Had I known what a positive emotion Hate could be, I could have easily started this column with the sentence: "I was being released from the Palm Beach County Jail about the same time FOX News anchor Shepard Smith was being arrested for squashing a well-known liberal reporter with his car."

But, no… I wasn't in Florida at the time. But I should have been.

Of course, I'm sure I wouldn't have been anywhere near as suave as Smith was when committing my crime of choice. According to Matt Drudge, Smith actually told the flattened (but ungrateful) bitch, "Fuck you!" as he exited his vehicle. I mean, is this guy cool or what?

But unlike my new hero, Shep, I would only have been arrested for putting bumper stickers on Florida Volvos and mini-vans (Democrats' safety barges of choice) that read: "Don't blame me. I think I voted for Gore." I'm also sure I would have just switched to papering Republican-owned Mercedes (you know, Dodge Vipers and Chrysler 300 M's) with some equally vitriolic "I could have stayed in Milwaukee and got a pack of smokes, but I voted for Bush instead" peel-n-sticks when I was picked up by one of Disney's 28,909 rent-a-cops, but… I didn't give in to the wicked temptations offered by The Dark Side.

I know. What an asshole I am.

Guide me, Shepard. One of your flock has strayed…

Why people shun good old-fashioned hate is beyond me. It's not that Love is a bad thing, mind you, but sometimes - sometimes - you've just got to drop-kick the kitty after she's peed on the floor. It's not that you hate the kitty; it's just that you HATE cleaning the floor for the umpteenth time in two hours. See the difference?

Besides, anyone can love the great outdoors or a piano concerto, but it takes a gifted individual to hone Hate into the razor-edged tool of positive energy it can be. I'm not talking about the "Hatred of Convenience" to further some dark political agenda (i.e.: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Barney, etc.), but a fine-tuning of garden variety Hate into a powerful self-motivator for those times when you want to make bad people stop doing very bad things to not-so-bad people.

It's better to "love thy neighbor," you say? Have you met my neighbor? Yeah. Right… Maybe if she was a cheerleader who practiced nude yoga on her kitchen counter while I watched through the window instead of a crusading, speed-hump-loving-safety-nazi who'd sell her own baby into White Slavery if it meant she could suck Clinton's dick through a federally mandated glory hole.

Sorry, Reverend Jim, but I can't love my neighbor when he's stuffing a ballot box anymore than I could if he were stuffing me into an oven.

Unless your Father can part seas, rain fire or write in stone with His finger, Love is - for all intent and earthly purposes (including certain electoral processes) - the language of losers. If you can't handle the fact that Hate is a "better" communicator when you absolutely, positively, have to get your message out overnight, then you've never "Seen the Elephant" - and I'm not talking about anything to do with the GOP's idiotic mascot.

Look at it this way: If you're staring down the barrel of a gun, be it politically metaphorical or cold blue steel, what musical passages would you choose as being best suited for the soundtrack of what's left of your pitiful life?

If you've decided to attend your metaphorical gunfight armed only with a Handgun Control, Inc. membership card, your personal soundtrack probably includes a selection from Enya, or perhaps Rex Harrison performing "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" from My Fair Lady. But, if you came prepared to throw down and assume a Weaver Stance, you're probably listening to GWAR or Rob Zombie's "Dragula" as you reach for your metaphorical (or actual) Tactical Tupperware.

After all, it's no coincidence that Armed Forces Radio was playing AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock, We Salute You" rather than Boy George's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" when the ground war started in Desert Storm.

The point is, "warm and fuzzy" don't beat true evil. Hate is not the vilest emotion. Apathy is.

There seems to be a groundswell of what one might call a "lack of patience" amongst Americans who've pretty much had enough of the "love thy neighbor… or else" Nanny State that refuses to relinquish its choke hold on those of us who've had their fill of forced altruism. Fuck "kinder and gentler" rhetoric. I'll use the "H-word" to describe the way I feel about my enemies whenever I damn well please, you PC pricks. I'll gladly revert to the "L-word" after you're politically dead and buried.

Fuck. I'd hate this goddamned country if I didn't love it so goddamned much.

…And the next time that neighbor I'm supposed to love drives by displaying her "Hate is not a family value" bumper sticker, I'm going to slip in a selection from Black Sabbath's "Born Again" and drop into an appropriately lower gear.