PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The question in this blog headline emerged this week in another quality piece by one of my favorite columnists, Michael Gerson, who writes for the Washington Post.

The question – can hate drive out hate – is a good one to ask as we anticipate Martin Luther King’s birthday commemoration next Monday, January 20.

The best answer is “no.”

Gerson justifies the answer this way:

“Our civic holidays inspire us. But sometimes — as in the case of Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year — the spirit of a holiday is so at odds with our current practice that it judges and indicts us.

“That spirit is impossible to summarize in one King quote from a lifetime of quotable eloquence. But if I were forced to try, it would be this: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive our hate; only love can do that.”

Gerson asks whether it is possible to find a more routinely violated principle – hatred doesn’t work — in our public life?

And he answers no.

“We have a president,” Gerson writes, “who boasts of avenging slights and criticism with multiplied viciousness. Donald Trump has political opponents who feel obliged to attack his breaches of decorum, morality and ethics with an intensity that continues the country’s rhetorical escalation.

“Partisan media and talk radio make their money through incitement and answering fire with fire.

“And much of this conflict is based on a trend that threatens to become a tragedy. Political divisions in the United States are becoming less ideological than sociological. Americans are increasingly taking opposition to their views as an assault on their way of life. So issues such as gun control or climate disruption — instead of being matters requiring debate and offering the possibility of compromise — become signifiers of cultural identity.

“Among those who hold this mind-set, losing an election raises the fear of cultural extinction. The strongest and loudest political advocates tend to think their loss might end America as they know it.”

As a veteran of various political processes over the years, the current state of politics is very troubling for me. It does not appear to be possible any longer to disagree agreeably. Rather, if you hold certain principles, others who don’t hold those same principles, then you hate them.

Gerson says the depth of current political divisions would not surprise King, who lived in a time when social divisions were far deeper, and the level of political violence far higher. King, thus, was not optimistic about human nature.

His primary source of hope was not in human potential, but, rather, in God’s nature – and he believed in a personal God, not some amorphous higher being out there. That hope should be ours, too.

“God has planted in the fiber of the universe certain eternal laws which forever confront every man,” King argued. “They are absolute and not relative. There is an eternal and absolute distinction between right and wrong. It is the human calling to discern and apply these principles to public affairs with prophetic intensity and urgency. No one can finally be neutral. Every man and woman has the duty to resist evil and seek the good.”

For King, the final goal was love, not hatred. And, it was love in the sense of respect for other human beings regardless of their age, the color of their skin, or their beliefs.

“I think I have discovered the highest good,” King said. “It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos.”

And he found this true for a specific reason. “Agape [meaning God-like love] means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated,” he wrote. “…all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself.”

Finally, Gerson, the columnist posits this:

“Many will find this impractical. But in the midst of our zero-sum politics, it is worth asking: How practical and successful is the theory that hate can drive out hate?

Hate is not practical. Hate is not successful.