Nasty is as nasty does.

This is an interesting political thesis, from Brian Micklethwait of samizdata.net:

"In my opinion, an amazing number of mysteriously vehement, evidence-defying opinions can be better understood once you understand that the expresser of such opinions is unthinkingly assuming that most others are, in some particular respect, just like him."

I do not think he's picked for his illustration the very best examples (why are anti-gun people sometimes themselves very violent?  why are people who are very alarmed about the societal impact of open homosexuality sometimes "repressed homosexuals" themselves?)  but it is an interesting point.  

(I'm going to try to be a little more careful than Micklethwait has been to qualify the remarks with terms like "some" and "sometimes" and "self-declared.")

An example I have noticed that I think fits this pattern:  some self-declared feminists who will use the nastiest and most sexist language possible to describe women who hold conservative political views. 

Micklethwait's idea is to turn the question around: instead of asking, for example, "why are some anti-gun people so violent?" change the question to "why are some violent people anti-gun?"    I suppose the question then becomes not "why are some self-declared feminists so willing to use sexist language against women who are different from them?" but "why do some users of vicious, sexist language against their political opponents persist in calling themselves feminists?"  And maybe Micklethwait is right that there is something in there about assuming that everyone is willing to use vicious sexist language.

I have long had a different theory -- maybe both theories are right.  My theory is that there are certain people who believe it is okay to play foul if your opponents are also playing foul -- the "He started it" excuse.  So, then, if some people who call themselves feminists (and who believe that conservative women are anti-feminists -- I don't think so, but I can of course understand that many liberal feminists define "feminism" in a way that excludes much social conservativism) believe that their opponents use vicious, sexist language, well then, it is okay for them to use vicious, sexist language too. 

Hence all you have to do to justify nasty behavior on your part, is to imagine your opponents being just as nasty.  (Notice that they don't have to really be nasty.  You just have to imagine they are nasty.  Which is maybe just another form of Micklethwait's thesis that you "imagine they are just like you.")

I'm sure there are many examples of this all over the political spectrum.    My point is that it is foolish to use someone else's bad behavior as an excuse for your own bad behavior.  Doubly foolish to use someone else's behavior that is really only as you imagine it to be.  All it does is turn you into what you hate.