You can disagree all you want with an American hero, but you still must respect him

John McCain is dead. In life, he and I rarely agreed on issues. We found common ground over wasteful government spending. He was one of the few Republicans who dared oppose his own party’s expansion of the federal government. He fought for a ban on earmarks, which he and then-Sen. Tom Coburn referred to as the gateway drug to big government. But from campaign finance reform to foreign policy, McCain and I were frequently at odds.

Once, on his campaign bus in 2008, McCain referred to me by a word I will not put in a newspaper. That time he meant it endearingly. At other times, he meant it caustically. We frequently disagreed. But I never doubted that McCain wanted what he thought was best for his nation. We just disagreed.

The man is an American hero. He had the opportunity to be released from a brutal prisoner of war camp earlier than others. He declined to deny his captors a PR victory. Over the past few years, however, McCain conspiracists have stepped forward to blame McCain for an explosion on an aircraft carrier. They claim he exaggerated his conditions. Some even have gone so far as to deny he was ever a real prisoner of war, seemingly thinking the Hanoi Hilton was a real Hilton.

For reasons I cannot explain outside theology, a lot of Americans these days believe they can no longer disagree with someone without presuming that person is inferior or somehow evil. President Donald Trump embodies this in his relationship with McCain. He could not just disagree with McCain. McCain had to be disavowed as a hero, which gave others license to do the same. Because they disagreed with McCain on public policy, they had to vilify him, degrade his record of military service, and presume bad intentions on his part. They had to make themselves feel morally superior by believing the lies about him.

This happens more and more in politics on both sides. Perhaps the greatest difference these days between the political left and political right is that the political right recognizes it has bad actors in its midst and the political left spends a great deal of time pretending it has none. But at the outer edges of both parties, the far left and alt-right are largely the same entities. ANTIFA and white nationalists just differ on whether the hoods should be black or white.

There is no better example of this phenomenon than the Arizona Senate primary that concluded Tuesday night. Kelli Ward, the woman who believes in chem trails, got 28.2 percent of the vote and Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff, got 18.9 percent of the vote. Arpaio literally — and I must insist I am not making this up in any way, shape, or form — framed a man for a fake attempted assassination. The man spent four years in prison. Arpaio did it to boost his re-election chances. The man ultimately won a multimillion dollar jury verdict that taxpayers had to pay. Still, almost 19 percent of Arizona Republicans voted for him and I suspect a sizable portion of both his and Wards’ voters did not just disagree with McCain, but hated him. A good portion probably even believed McCain blew up that aircraft carrier.

We live in unserious times and it has allowed people to be unserious. That is why the death of serious men should be treated reverently even if we disagree with their politics.

Erick Erickson is host of Atlanta’s Evening News on WSB Radio.