Agape
(I wrote the following in response to this dailyKos thread--but thinking about it, the same sentiment applies in consideration of the right-wing conference I wrote about earlier today.)

What almost physically sickens me whenever I see Ann Coulter, or read about Michael Savage, is that whether they know it or not (and I really have no idea), their rhetoric opens the door to unbearable horrors. Dehumanizing your opponents is the first step to jailing them, beating them, or ultimately deciding that the world would be better off without all of them.

They're no longer seen as parents, children, individuals, people who love and are loved. They're monsters. Traitors. Liars. Murderers. Immoral, wicked things. Bugs to be exterminated.

So, yes, on one level we're fighting for our survival. There's no compromise with the rabid core of the right wing hate machine.

On another, though, we're fighting for our ideals, which is a much more uplifting--and immediate, in the sense that nobody is yet knocking on our doors or herding us onto trains--kind of struggle. That means, in part, not dehumanizing our opponents. Hating them is ultimately counterproductive.

The phrase Martin Luther King Jr. used was "agape".  He described it as

...something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love  that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it's what theologians would     call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you've ever seen."

I'm not religious, not in the sense that I try to be mindful of God loving (say) David Horowitz, but I certainly can perceive the worth of this concept. By remembering the humanity of even the most evil-seeming on the other side, I think we consciously reaffirm our own. It's a tough balance between resisting something with all your strength and keeping in mind that the proponents of what you're fighting against are themselves human beings, were once helpless babies (as King reminded those who took actions with him, speaking of the people who were about to sic dogs and turn firehoses on them), are probably capable of tenderness and delight and even mercy. But I think we have to strive for it.