Whence the hatred? Jews have been asking for decades and Americans since 9/11. Commenting on the story about Jewish doctors saving Palestinian babies, a reader emailed me: “I wonder if you are a fan of Ayn Rand. The piece, below, sprang to mind, as I was reminded - yet again - that the squalor and destitution of vast swathes of Arab/Muslim societies never, ever turns to good, and the creation of good. No, it turns to the easiest, most violently adolescent answer: hatred of the good for being the good. Just like a bitter father chopping his striving son at every turn, lest the son’s potential success reflect badly on his father, Israel’s enemies - in the Middle East, but lest we forget the rest of the world - revert to the easier, most expedient answer every time: hatred of the good for being the good.”
Today, we live in an age of envy. “Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves . . . . That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree . . . . Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
If a child wants to get good grades in school, but is unable or unwilling to achieve them and begins to hate the children who do, that is hatred of the good. If a man regards intelligence as a value, but is troubled by self-doubt and begins to hate the men he judges to be intelligent, that is hatred of the good.
The nature of the particular values a man chooses to hold is not the primary factor in this issue (although irrational values may contribute a great deal to the formation of that emotion). The primary factor and distinguishing characteristic is an emotional mechanism set in reverse: a response of hatred, not toward human vices, but toward human virtues.
To be exact, the emotional mechanism is not set in reverse, but is set one way: its exponents do not experience love for evil men; their emotional range is limited to hatred or indifference. It is impossible to experience love, which is a response to values, when one’s automatized response to values is hatred.
Unfortunately, Muslims and Arabs are not the only haters of the good, intellectual elites are too. Hence, the relentless media, NGO war against democracies as a whole and the US and Israel in particular. Therefore, the more democracies try to accede to the demands of these “victims” and their self appointed advocates, the more they are hated.
Unfortunately, few of us are willing to look at reality with Ayn Rand’s unflinching eyes. Most of us prefer self delusion. It is less unsettling, more rewarding. Hence, the democratic Atlas may be bone tired, but it has yet to shrug.
Have PoliticalMavens.com delivered to your inbox in a daily digest by clicking here
