The Wall Street Journal-20080126-Liberals and Conservatives- One Person s Passion is Another s Hatred
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Liberals and Conservatives: One Person s Passion is Another s Hatred
Regarding Arthur C. Brooks's op-ed "Liberal Hatemongers" (Jan. 17): Perhaps the problem is that people self assess that they are liberal when really they need to be thought of as left wing.
A few years back I attended a corporate diversity training seminar where the teacher said that people often have the stereotype that policemen are intolerant. Her experience was that university professors were far more intolerant. Now I don't know the political leanings of this teacher but judging by the response I got when I mentioned a phrase from the Bible, my guess is that she was left wing.
Hmm -- maybe I'm a liberal.
Tim Schefter
Loveland, Colo.
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Mr. Brooks misrepresents his source data. His conclusions are based on the ANES survey's "feeling thermometer," and he defines a rating of zero as "complete hatred." This is incorrect. The survey asks respondents to provide a rating below 50 for groups toward which they "don't feel favorably," or if they "don't care too much for that group." The words "hate" or "hatred" do not appear in the survey questionnaire.
Many liberals feel very unfavorably toward an administration that has created a tragic war based on false reasons, added trillions to our debt, and failed to take action on global warming. But to call this disfavor "hate" is not supported by the survey data.
David Overton
Dallas
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Any reader who doubts Mr Brooks's assessment of Democratic partisan hatred may easily verify it by Googling "I hate Republicans" and "I hate Democrats". As I write, the "hit score" is 21,600 to 11,000. In October, 2004, it was almost 10 to one.
As an independent Democrat, I've long been dismayed by our own political hatred, which has no legitimate place in political discourse. No amount of Republican wrongdoing justifies our own hatred of half the very nation we seek to bring together.
Phil Harvey
Hampton Falls, N.H.
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I hate to admit it, but Arthur Brooks is right about "liberal hatemongers." I can say this because I am an unabashed old-fashioned "New Republic" kind of liberal. My friends to the left don't take prisoners. I have seen vitriol unleashed against conservatives in ways that can only be called truly McCarthyite.
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin
Atlanta
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I live in the hothouse of hatemongering liberalism, the upper west side of Manhattan in New York. If anything, I am both a lower case liberal on some issues and a lower case conservative on others. What Arthur Brooks has written has been my experience. A brilliant young friend, a dynamic lawyer and a gay/lesbian rights leader and an observant Jew and activist in MoveOn.org told me when I praised Mary Cheney for her opposition to President Bush's support for a federal heterosexual marriage amendment to the Constitution, "Mary Cheney reminds me of a Jew in a Nazi uniform." Someone close to me called Condoleezza Rice an "Oreo cookie." That's liberalism?
Why are blacks and gay people not allowed to have "right wing" opinions without being unmercifully villified, while we whites are allowed to do so without serious consequence.
Frederic Wile
New York
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I don't think Mr. Brooks makes a wholly convincing case that the political left is less tolerant than the right. But it seems fair to make two observations. The chilling phenomenon that we know as "political correctness" is a creature of the left. Also, when a leftist feels very strongly about an issue, it's called passion. When a conservative feels strongly about an issue, it's called anger.
Dennis Rhodes
Provincetown, Mass.
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The major flaw with Mr. Brooks' comparison of the two ANES surveys is that it ignores the relative magnitude of the two Presidents' actions prior to the survey. Perhaps the "extremely conservative" respondents who went easy on President Clinton in 1998 recognized his actions as tasteless and unprofessional, but ultimately not earth- shattering. By contrast, the "extreme left's" harsh rating of President Bush and Dick Cheney in 2004 might be a reflection of the comparatively massive impact the two men's actions have had on the world.
Chris Visser
Falls Church, Va.
