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Quote of the Day: Love and Hate
“I know there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that.” – Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer spoke these words ironically, as a joke. Yet it has become a progressive mantra in the last few years. Some businesses post signs saying words to the effect that they love everyone – haters stay out. Progressives post signs on their lawns proclaiming “Love Trumps Hate,” while hating Trump and anyone who does not actively hate Trump. They claim saying “all lives matter” is racist, without attempting to explain logically how that can be true. They say “love is the answer” while slamming the door in the face of anyone who might point out that is not necessarily always true.
What I find most frightening is they do not see any contradiction between these words and their actions. None.
Published in General
Titus 3:3 (ESV)
For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
Lehrer’s song, “National Brotherhood Week,” nicely skewers the hypocrisy. Another good one is Stan Freberg’s “Take an Indian to Lunch.” The Freberg is probably better since it doesn’t refer to people who were in the news in Lehrer’s heyday.
“First, satire has to be funny. Otherwise it’s just whining.” –Stan Freberg
Hating haters equals loving people, because haters hate people, don’t you see? (Neither do I.)
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Equally sanctimonious are the yard signs that cannot even rise to the level of tautologies.
“Love is love. Science is real…..”
I’m sure you’ve seen them – I’m not sure their understanding of what “love” is rises above “sexual stimulation”.
Lehrer got kind of cranky himself in later years. But the general mindset of angry people on the left is that they are so caring and compassionate about the world they can be miserable bastards to individuals and it’s OK — in fact, those people probably deserved it. That also goes towards the idea that because they’re smarter than the sheep out and about in the world, they should be the ones who tell the rest of the public what to do and how to lead their lives.
The ones with that mindset who achieve political office, then set about implementing their fantastic top-down big government plans, and even though those efforts have failed miserably in the past, it was because the wrong people were in charge. And even when those plans fail again when they’re in charge, it’s not their fault, because evil non-believers sabotaged the plans. That’s when you start seeing the round-ups of the political heretics, because things will obviously work when there’s no more dissent hamstringing their plans. And as the plans fail time and time again, the angry types continue to find people to blame, and have no qualms about even making former allies Enemies of the People, because it can never be their own fault or the fault of an ideology that fails to take human behavior into account and will never work.
The Unitarians put out those signs before they got the memo that science is “toxic whiteness.”
https://www.uua.org/worship/words/image/we-believe
Except he didn’t say “poops.”
He’s still in those later years, and frankly, I think he was rather cranky from the beginning. Made for great songs, though.
He hit the same target nicely in “The Folk Song Army” with the line, “Every one of us cares/unlike the rest of you squares.”
Seen: “Hate is not a Family Value.” Unseen: “And I LOATHE any Republican who disagrees with me!!”
Several years ago a (female, twenty-something, if it matters) coworker found one of those little Christian tract slips of paper with a gospel verse on it tucked in some cranny of our (open to the public) workplace. She showed it to me, obviously upset, and said, with no irony or self-awareness, “I really hate Christians. They are so intolerant.”
I’m actually friends with this person and am very fond of her, but this comment has always bothered me. I sort of roll my eyes when I find tracts (pretty common for people to leave them in library books), but my goodness, who is it hurting? Why would something like this be perceived as hateful? And why is it not hateful for her to hate (her word), what, two and a half billion people?
Every time I hear something about the Unitarians, I think about Mort Sahl’s routine in which he cautions against running afoul of them because “you might end up with a burning question mark in your front yard”. (I guess you had to be there.)
I still find myself (sometimes) humming “The Vatican Rag” to myself. (Not during Mass, of course…)
They would then be goats.
I love the song, but I still can’t genuflect like that.
Given Lehrer’s own progressive leanings, maybe it wasn’t so ironic after all.
Every time I hear something about Unitarians, I am reminded of a long-ago friend, a lapsed Catholic, who flirted with Unitarianism (along with astrology and tarot reading). At her house, I read a denomination newsletter that included a letter from a clergywoman who reported being passed over for a position by a congregation. It was explained to her that the church could tolerate a belief in God in parishioners, but NOT in a pastor.
It takes practice…
They wrote that in a denominational newsletter?
My eyes just rolled so far back I could see my brain.
“It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffeehouse or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everyone else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.”
“One of the problems that recurs more and frequently these days in books and plays and movies is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can’t communicate, children who can’t communicate with their parents and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and movies, and in real life I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can’t communicate. I feel, that if a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.”
That album was full of gems.
As far as tolerance goes, I’m pretty sure it has always been the case that those who scream the loudest about something are those who have it in the shortest supply
Lehrer’s song has that timeless line: “And everybody hates the Jews.”
“They’re rioting in Africa.” – The Kingston Trio
Ah, Peter! That was one of me sainted mither’s favorite lines, and one that she quoted often. She was the queen, both of Cutty Sark and cutting sarc.
They’re simply intolerant of those who are intolerant of others.
They are not big on self-reflection, are they? Or logic, for that matter.
That’s the trouble with cancel culture, you’re good one day then things change and you can be cancelled for holding what was once the correct thought.
Since she made a bit of news recently, I first read Tom Lehrer as Tomi Lahren. Whoa.
They fixed it:
But boy should this be some kind of tax/elections law violation:
https://www.uua.org/worship/words/image/banners-resistance