I appreciate the sentiments in this article, and dislike Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh almost as much as the author does. But before we liberals credit the invention of divisiveness to Rush and Bill we ought to look back. After all, they didn't start the "war" on Christmas. It is surprising to me that people would file lawsuits to get Nativity scenes removed from public areas and even try to get "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance and expect conservatives to just shrug it off. I am a rare bird I guess, a liberal Christian from the Deep South, but even I am a bit uncomfortable with what looks like a concerted attempt to remove all traces of religion from public life.

I was just an infant in 1968, but my understanding is that things were pretty divided then. It's just that the liberals had the upper hand. We had people burning bras and throwing jars of human blood against public buildings. Businessmen were selfish royals, police were fascists, and we were told never to trust anyone over the age of thirty. Meanwhile this over thirty set, which was composed of World War II veterans and Depression children, was quietly building the economy and society we have now. Liberals may not have liked these people, but they created most of the great corporations and institutions that pulled us out of the doldrums of the 70s and gave us a more vibrant nation in the 80s and 90s.

Again, I would never defend Rush and Bill. But liberals had their Jane Fondas and Abbie Hoffmans and John Lennons, none of whom were kind to their opposition in their day. Things burned out in the 70s with Sid Vicious and Ted Kennedy -- people taking a good idea to its sterile limit, leaving the public behind. Rush and Bill will do the same. People thought Joe McCarthy would never end.

The main thing liberals need to remember is that the worst conservatives have to offer is no worse than the worst liberals have to offer. For every Hitler there is a Lenin. For every Rush Limbaugh there is a Huey Long. The name of the game is tolerance. If the majority is tolerant, the imbiciles will fade away. I can't see how you get to tolerance by hating the far right, as foolish as they may be.

Like the author of this article, my now-deceased father and still-living siblings spent/spend way too much time listening to conservative talk radio (they work together in a family business that enables radio blather in the background). The O'Reilly/Limbaugh/Ingram/Dr. Laura et al. bloviators make a connection for them just the same as fundamental Christianity works for them. Everything is so neat and cleanly laid out without the bother of actual intellectual engagement, which pretty much works for them since they are heterosexual, white, small-town people who are certifiably in the majority-mainstream of life.

Which makes it pretty hard for me, a gay guy whose career interests and need for an accepting community drove me 20 years ago to live in a city 500 miles away. So every year I trek home for two or three days of stifled obedience. No one asks me questions about me and my boyfriend, they hardly understand what I do for a living (I am a person of accomplishment and have accumulated more financial assets than they'll ever know) and they couldn't begin to hold a reasoned conversation about why I (too) oppose the death penalty, am worried about their progeny's quality of life because of our dependence on fossil fuels, and see gay marriage as an obvious means of strengthening the structure of society (not to mention the constitutional fairness issue).

Just like I deal with limited people in daily life, I must endure my family with the same stoic resolve. They are an immutable fact, not going to change and I am best off tolerating them for short durations. But the people I truly connect with, spend time with and consider to be my family are not those blood relatives. I am jealous of people who have great flesh-and-blood relations, but perhaps I've been lucky too for having an expanded sense of family – most of whom get their news from objective sources and who consider problems from different perspectives. Shockingly, these friends include a few Republicans among many independents and Democrats; none of them are fans of the conservative radio blowhards, however.

But the bottom line, expressed by the author, is clear: such absolutism espoused by O'Reilly and others drives a wedge between members of families everywhere.

Merry Christmas, Bill.

In my case, it was the real war on Labor Day, 2004, when my staunchly Republican Dad went all medieval on my liberal ass. It's always been a joke in my family, how a right-wing, conservative Dad managed to raise a bleeding-heart liberal daughter. But we have always had a great deal of respect for each other's point of view, and talking politics was never an issue.

In 2004, my new fiancé and I had made the drive from Texas to Florida to visit my parents; I wanted them to get acquainted in a low-key setting. At dinnertime, the conversation got around to the president. I declined to comment, as I never like to discuss politics or religion over food. With no warning, my usually logical, calm Dad was transformed into a crimson-faced, foaming-at-the-fangs Rush O'Reilly, screaming at me at the top of his lungs about how at least this president wasn't Clinton, how he was bringing honor back to the nation...yadda yadda yadda. If it had been anyone except my Dad, I would have called 911 for involuntary commitment to the nearest mental institution. The transformation was stunning and quite frightening; not only in front of me and my Mom, but also in front of his guest, my fiancé.

Sure, I knew he listened to talk radio, and watched Fox News...what I hadn't realized, until that time, is that these outlets have tapped into time-honored brain-washing techniques (repetition, repetition, repetition; us and them; 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!) to transform normal, sane Republicans into talking point monsters.

What springs to mind is, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles..." - to another time and place when a reasonable, politically thoughtful population was deliberately put under the sway of emotion rather than reason. I never thought it could happen here...I was wrong. When is this insanity going to end?