I am always amazed by the displays of unfathomable hatred, pure blinding hatred, that continues to be displayed by the "lib/leftists’ in regards to US President George W. Bush.
This thread, forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … highlight= , being only the most recent manifestation of this weird phenomena.
And then, I happened to recently come across these related articles…An Explanation. As good as any I’ve seen.
[quote]Eight Years of Liberal Hatred
By J.R. Dunn, November 28, 2007
We often overlook the fact that liberalism is an ideology, and has been since the days of the New Deal. It is not a doctrine or a school of thought, and does not operate by the rational rules required in those cases. It’s an ideology in the sense of a synthetic, politically-based replacement for religious belief, and it operates by the rules of an ideology – irrational, compulsive, and totally divorced from anything outside of the ideological system itself.
Hatred, along with fear, hysteria, and conformity, is a basic element of ideological thinking. I know of no exceptions. For the Nazis, the hate-figures were, of course, the Jews. For the Soviet communists, they were a shifting cast of kulaks, socialists, capitalists, Trotskyites and “wreckers” (saboteurs out to destroy communist achievements on the orders of any of the above). For the New Dealers, it was businessmen (as it is today for some Greens).
The need for devil figures remains true no matter what part of the political spectrum the ideology lies on, what other elements are present, and whatever the ideology’s goals may be. You could go so far as to say that hate is necessary to the definition of any ideology.(article at link)
Eight Years of Liberal Hatred[/quote]
And here is the article referenced above:
[quote]The Insanity of Bush Hatred
Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.
BY PETER BERKOWITZ, Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents.
But Bush hatred is different. It’s not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.
This distinguishing feature of Bush hatred was brought home to me on a recent visit to Princeton University. I had been invited to appear on a panel to debate the ideas in Princeton professor and American Prospect editor Paul Starr’s excellent new book, “Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.” To put in context Prof. Starr’s grounding of contemporary progressivism in the larger liberal tradition, I recounted to the Princeton audience an exchange at a dinner I hosted in Washington in June 2004 for several distinguished progressive scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.(article continues at link)
opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010861[/quote]