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"I&amp;#x27;m not one to pay even the most minimal attention to any of Bill O&amp;#x27;Reilly&amp;#x27;s rants, but something he said this week really stuck with me, even after I&amp;#x27;d gone through my usual &amp;quot;read the transcript, roll my eyes, read it again for the comic value, and go on with my day&amp;quot; process. It was his reaction to Al Gore&amp;#x27;s surprise visit to the Netroots Nation conference this week. O&amp;#x27;Reilly declared: &amp;quot;There is not a more hateful group in the country than these Daily Kos people....The fact that [Gore] went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into a Klan gathering.&amp;quot; Hmm. Really? A bunch of wonky, tech-y progressives are more hateful than, say, The Minutemen? Do they really use the &amp;quot;same rhetoric&amp;quot; as the Klan and the Nazis? One wants to dismiss such ridiculous comparisons out of hand. But then I thought, what if he has a point in there somewhere? Are liberal opinionators turning into another one of those groups that survive on a &amp;quot;rhetoric of hate?&amp;quot; The more I went over it in my head, the more I realized that my own progressive political views are often expressed by venting my angry disgust for all the ills committed by the Reign of Conservative Terror and beyond. That&amp;#x27;s not how I want to articulate my feelings about this country and the future. Besides which, it&amp;#x27;s exhausting&amp;amp;#8212;too much resentment, not enough action. There has been a lot of love in this election&amp;amp;#8212;Obama groupies, anyone?&amp;amp;#8212;but it doesn&amp;#x27;t cancel out the amount of hate we employ in our political conversations. Yes, the Bush administration has left us all with massive amounts of discontent, but that&amp;#x27;s going to all be over soon, one hopes. So why should we stoop to using the same attack tactics as those pissy right-wingers? If the point is to be progressive, I think moving forward should include leaving hate behind. I&amp;#x27;m taking a vow right now to be more positive from here on in this campaign. Are you ready to make the same one? &amp;amp;#8212;Fern "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/07/hate-actually>