George,

Where does the lunacy end? Sure, we always had the haters, gripers and self-interested money grubbers, who, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, embraced a wacky extremist view; left or right.

We had the "sold us down the river at Yalta" crowd, for example, who forgot it was the Russians overwhelming defeat of the Nazis in the East, (the war there ended, for all practical purposes at Stalingrad in 1943), that allowed the D-Day invasion in June of 1944 and the juggernaut of the Allied forces to sweep over western Europe to meet our Russian allies on the Rhine River in 1945. Politics being the art of the real, FDR would have been impeached had he NOT "sold us down the river at Yalta," which, as it turned out, he didn't (but why confuse lifeless facts with deathless prose!).

Guess who won the Cold War even after the "sale!" Though the Right Wing was determined to "nuke the Commies back to the Stone Age," wiser leaders of both parties in the US prevailed and detente was achieved without a war that would have ended civilization!

Now, it's different. Now it centers on pure hatred of a black man for that alone and the "leaders" and their talking heads on the extreme right couldn't care less about the nation or its people--they lost and the only arrow in their quiver is to denounce, demean, vilify and use any scurrilous lie or propaganda to "put this nigger in his place!" (I am quoting here.)

Like the "good people" in the days of the Ku Klux Klan who sat on their hands as these terrorists burned, shot and lynched their way across the segregated south, not ONE member of the Congressional Republican party has had the guts or courage to speak out!

So we have the Glen Becks, Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters et al rabble-rousing the ignorant and pathetic to join them in their madness!

Sadly, like the rise of the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s, the tactics of the neocons and the virulent Right Wing, though they be a relatively small force, are well bankrolled and trade on ignorance and a scatter-brained concept of democracy! Tell me why some feel it necessary to show up at town hall meetings and public forums carrying loaded guns?

The standard reaction to all of this by the average American is to do nothing. And that is precisely our problem. Thomas Jefferson said it exactly, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” This maxim precisely describes where we are today as a nation.

Harry Tenney (Electronic mail, September 4, 2009)