Yes, both candidates make personal attacks on their rivals, but there is no parity in how the two parties stigmatize opponents. Democrat vitriol is liberally applied not just to Trump, but to all his supporters.

As Hillary Clinton's corruption and willing betrayal of national security secrets dominate conservative headlines, her campaign and the liberal media turn to their favorite theme: their moral superiority. Democrats are the good people; Republicans are the bad people. Hillary's failures are trivial compared to the horrors of those KKK-Fascist-Stupid-Greedy-Hitler Republicans.

Chatting with a California man who had biked across America, I remarked that it must have been interesting to talk with people across the country. His answer? "Are you crazy? I didn't talk to anyone. They're all rednecks."

Character assassination is the liberal weapon of choice against ordinary people. Democrats bully everyone to obey their rules on what we may think and say and do. They have the right because they are protecting blacks, gays, and women from our hidden hatred.

My college-age niece is typical of millennials when she tells me freedom of religion is of no importance, that people must be forced to think correctly about gays. Young people see the Bill of Rights as the handmaiden of bigotry and homophobia.

In September 2001, I had the privilege to sit in on a course on genocide at the Boston Divinity School taught by the late Elie Wiesel. The class met the day after 9/11, and many of the divinity students wanted to excuse the Islamic terrorists as "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." These kind-hearted millennials also wanted to whitewash the Holocaust, claiming that all of us would be Nazis in the same circumstances. Wiesel shook his head with a sad, sad look on his face. Only some people became Nazis, he explained. Some fought them heroically.

The rest – like my liberal classmates – made excuses for them.

The most unforgettable lesson was on the Rape of Nanking, in which the Japanese army in 1930s China raped, tortured, and massacred Chinese civilians in an orgy of sadism. How did ordinary Japanese soldiers lose civilization and behave like monsters? Wiesel explained that the indoctrination began in grade school, and the key to enabling atrocities and mass murder is to dehumanize your opponents. Portray your enemies as diabolically evil, and you have the moral right to destroy them.

Now the unthinkable is happening. We are living in a period when Democrats are normalizing the demonizing of conservatives and Christians as evil people beyond the pale. We are all KKK. As predicted, violence follows vilification. Trump supporters have been punched, hit with a crowbar. robbed, spat upon, thrown to the ground, injured by a soda can thrown at the back of the head, and pelted with dog feces. In San Jose and Minneapolis, police have stood by and allowed the violence. A black Trump supporter who voiced his opinion in a bar was shot. Democrats think we deserve it.

So I was glad to read this clear exposition of the danger of Democrat tactics in D.C. McAllister's important article in The Federalist this week:

Scapegoating is not just about control, it's about disassociation, even eventual annihilation. One group (the most powerful, the in-group: Democrats and liberals) targets an opposing group (Republicans and conservatives) and blames them for all the problems of society – economic ills, racial conflicts, cultural clashes, even personal struggles and unhappiness. This is a dangerous progression because hostility will inevitably break out against the out-group that has been maligned. We see some of this with the conflicts between Black Lives Matter and white cops (cops being the out-group). But, in time, it will spread beyond law enforcement. The scapegoating will eventually extend to anyone who opposed the liberal agenda.

She argues that liberals delegitimize what used to be universal American values. In the new progressive-dominated popular culture – reinforced by K-12 public school, Hollywood, academia, and the liberal media – America is labeled racist.

The entire history of America's founding has been labeled. Individualism has been labeled. Personal responsibility has been labeled. Free markets have been labeled. Christianity has been labeled. Conservatism has been labeled. The United States of America as a nation has been labeled and stigmatized. That's why so many people – millennials especially – want to be identified as globalists. They're ashamed of their disgraceful nation, which has been effectively stereotyped as hateful and bigoted – a belief Barack Obama reinforced when he said "Racism is in our DNA" and reinforced by Hillary Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, who recently called for whites to become a "minority" to atone for racism. Everything conservatives hold dear culturally, politically, and socially has been labeled and stigmatized, not because of actual racism or covert racism, but because leftism has been a raging success. Groupthink has won.

Liberal identity is based on the pretense that liberals are the only fair, intelligent, loving people in America. Democrats eat up these flattering falsehoods. They don't notice they are selling their heritage for a mess of pottage.

Worse – in using the tactics of demonization, Democrats are becoming the fascist tyrants they fear.