters of political correctness.

A good injection of sarcasm and mockery is the perfect antidote to the hate-hype viper’s bite.

Better still is the inoculation of truth, administered regularly in speech and writing.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood that the mighty Soviet Union rested on falsehoods and contradictions—just as our p.c. regime does.  He advised his countrymen not to live by its lies, but to deny them whenever feasible.  The cumulative effect of simple truth-telling undermined Soviet power.  Our task in the West should be the same.  We must point out the logical and factual nakedness of our p.c. emperors so incessantly that they can no longer hide it.

When the left labels our honest comments and questions as hate, we might reply that truth-telling is hate to those who hate truth.  When they denounce our free speech by calling it hate speech, we might reply that free speech is hate speech to those who hate freedom.

Beleaguered defenders of truth can take heart from the fact that no one can manipulate reality out of existence.  Those who try must live with perpetual frustration—and unending rage and hostility.