RALEIGH – “Why aren’t you upset?”

Of all the responses I received from friends and acquaintances after this week’s publication of a New Yorker hit piece on Art Pope and North Carolina’s conservative movement, the most-frequent comment has been something along those lines. Be they conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, most callers or correspondents seem to think that I ought to be shaking with rage at the attempted character assassination of Art, my longtime friend, or at the New Yorker’s attempt to cast the work of the John Locke Foundation and other right-of-center groups in the worst possible light.

I certainly don’t like to see a friend of mine subjected to a hit piece. But, no, I’m not upset about it. I’ve seen or experienced dozens of such left-wing attacks during the past two decades. Not a single one of them has done me or my cause any significant damage. They are not darts that pierce our hides. They are boomerangs that damage their casters.

In the particular case of the rambling, ramshackle hit piece in The New Yorker, the gist of which was subsequently picked up by MSNBC and various left-wing websites, I have received nothing but supportive phone calls and emails in response.

Conservatives and libertarians have expressed glee at the panicked lunacy of its claims and the extent to which it portrays JLF and other conservative groups in the state as effective and influential.

As for my Democratic friends and correspondents, they have either expressed regret at the article’s tone, distanced themselves from what they consider to be an embarrassment to their cause, or asked honest, non-confrontational questions about how we do our work.

As I suggested earlier this week, the real goals of such hit pieces are to 1) inspire liberal donors to give more money to their cause, and 2) intimidate conservative donors and discourage them from giving more money to our cause, by showing what will happen to them if they do.

I have no idea whether the New Yorker article will succeed at the first goal. Since left-of-center groups in North Carolina are already more numerous and better funded than right-of-center groups, we’re used to being outmanned and outgunned. We’ve been successful, anyway, so no worries. Besides, it’s more fun to be the underdog.

As for the second goal, intimidation, it hasn’t worked. Past spurious attacks by Z. Smith Reynolds-funded leftists fell flat. Past attempts to organize boycotts of retail stores owned by Art Pope’s Variety Wholesalers have proven to be laughable wastes of time. Instead, our audience has grown. And JLF has had more donors in the past two years than ever before in the organization’s history — thousands of supporters across North Carolina. I expect a similar effect from the New Yorker piece. Perhaps I should send its editor a thank-you note.

More generally, as I repeatedly stress to younger conservatives and libertarians who haven’t seen this process play out before, when your adversaries resort to personal attacks, their desperation should encourage you. It signifies their inability to respond to your substantive points – it is, in a sense, a concession. And it represents a waste of their time and resources.

In the case of the New Yorker piece, it did something else: it exposed its author, sources, publisher, and re-publishers as either incompetent or dishonest.

The thesis of the piece is that Art Pope “has taken control in North Carolina” by “buying” the 2010 legislative elections. But if you are going to use the language of the auction house to describe political contributions or independent expenditures, you have to abide by the logic of your own analogy.

When bidding against others in an auction, you only get to buy the object if you make the highest bid. If someone else outbids you, you haven’t bought it.

By the logic of the auction house, neither Art Pope nor any other Republican donor could have “bought” the 2010 legislative elections, since they were outbid by the Democrats. Yes, the Republicans did win the General Assembly, but they did so having been outspent by at least $16 million to $14 million.

Furthermore, by the logic of the auction house North Carolina Democrats have “bought” all the previous elections for the state house since 1998 and all the previous elections for state senate since the 19th century, since they outspent Republicans in every election cycle, often by two-to-one, three-to-one, or even more gargantuan proportions.

See how this argument doesn’t really help liberals, and why I’m not upset that they keep repeating it?

Now, if you purport to write a news story about North Carolina’s 2010 legislative elections and you don’t know that Democrats outspent Republicans by millions of dollars, you are incompetent. If you do know it but still allege that Art Pope “bought” the 2010 election, you are dishonest.

So why am I not upset? Because I quite like that my adversaries are either incompetent or dishonest. I’m lazy – I admit it! I would rather they self-destruct so I can spend less time arguing with them and spend more time with more mature people — such as, say, my kids and their pals.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.