It's not hate

I keep getting accused by my friends of simply being partisan, of hating Republicans for being Republicans. It's simply not true. First of all it's not hate. If one hates something, one takes steps to physically eradicate it. I hate cockroaches. I hate wasps. I hate yard work. That's quite different from saying you hate a person. I hated people in grade school; not many, but there were a few. And always, I later looked back and wondered why I wasted so much time hating that person rather than getting on with what was important in life. Sometimes, I ended up making friends with people I had earlier hated.

Glenn Greenwald said this last Friday on the subject of partisanship and "progressive" Democrats at the Yearly Kos convention:

There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.

The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

I don't hate Republicans. I disagree with them, I want to convince them why they are wrong to believe what they believe, but through reason not coercion. I am a Democrat and vote 100% Democratic not because I just love Democrats, but because they support more of the things I believe in than Republicans do.