I see this phrase all the time: “They hate us, they really hate us”. It is offered as an explanation of why the left is so rabidly confrontational and irrational these days – but after several conversations with local lefties this week, I have concluded that it is not really hate, it is something close to hate but not quite all the way there.

But most of all, they fear we are right – that what we believe and how we live is the way to attain the type of life and in the society they want – and that our success would destroy the illusory, zero-sum world they have created for themselves.

Digging into the roots of things like gender fluidity, critical theory (including critical race theory), postmodernism and pretty much all the Democrat Party philosophies, these are all pseudo-intellectual attempts to explain failure. Whether it is trying to deny the biological reality of sex, to explain the lack of socioeconomic success due to 1) an institution that ended a century and a half ago and 2) a “white” power structure that keeps only black people down, redefining the language so that your ideology can be explained or adopting all of the above as a basis for your political hopes and dreams, it is all about fear.

It should come as no surprise that people who ascribe to this fear want to invoke a “protector” of sorts. Like Hobbes’ Sovereign, Plato’s Council of Guardians or Sir Thomas More’s Prince, the left seeks protection via government – and that “protection” is rooted in the idea that people must be told and coerced into behaviors that are agreeable to the collective and no one should be able to rock the boat by deciding anything for themselves.

To someone who looks to government to make decisions for them, the idea that an individual could and should make their own decisions is scary to them – ergo the fear of which I speak. To them, the thought that they must make their own decisions and bear the consequences of those decisions is oppressive.

How dare we force them into the tyranny of individual freedom of choice!

Hate requires reasoning. Hate is deductive – it requires that someone consider the reasons for the hate – whether those reasons are rational or even factual is immaterial. Hate is an intellectual process – but fear is not – fear is feral. It takes no thought; no reasoning and it is ingrained in all of us as the natural consequence of our response to danger – commonly known as the fight or flight response.

In my opinion, that is why the reactions we see from the left are so primordial, so violent and so vicious. To them, the threat we pose is existential. It is not about battling it out in the arena of ideas and debate, this is a life and death struggle to them.

And given that they tend to think of life as a zero-sum game, if we win, they lose. We think we are fighting over philosophical approaches; they think they are fighting for survival. There is no way to reconcile those two positions.