Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

A month before the fatal needle was inserted into his leg, I wrote a column about Timothy McVeigh. I supported his execution on grounds of his own moral suicide, not as an act of public vengeance.

Next morning, I opened the first e-mail from a reader: “You deserve a needle, you $%&*@#.”

Apparently I had not been zealous enough about the death penalty, and this anxious reader wished me into the hereafter with McVeigh.

Makes a fellow wonder about which side to choose.

A columnist’s mailbag is a small window into things, sometimes illuminating, always entertaining. Also occasionally frustrating. For instance: Why is there so much blunt fury these days? Or, more to the point, isn’t it about time to call bull on these bullies?

In my lifetime, I have seen both sides of the ideological spectrum run away with themselves. In the age of Vietnam, it was the left that screamed out its anger. On the fringes, radicals took to violence in the name of peace and civil rights. The killings at Kent State became the symbol of martyrdom. I didn’t like it then.

In the years since and for longer than I care to remember, rage has bubbled on the right. Out on the fringes are the McVeighs and the anti-abortion radicals and the loonies in the Idaho panhandle. Waco is their symbol. Or Ruby Ridge. And I don’t like it any better now.

But the fringes interest me less than the anger of your everyday upstanding defender of the American Dream.

When I wrote about the delight that other states are taking in California’s energy woes, readers from other states rushed to underscore the point: “I hope you freeze in your (cold) hot-tub, you $%&*@#,” said one well-wisher from Washington state.

When I noted that Nevada was luring business investments with the promise of not sharing tax information with the IRS, an Arizona reader who signed his name with a PhD began: “You, one of the swine from the Union of California Socialist Republics, has zero right to complain about what happens in the neighboring country of America.”

When I questioned whether our president was as compassionate in deed as in word, a reader gleefully hoped for recession because “as soon as ad revenues drop, your lazy, despicable, lying butt will be out the door.”

My, my.

Well, for one, I welcome earnest argument. It cannot get too lively for me. I suppose that’s self-evident in the character of a columnist. And I’ve worked abroad in countries where public disagreements were not permitted, where you got the equivalent of a needle in the leg for sounding off. So I’ll take America.

But how about an America that isn’t quite so dull-witted and venomous?

Verbal brawling of this sort is commonplace on so-called talk radio, not to mention on grade school playgrounds and in rougher saloons after midnight. But honestly, shouldn’t we expect higher-caliber thinking among those who read newspapers and presume to be engaged with civic life?

If my mail alone was sprinkled with rantings that seem to be scrawled in the charcoal from a Neanderthal’s fire, I’d be quiet. But it’s not, of course. The language of the knuckle-dragger is too often a part of our nation’s official proceedings. Read some of Trent Lott’s pugnacious statements, or listen to the fuming of Dick Armey or Tom DeLay. Remember, these aren’t fringe characters but congressional leaders and torch-bearers for the reigning party in Washington, D.C.

Time and again, they rile America’s fears by demonizing government as our enemy. Never mind that government is school teachers, highway workers, soldiers, park rangers, air traffic controllers and others who bear little resemblance to this looming straw man of partisan creation. Perhaps it is little wonder that these ideas churn through a delusional mind like McVeigh’s with tragic consequence. How far of a step is it, really, between attacking government and attacking government?

Who is to say that Congressman DeLay’s exhortation to “transform our resistance into an aggressive counterattack” isn’t read by someone as a call to arms? Might a person somewhere mistakenly think it patriotic to defend the country with a bomb when, as Armey warns, the United States is on “that downhill slope” where “government becomes so large that it actually endangers the liberties it was instituted to protect”?

In the November election, George W. Bush was judicious with his promises. Restoring civility to America’s civic debate was his most important.

It was also his most ambitious--for, as happens, the biggest brawlers in the land are the very people carrying his policy agenda.

Last week, Bush reported progress. “The tone is changing,” he said. I hope he’s correct. He has a closer vantage there in Washington than I do here on the other coast. All I can say is that I don’t detect it in my mail yet.

But I wish the president resoluteness in his quest. I hope he keeps after it with the same vigor he did for tax cuts. It’s a daunting job. Count me as an ally, Mr. Bush. And scores of my more thoughtful readers too.

Strong argument makes us wiser. Civilized debate ennobles the idea of self-governance. Wit in our national conversation helps us maintain perspective. Anger begets itself.