Critics of the bill cite the obvious. HR 1592 is a threat to free speech. The only reason why speech needs protection to begin with is that someone else will find it "hateful" and want it suppressed. As the Founders recognized, dissent of any kind will always be "hateful" to despots. A free society is founded on the faith that good and evil can be distinguished by fair-minded people, and that in the natural commerce of ideas the chaff will be sifted out from the wheat.

Even as we go through the motions of defending democratic institutions we sense we are caught in an anachronism. The sun went down on democracy a long time ago and we never noticed. Like when we hear ourselves saying that foreigners pouring over our borders ought to respect our laws. Like in a dream, we hear the sound of our voices, but the sum total of our words falls short of meaning.

Proponents of the new bill say they can't wait for the engines of democracy to grind on in the traditional way, that something like a state of emergency exists. We must sacrifice certain basic rights before the Communists have another chance to burn down the Reichstag. Only now it's not Communists with their Manifestos, but Baptists with their Bibles.

The placard reads "hate speech is not free speech." This begs an important question - the only important question in a liberal democracy - who decides what is hateful and what is merely contemptible? It is claimed that hate speech leads to violence, and that while we already have laws against violence, that's not enough. Some forms of violence are more insidious than others. Violence that occurs as a result of "bigotry" is declared to be a separate category, one requiring extraordinary measures of protection.

If you didn't know we were in a state of emergency, you soon will.

Bigotry must now be certified and policed. Be assured that not every antisocial rant will come under the heading of bigotry. We are not turning into a nation of extremists. Crosses submerged in vats of urine will still be funded by government associations in support of the arts. It's not as if we've lost sight of what's truly important about free speech.

Civil rights will be protected when it comes to intercepting phone calls from foreign and domestic enemies. "Spying" will be decried with great indignation, even if it uncovers genuine threats of violence. The kind of threat that will not be tolerated is the public reading of Leviticus, where a man lying with a man as with a woman is called "an abomination". Some threats are more serious than others.

Somehow I don't think this is about sex.

Here an interesting bit of psychology comes to light. Those who ban the text of Leviticus as "hate speech" assume the typical reader is inflamed with the same savage resentments that they are, that all it will take to set off a conflagration is to preach this text. Once the evil genie is let out of the bottle, rednecks will take to their pick-up trucks, declare a pogrom against gays, and parade through the homosexual ghetto with shotguns blazing. Never mind that the average gay is three times as likely to live in a high rise apartment or gated community than the average redneck.

The old myths are handy but no longer convincing. According to the dogmas of class warfare, religious texts do not incite violence based upon their surface content, but only gloss over existing economic rivalries. This may be questionable from the standpoint of theology, but from the perspective of political economics it is still axiomatic. A troubling bit of economic psychology comes to light in response to the question, what turf is being protected in the name of "hate speech", and from whom?

Gays are now winning politically and economically, and that means somebody else must be losing. They've outgrown the myth of being harassed by the schoolyard bully. By the principles of class warfare they have now achieved grounds for arousing legitimate resentments on their own terms. Like all the certified members of the new Liberal Plantation, they must be protected from the uncertified, unwashed. In the pattern of today's pressure politics they seek empowerment through perpetual victimhood. And to divert attention from rivalries on the Plantation, the next enemy must be rooted out and destroyed.

While the classic Marxian dogma may account for some nuances of psychology, it does not account for the perceived state of emergency justifying the present bill before the American legislature. It's not clear who the real enemy is that proponents of the bill are warring against. It almost seems as if the enemy is... spiritual.

Class war has no nation. In this observation Marx was prophetic. Class warfare is a revelation of the human spirit and thus global by definition. It was an illusion that such a phenomenon could become incarnate in the modern nation state. In the early years of the Bolshevik revolution it was clear that nationalism was a rival to the revolution. Hence the Russians abdicated their role in the First World War and set about cannibalizing each other at home. The modern commonwealth, the Leviathan, was defined as a body of unequal parts, each part now rousing a primal fury in the other. The Soviet Union failed to overcome the contradiction of the modern state and created the oxymoron of the communist state.

Perhaps the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship was not a failure of socialist dogma as much as the natural result. Today we see that the dogma of class warfare is not so much an economic doctrine or a body of social criticism as it is a spiritual cancer. It fastens upon healthy cells without discrimination, attacking one vital organism after another, until the body as a whole is unable to thrive. Then, with many of its parts still seemingly intact, it collapses like a tall tree. The hollowed-out shell and sickly anatomy are only visible as the husk lies shriveled on the ground.

This is the spirit that Nietzsche prophesied was coming upon the world under the guise of the Mass Man. The spirit's name is Ressentiment. The English word "resentment" doesn't quite capture the psychological breadth of the word Continental philosophers developed in the early 20th century. Most of them allowed some theoretical resolution to the destructive power of this spirit. Nietzsche was emphatic in ascribing an apocalyptic character to it. Churchill affirmed its destructive character, referring to its appearance in history as "the Bolshevik infection". My word "cancer" is tame and clinical in comparison with Nietzsche's apocalypse, but it may be descriptive of the life of this spirit extended over time.

Again, it really has very little to do with sex or sexual equality. It has little to do with freedom and nothing whatever to do with justice. All of these join the list of anachronisms.

HR 1592 is the next phase in a war against democracy, or against whatever spirit has inhabited the historic institutions calling themselves democratic. The familiar "state of emergency" purports to justify the limited surrender of personal rights in the name of a superior justice. When the new justice fails to materialize, the former rights will not be reinstated. Those who sacrificed in good faith will not be rewarded with preferential treatment. In good Stalinist fashion they will be silenced as a threat to the spreading demands of justice. They are now a threat because they remember too much of the old democracy.

This is about power. Period. Not everyone can have it. Get used to it.

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline