I have just sent the following e-mail to the editorial department of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

for my part, I'm tired of winner-take-all, piss-in-your-face politics on BOTH sides, but the letter I'm addresing really went over the top...

My letter:

To the Editor:

The strength of democracy is that it tolerates, even demands dialog. Closed societies allow only one way of thought, and always crumble because they are not able to change or adapt. For a democracy to function well, mutual respect must be maintained, so that ideas may be heard.

Robert Coggins (Sunday, Sept. 11) says that he is tired of “Bush-hating rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth liberals whose letters and editorials continue to insult the intelligence of the people of Western Washington.” But in my experience, Republicans are often the really good haters. Only remember the endless and still-raging Clinton-hating that characterized certain Republicans for so long, and as for mouth-foaming venom, Mr. Coggins is no slouch himself.

For my part, I’m tired of democracy-hating, rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth neocons who will not tolerate dissent, and equate principled disagreement with hating.

The problem, perhaps, is that many neocons and right-wing Christians feel that God is in the Whitehouse. "[Bush] is the leader of the Christian right," according to Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian Coalition figure now with the Hudson Institute think tank.
Is this why taking exception to the administration’s repeated short-term thinking, tolerance of porkbarreling, repeated appointment of incompetent good ‘ol boys, wandering war policy and general mismanagement and mendacity so outrages the doctrinal pure-of-mind, such as Mr. Coggins?

The question must be asked: how can we get back to a functional democracy, where both sides are valued and disagreement is a tool for finding a better way, and not somehow a threat? Not by way of the one-party-controls-all situation we find ourselves so disastrously and stridently in now. Not through the sort of shrill, one-sided rhetoric that Mr. Coggins employs.

Why does a certain sort of Republican seem to hate democracy?