Earlier this month, conservative author Ann Coulter said Jews need to be "perfected" into Christians. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad routinely denies the Holocaust and says Israel needs to be "wiped off the map." Of Vanity Fair's recent "hundred most powerful people," more than half were Jewish when counted by the Jerusalem Post and checked by New York Magazine.

I have heard that anti-Semitism is the only word that expresses racism against a single specific ethnicity, and while I don't know if that's true, I can't think of another example. I try to imagine what it would be like to hate a particular kind of person. The best I can come up with is communists.

I hate communism by any name: totalitarianism, dictatorship, socialism, oligarchy, fascism. Yet when I meet communists, I believe they are merely misguided. If I speak with them, and they are reasonable, but do not change their minds, I feel sad, as if I have failed, as if it is my fault for not finding the right words to show them the truth they were longing to see.

But I could hardly imagine myself ever being so insulting as saying communists need to be perfected into libertarians, or so duplicitous as claiming no communists died under Stalin's rule, or so murderous as declaring that communists need to be wiped off the map. I couldn't imagine a more boring activity than counting presumed communists on the lists of powerful people.

I pity communists in that they do not know the joys of liberty. It's like trying to explain color to someone who only sees shades of gray.

I wonder how they feel about me? I've gotten some hate mail, and I've heard of other libertarians who have too. I've assumed defenders of totalitarian government get their fair share as well, but perhaps the emotions some communists and their ilk feel for libertarians isn't the mirror image of pity. Perhaps they truly feel something closer to hate.

Perhaps they have to. I believe communists live an inner contradiction every day. Outwardly, they profess the need to share, spread wealth, and so on. But deep in their hearts, how could they not understand that sharing and spreading must be voluntary to be meaningful? I believe communists sense this problem, at least subconsciously, and when promoters of liberty point it out, they must banish the thought if they are to maintain their illusion. It takes an inwardly strong communist to reasonably discuss freedom, and if they have that strength, they are more than halfway to being libertarians already. Emails from such readers are a joy. I often have lengthy exchanges with them, and I love every minute of it.

For those without the moral strength to at least consider the contradictions, they are threatened by cognitive dissonance, and perhaps to resolve their inner struggle, they must hate not only the message but the messenger.

Perhaps that's why many people hate Jews so much.

In his recent book How to Read the Bible, James L. Kugel draws from ancient interpreters and modern biblical scholars. One question that comes up halfway through is, Where did the Hebrews come from? He describes the El Amarna letters discovered 120 years ago, tablets written by Canaanites around the time when the Jews were supposedly invading Canaan. There is no mention of an invading army.

But the local rulers often complain of the apiru or the habiru, referring to a group of rebellious peasants. It is no stretch to see the similarity to the word Hebrew. One theory is that Hebrews started as a grass-roots movement of Canaanite revolutionaries, perhaps stoked by tales of escape by their brothers from Egypt, perhaps with their disparate groups joined together by a common belief in a new, previously unknown God. But ethnically, they were the same as the people they overthrew. As Kugel puts it, "We have met the Canaanites and they are us."

Perhaps, then, the Hebrews launched the first popular libertarian revolt. (Was the American Revolution the last?)

About two thousand years ago, a Gentile who wished to become a Jew asked Rabbi Hillel, one of the most famous Jewish sages and the namesake for countless synagogues, to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot—in other words, in a very few words. Hillel replied, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Law; the rest is commentary."

There can probably be no better summary of libertarianism.

If this theory is true—that the Jews essentially arose as freedom fighters—there are a great many ironies today. Modern Jews tend to be socialists, particularly in Israel, where the tradition of kibbutzim, or collectivist living, has long been an ideological staple, counting at its peak 1 in 15 Israelis as followers. Yet the Israelis are still hated, I believe, for the values of freedom and revolt that their very existence still represent.

Is it not the same with the United States? We founded the world's first libertarian country but have become just another large government with an oppressed populace. Isn't it equally ironic that some people can continue to hate the freedom represented by Americans even as those very freedoms are being taken away from us?

I know I will receive hate mail for this piece. I will get furious emails from communists calling themselves liberals, totalitarians calling themselves conservatives, apologists calling themselves patriots, anti-Semites calling themselves religious, and kibbutzniks calling themselves offended Jews.

I do hope I also receive emails from similar people with reasoned moral objections to libertarianism, and maybe another productive dialogue can start. No one will get perfected, because liberty isn't about utopia. It's about doing the right thing.

phil@maymin.com