Hardaway: Hating the Hater?

Tim Hardaway’s rant about homosexuality this week has brought about the usual condemnation from all the right people. He’s a “hater.” Hate is bad. However, it is permissible for his detractors to hate him. Thus is demonstrated the intolerance of tolerance.

Are we not to assume that Hardaway’s actions and beliefs are either a product of his genetics or his environment? Isn’t he the way he is because that’s the way he is? Wouldn’t tolerance of diversity compel us to accept him? Aren’t we in no place to make value judgments about him. If Hardaway were gay, the answers to all the above would be yes.

But, Hardaway isn’t gay. Instead, he committed one of the few remaining sins in our “tolerant” culture, he hated. But, what is hate, and why is it so hated?

Hate implies a strong, negative value judgment. A value judgment presupposes that the individual has the capacity to discern for oneself what is right, and the authority to say, “no” when something isn’t. In doing so, value judgments can deny the ability of a culture, the media, or society to dictate our thoughts and actions.

Hate, like just about everything, has power for ill and good, and to eliminate it, as our culture seeks to do, through the fog of “tolerance,” would be a mistake just as to unnecessarily foment it is a mistake. How many of us hate to see or hear about someone suffering needlessly? How many of us hate to see a culture where image supplants value and emotion trumps thought? How many of us hate immorality, however we may define it these days.

Let’s be outraged when the demise of a former model receives nonstop TV coverage for days. Let’s get angry when crime invades our neighborhood. Let’s hate actions that prey upon the weak and innocent. Let’s hate the part of ourselves that gets sucked into the train wreck that is popular culture and assumes its values are our own. And, at the same time, let’s stop and think twice about hating those who say a few words we happen to not like or agree with.

Like Tim Hardaway, through the use of hate and love, we must draw our own lines. As we do so, though, let’s not be fooled by the double standard that is “tolerance.”

Summers into Fall

The news broke this week that Harvard selected its first woman president in its hallowed history. To ascend to this level on one's own merits is laudable, but to ride the tide of political correctness to this post will leave a perpetual cloud of uncertainty hanging over the new president. In order to understand this predicament, we need to examine the presidency of Lawrence Summers. During a conference seeking to address the shortage of women in science and engineering, he was asked to give a thought-provoking address to spur discussion of the sources for this disparity. Unfortunately, his assertions did provoke thought--offensive thoughts, the enemy of the political correctness movement. Instead of using this opportunity, as he had rationally intended, to stimulate discourse, consider options, and produce real action, he found himself at the center of a backlash which had lost all sense of proportionality. He quickly learned that our universities, which had once been the centers of free thought and speech have become something quite different. Now, let's consider the leadership structure of Harvard. They were angered that a man could be so bold to propose that differences exist between the sexes. In order to correct this injustice, they naturally brought about his departure. However, that wasn't enough. In the next stroke, they had to both ensure that something like this would never happen again and demonstrate that women are equally as capable as men to lead such a prestigious university. Thus, Drew Gilpin Faust was hired. As with all selections potentially based on criteria other than merit, we will never know whether Dr. Foust is or was the most qualified candidate for the job. I wish her the best of luck, but I fear that under her reign, the chill of political correctness will continue to blow through the campus. Harvard likely will not help us learn why there are real differences in the numbers of men and women in science. Nor will it investigate why more women enroll in or succeed in undergraduate education. In this era, the sunshine of intellectual vigor and discourse fades, the leaves of free speech fall to be trampled under the heels of political correct minions, and summer transitions into fall at Harvard.