The negative effects of the importance of money in election campaigns, the gerrymandering, the crazy rants of Dobbs, Limbaugh, Olbermann and others, and so on, those are not new topics, they've been criticized many times before, including by myself.

I'm sorry, but the radicality was there from the very start. Of course Pelosi didn't help matters, but it's not as if she caused it. Just look at those townhalls - those were filled with furious people shouting down the Congressmen before they'd even said anything.

And a number of the things mentioned in the article were already going on even before the health care reform issue was put on the table at all - of course that exacerbated matters, but then it is an important issue so it's normal people have strong opinions on it. But with the way things have been going, caving in to the Republicans on this or even shelving the whole reform isn't going to restore sanity to the nation.

You know very well that you are the one twisting and turning her words into something suiting your ideology. If you can even call it that; "use the term Nazi" is quite simply an outright lie as she didn't use the word. "Splitting hairs" doesn't enter into it. Saying "Nancy Pelosi called the protestors Nazis!" is one thing if you've only heard it through the grapevine and don't know the details of the matter, but you can hardly claim ignorance as an excuse for your statements, so the only thing left is malevolence. Shame on you. The sad part is that since that moment wasn't exactly Pelosi's finest hour, you'd have plenty of room for genuine criticism without any need for malevolent lies.

Sure, but when you have two or three like that in a row, it becomes a pattern, and a whole generation grows up who's never known a president whose legitimacy wasn't in doubt. And then one day you find yourself electing a moderate by a solid margin of victory, someone who in days past would have had broad support, and see that the radical elements of the losing side still treat him as if he wasn't president. And honestly, the supposed reasons to doubt Obama's legitimacy are rather shaky - his election victory was clear, there's no real reason why he wouldn't be legitimate. He's not a moderate like Clinton, that's true, but that's something else.

I'm not saying that Fox or the right in general is solely responsible for things being worse at all. I have the impression, for instance, that Obama seems to make more snide comments and attacks on his political opponents than is common for a president, and Pelosi's "I think they're astroturf, they were waving swastikas" comment was pretty sad even without your wilful misinterpretation. What Friedman is saying and what I'm saying is that, while of course any particular statement or attack or action is the responsibility of the person who makes it, an atmosphere has been created in which those things are increasingly normal, and that will be very hard to turn back. Sarah Palin is responsible for her death panels comment, Obama was responsible for his questionable comments in the Gates case, but in the background the polarization of the US and the changes in the media bear part of the responsibility for both as well.

Is he? I think he did an intentional attempt to point out that this is a thing from both sides, and liberals reading his column who think it's all the right's fault might perhaps reconsider that stance when they see his "24 years" comments.