to the topic at hand, protests are protests. Town halls are not protests. Sure, you can demonstrate at a town hall but do so silently. If you want a venue where you, and your supporters want to monopolize the conversation with inflammatory speech and tactics, then get a permit and find a street to march down. And if your conversation is based on lies, the media should do us a favor and no legitimize their behavior by showing it over and over with little context. I barely heard about Code Pink until recently when some conservative was calling them out for their incivility.

I know, it shows my bias too when i defend the tactic of the left, but if violence or something adverse doesn’t happen, no one pays attention. And in this respect, I agree both sides go as far as they can to incite anger and potential for violence.

Additionally, even when you’re discussing the IMF riots in Seattle, or Code Pink, or any of the other fringe groups, can you imagine an MSNBC anchor coming on the television to “air both sides” of their complaints? I challenge you to find me more than one example of this.

I agree with part of your point: in the ’60s, the left’s social movements were not violent and did not intend to be. I quibble with part of this: in August 1970, radical students at the University of Wisconsin bombed the physics building, resulting in the death of one man (a physics researcher and father of three) and severe injuries to four others. Maybe the radical students didn’t intend to kill anyone. But if their intent was simply to bomb a university building, could they not have foreseen the possible consequences?

My real problem with the left’s tactics, those of the New Left or post-’60s left at least, is its use of abortion. But that’s a topic for another time.

All things aside, since the question here is civility (thereby, in my eyes, implying respect of others’ opinions, open-mindedness, and enough devotion to the bedrock principles of healthy democracy to accept that someone else might have a worldview different than one’s own), and since civility here is being measured as though it were a commodity to be possessed rather than a virtue to personify, and since we’re measuring that commodity in people who identify themselves with whichever faction of the War Party promises them the best scraps from Massah’s table:

I would say, “No. Conservatives are no less civil than Liberals.”

And, as evidence, I would recommend a visit to any number of left-leaning blogs or news aggregators that allows user comments – sites such as (but not limited to) RAW Story, DailyKos, or AlterNet.

A quick perusal of the comments penned by mentally-challenged blowhards shows that the “public discourse” is the same as it was through all of the Bush years. Only, since the “opposite” faction of the War Party is now firmly “in control”, the positions have reversed. Now, instead of “conservatives” in the foreground, deriding everyone who doesn’t agree with them one hundred percent as un-American, terrorist-loving appeasers (undoubtedly, all the worst things their feeble minds can bring to muster), we now have “progressives” in the foreground, deriding everyone who doesn’t agree with them one hundred percent as Nazis, domestic terrorists, and corporate shills (undoubtedly, all the worst things their feeble minds can bring to bear).

Every four or eight years for as long as I can remember, this same, tired, worn-out episode of the shittiest soap-opera I could ever hope to not be trapped in plays out, just the same as it did the last time.

All I’d like to know is: Is Massah ever actually going to hand out those scraps?

Indeed, many formerly left-wing conservatives like David Horowitz have recommended the tactics of left-wing agitators as textbooks.

Back to who is more civil. The liberals certainly can be uncivil, but it seems like they aren’t exactly in a target-rich environment. Who is more civil at the moment? In my lifetime, I’ve seen more conservative discivility than liberal, but I’m sure that will change at some point.

In many ways, it is a generational thing. Having been around and “active” in the ‘60a”, I can certainly recall acts of violence and over-the-top demonstration techniques.

Maybe the difference is that the demonstrations-and even the violence-during the ’60s were in the name of accomplishing civil rights and ending what we believed to be an unjust war in Southeast Asia. Even the bombings were executed in a way designed to make a point without killing anyone. That doesn’t excuse violence or bad behavior.

Yet, when you look at the violence during the ’60s that set off so much of this, it was all violence intended to kill. Martin Luther King…the Kennedys..you get the idea.

Somehow, it seems different today. The motivation of the fringe right seems more the result of selfish drives rather than social drives. They hate the government because the government taxes them They still have some issues when it comes to race and ethnicity. They are prepared to do harm in the name of their religion.

While I fully recognize that my own bias may be playing into my feelings, it seems to me that when a member of the fringe right decided to become a bomber in the name of his cause, he killed a serious number of people, including children. In the ’60s, we didn’t carry guns to a protest rally. As we have seen, there have been an extraordinary number of guns making an appearance at the town hall meetings – a bad idea in the name of any cause.

As for the shouting, the liberals were just as obnoxious in the ’60s (I know – I was one of the obnoxious ones) as they are today at a town hall meeting. So, nobody has the moral high ground on this issue.

But honestly, as someone who has experienced the overzealousness from both sides of the political spectrum, I have to say that what is happening today feels considerably more dangerous than what happened back in day.