I’m not worried about Limbaugh – he’s a grown-up and can take it. I catch a little of it myself, via hate e-mails and inchoate rage from lefty commentators on my blog, but it pretty much rolls off. It’s just trash-talk.

What I am worried about is people who don’t comment for a living: Some schmoe who writes an essay for the paper and gets gobsmacked by left-wing vein-poppers calling him names, for instance. That’ll put you off the idea of civic engagement. People who at long last got involved in politics this summer, via tea parties, only to be called racists by no less than Jimmy Carter – what did they do to deserve the utterly baseless hurling of the most potent accusation now available in American society?

What’s happening, from Chris Matthews’ lies to Jimmy Carter’s, is simply the left trying to delegitimize conservatives wherever possible. Everything we say will be branded racist, somehow, and just holding the beliefs we do will be “divisive.”

Divisive screws up your life. It separates you from polite society, which is the point: The left is eager for conservatism to be socially unacceptable. Unable to debate, it slanders. Unable to persuade, it tries to bring back shunning. And they dare call themselves "progressive."