THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Frank Rich takes his turn at the plate this week to write about the rise in rage and vitriol in the right side of American politics and culture.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

By definition, conservatives are not about change, in fact it was John Stuart Mill who best described the base of conservatism. "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

What is frightening about the vitriol is the silence from otherwise decent people in the face of it. The last Republican to speak out against it was John McCain, maybe from decency or maybe because he was running for President at the time, but who has spoken out since? Again John Stuart Mill has said what we should all embrace. "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury." We have already seen O'Reilly and Beck run in fear from that idea. And we should take action to prevent what Frank most worries about.

It’s typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as “the height of insult,” in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was “warning us for a reason.”

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party’s big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight’s devout wish was to “bring an end to this false prophet Obama.”

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

So long as they think they can distance themselves from the responsibility, the Becks and O'Reillys and Voights will continue to encourage and enable the worst in American society. And as long as we can not put in prison an admitted torture conspirator like Dick "dick" Cheney, they have nothing to worry about.