Politics isn't romance. Conservatives' words have meanings, they convey messages, and they dangerously impact the confused, the frightened, the deceived and the unstable.

How near they come to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater - or "Get a rope!" on a torch-lit town square - is a tough call.

Most Americans would agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes that freedom of speech extends to the farthest fringes, and to those violent and mendacious words which decent people of any ideology rightly find repellent. So, then, it is the wisdom of the Founders that the Limbaughs, Becks, Savage-Wieners, O'Reillys, Malkins, Hannitys, Coulters and all of the lesser smashmouths of this world be left to the judgment of the next.

For everyone's protection, that is as it must remain.

But the right to speak does not imply the privilege to be amplified and paid. It is the "invisible hand" of the free market which bestows such bounty, based upon factors like how many additional tons of medicated crevice powder are sprinkled out nationally and how that tracks with the ups and downs of the "dittohead" census.

So far, that calculation appears to satisfy the smashmouths' advertisers.

With custody of the buttons and dials, our right not to listen remains our inviolable defense.

Few outrages escape the scrutiny of the Brocks, Olbermanns, Stewarts, Maddows and Colberts, so we needn't fall behind.

Consolation can also be found in the realization that it's always the freak show that rakes in the most quarters at the carnival.

John Jordan Moore

Bloomington