Because the confrontation is between two categories of people who do not know each other, it will be easy for the side of love first to understand love merely as opposite and opposed to hate, and then to generalize this opposition as an allegorical battle of Love versus Hate, exchanging slogan for slogan, gesture for gesture, shout for shout. Then if nature and rule of battle go unchecked, the side of love begins to hate the side of hate. And then the lovers are defeated, for they have defeated themselves. They have fallen into the sort of trap that Mr. Jefferson set for, among others, himself. If you say, “Alll are created equal,” then adding “except for some,” the exception overturns the rule, and a great deal else along with it. Just so, love that hates has cancelled itself. It cannot survive its hatred of hate any more than once can survive minus one. It is no more. Chaos and old night have come again.
Wendell Berry, The Need to be Whole, page 37