A few weeks back the Gonzaga chapter of a conservative student group, Young America's Foundation (YAF), put up flyers advertising a talk by one Dan Flynn, author of a book called Why the Left Hates America. The flyers bore the same title as the book, and in short order YAF got a letter from Gonzaga administrators: Seems they'd been getting complaints, and they decided the word "hate" in the title was a violation of school rules against — no kidding — "hate speech." Oh, and it's also "discriminatory."

Naturally, there had to be a penalty for such offenses. The flyers (which the school had previously approved) would have to be reworded and reprinted, and the complaint against YAF would go on file. "In the future," the letter warned, "watch what information is printed on your flyers." (For more details, click here.)

This is bizarre stuff, even by the decidedly warped rules of political correctness.

It's not that I'm wild about Flynn's choice of words. I wouldn't use language like "Why the Left Hates America:" It's too broad, too sensational, too nationalistic. (There's a difference between patriotism and nationalism.) But "hate speech?" If that term means anything, it's speech that's, well, pro-hate: Flynn's title presupposes the opposite — that "hate" is a bad thing. And "discriminatory?" It's not clear where that claim comes from. It seems to be no more than an epithet — a reflexive resort to the ultimate weapon of modern discourse, the accusation of bigotry.

So what's really going on here? Well, I think it really is about that four-letter word "hate" — but not in the way the university claims.

Let's start with an obvious point: It's inconceivable that (say) the Gonzaga Gay-Straight Alliance would've gotten in trouble for charging anyone with "hate." The same is true at virtually any other school. That's because it's understood that "hate" is their word. Everybody knows it: The (often self-appointed) spokespeople for various minority groups, usually associated with the political left, are perfectly free to stigmatize their opponents as hatemongers. They aren't expected to back up the claim; if anything, it's the accused who's expected to prove his innocence. Such intimidation tactics have been immensely effective. They've kept cultural conservatives on the defensive for the past three or four decades, forever facing the suspicion that their defenses of traditional morals or culture are just a mask for prejudice.

So the offense of Flynn and co. isn't merely that they said something harsh about the left. (Groups on the right and left say harsh things about each other all the time.) It's that they stole the left's property, and some very valuable property at that — a rhetorical weapon of mass destruction that's only supposed to be possessed by one side. If both sides are free to charge the other with "hate," one side can't enjoy overwhelming moral superiority in the eyes of the world.

Considering how long leftists have held the upper hand on campuses, it's not surprising that they get indignant when someone tries to take it away. A YAF leader said a Gonzaga official told him that numerous students and faculty members had physically torn down Flynn flyers and marched into university offices to complain. That seems like a wild overreaction, but it's the sort of thing you get from people who've come to think they enjoy a moral monopoly.

As I say, I'm not eager to see the right pick up the habit of accusing its opponents of hate. Certainly the right is no more immune to self-righteousness than the left is. (That's original sin for you.) And while college campuses have nurtured that attitude primarily on the left, the current national climate can easily breed it no less abundantly on the right. Wartime tends to breed an "us vs. them" mentality with little room for nuance.

What I'd really like to see is for people to get fed up with all this talk about who hates whom. It almost invariably sheds more heat than light. Hate is a perfectly legitimate word in and of itself; it describes something that exists in human relationships all over the world. But in current practice it's almost never used as a careful description of another person's motives. It's usually just a way to tear down the other guy, and build ourselves up in the process. The other guy hates, therefore he's bad; and by inference, those whom he hates are the good guys.

The truth is, there's plenty of blame to go around. When people really do hate, there are all sorts of reasons, some worse than others; often they hate because others have first done something to them. You can't measure virtue simply by who hates whom. (You can measure it by love.)

God, for His part, would have none of us hate others, but that's not because they (or we) don't deserve it; it's because love is essential to His nature and He created us to share in that. What God would have us hate is sin and injustice. All of us are guilty of such evils, and the more we concentrate on locating them in others, the more we neglect to locate them in ourselves — and repent of them.

This isn't a call to stick to our own lives and neglect the rest of the world; it's a call to bring the right attitude to all our engagements with the world. (I spent more time on this topic in a column a few months ago.) When it comes to charges and countercharges of "hate," we'd do well to just steer clear of the whole thing and keep our focus where it belongs.