The title of this piece is an attempt to trump my counterparts on the left, for whom the term "hate" has become the verbal tic of choice (just edging out "like" and "um") when referring to anything conservative.  The latest such throat-clearing exercise is Paul Krugman's piece in the the June 11 edition of the New York Times entitled (now get ready) ... The Big Hate.

Mr. Krugman's thesis is that the recent murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller and the fatal shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum more or less vindicate the DHS Advisory in April (since withdrawn--I guess the vindication didn't come soon enough) warning of a growing threat to national security from "Right-Wing Extremists".  (I usually dislike it when  writers use snotty quotation marks in this fashion, but when you are suggesting, as DHS did, that anyone with a Ron Paul bumper-sticker is a suspect, you're getting the quotation marks.) 

Mr. Krugman goes on to imply that Fox News and conservative talk radio are the Svengali to these various lunatic Trilby's, and have spurred them on to their monstrous acts.  Leave aside the fact that the perpetrator of the Holocaust Museum murder held positions not remotely associated with conservativism (we like Israel, the Jews, blacks and Bill O'Reilly just fine actually), he and the murderer of Dr. Tiller actually held views outside what could best be described as "the mainstream community of sane people."  In this, they were indistinguishable from the recent convert to Islam who attacked the two recruiters in Arkansas, killing one, except of course there is nothing there for the left to exploit which is why that story is currently free-falling down the memory hole.

Mr. Krugman's article, with its heavy reliance on innuendo, a credulous audience and sparse fact-checking (did Glenn Beck do anything except debunk the FEMA camp urban myth, really?) is unremarkable.  What is far more interesting is the larger campaign by the left to conflate conservative commentary and "hate speech" (please see previous note on the snottiness waiver).  To that end, the article in question is just one more plant.

(Plant  n. The creation, invention or exaggeration of a problem with the express purpose of employing it later as justification for doing something normally prohibited.  Logical successor of the "crisis that is too valuable to waste".
  -- Meed's Highly Unofficial Dictionary)

The exact dance-steps are as yet to be determined, but the general intent is pretty clear.  Inasmuch as conservative talk radio and Fox News represent a significant thorn in the flesh to the liberal establishment it would be very much in its interest to classify conservative opinion--or at least insufficiently sterilized conservative opinion--as hate speech.  If legislative muscle could be put behind this eventually, that would be game, set and match.

(For those who consider this far-fetched, please review the current proposed expansion of existing hate crime legislation, note the baby-steps that would be required in terms of definition of "injury" and "victim groups" to achieve the ends above, and tell me again why this wouldn't be attempted.)

All this said, I was encouraged that the comments section of the Krugman article was by no means the uniform Gilbert and Sullivan patter-chorus I would have expected.  Among the more or less obligatory denunciations of conservatives as gap-toothed hillbillies whose demagogues must be silenced, there seemed a good representation of people (at least one of whom identified herself as an Obama supporter) who understood the speciousness of the arguments, and more importantly, the primacy of First Amendment over the latest Kill-The-Bogey-Man appeal.

During the worst of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, someone observed that if it were proven conclusively that God didn't exist the combatants would immediately resolve themselves into Catholic atheists and Protestant atheists.  People who walk into public places with murder on their minds are not driven by anything but their own demons, and, to paraphrase Mr. Krugman, those who attempt to exploit these tragedies for political gain do so at their peril.