Who defines hate?
As if recent events don't give us enough to worry about, now we have a new missive in The Atlantic from former Vice President Joe Biden concerning the incident in Charlottesville.
Biden wants to declare America a hate-free zone.
He says we should declare "no place for these hate groups in America. Hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants — all who are seen as 'the other' — won't be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation."
Biden articulates for us here the vision of the "alt-left." America gets transformed from being about limited government, with laws to protect individual freedom, to sponsoring search and destroy missions for eliminating hatred. And, of course, Joe Biden and his left-wing friends will define for us who the haters are.
As sickening as the "alt-right" racist bigots may be, at least we know where they're coming from. They make no claim to the high ground. Their racism is on the table, in the light of day.
But the "alt-left" is far more insidious.
Take, for instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are self-appointed mission control for identifying who and where are the haters in America.
They publish a "Hate Map" on their website, in which 917 "hate groups" are identified, ripe for elimination in the spirit of Biden's appeal.
Included are 101 anti-Muslim hate groups, but somehow not a single anti-Christian hate group is identified. Actually, Christian groups, in their map, turn out to be the haters.
SPLC identifies at least 19 Christian organizations as hate groups. Groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, which provides legal counsel to those whose religious freedom has been abrogated (e.g., a Christian baker being sued for refusing to create a cake for a same-sex wedding), or Family Research Council, which publishes research in support of public policy consistent with traditional Christian values, or D. James Kennedy Ministries, which, through its church and media, disseminates the Christian gospel and sermons of its founder, Dr. D. James Kennedy.
Peacefully preaching Christian gospel is, in the eyes of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an act of hate because part of this gospel chastises homosexual behavior as sinful.
Unfortunately, in today's tortured culture, sources deemed by some authority like CNN or GuideStar, which provides data on evaluating nonprofit organizations, reference the SPLC "Hate Map" as a guide to hate in the country.
Two major corporations, JP Morgan and Apple, announced six-figure contributions to the Southern Poverty Law Center after the events in Charlottesville.
In a memo to employees, JP Morgan's head of corporate responsibility noted that their contribution to SPLC is "to further their work in tracking, exposing, and fighting hate groups and other extremist organizations across the country."
In 2012, a young man entered Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., and shot the building manager. He, fortunately, was caught and subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was a volunteer at a pro-gay organization and told
the FBI that he used the SPLC hate map to find FRC and that his plan was to kill as many as he could.
D. James Kennedy Ministries recently filed a lawsuit against SPLC for defamation.
In recent media appearances discussing Charlottesville, I noted the equivalency I see between the LGBT rainbow flag and the Confederate flag. Both stand, as I explained, for particular dogma and are statements of exclusion to those who don't fit their worldview.
Those who don't agree with me are welcome to say so.
But instead, the so-called advocates of tolerance shut down my office in Washington, D.C., with an avalanche of calls and threats.
We can't legislate what people feel.
We can and must recapture the American vision of freedom, where law protects individual life, liberty and property, so our large and diverse population can live together peacefully
and productively.