Violent voices of 'tolerance'

President Bush must die.

Or so says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams, in explaining to a class of school children in Australia why she rejects non-violence and remarking how mystified she is that she ever won a prize awarded for promoting peace.

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush," she told the kiddies, causing them to break into spontaneous applause.

And Williams is by no means a voice crying in the left-wing wilderness.

Air America hostess Randi Rhodes, who apparently thinks that promoting the killing of the president is a real hoot, broadcast a "comedic skit" last year featuring the sound of gunshots being fired at the chief executive.

Not to worry, though; Air America assured us that the skit was simply an "oversight." The only problem with this explanation is that Rhodes had made a similar remark on her show the year before about gunning Bush down, once again under the guise of humor.

Yes, this is what passes for humor in the ever-tolerant, all-inclusive, non-judgmental world of liberal talk radio. Never mind the fact that Al Franken promised us when Air America was getting started that it would offer a "kinder, gentler" brand of political talk – you know, as opposed to those right-wing crazies who spew nothing but hate and anger.

Thankfully, there are any number of college radio stations that attract more listeners than Air America does on any given day, so it's unlikely that anyone would ever act on these calls to action from Franken & Company. But that doesn't make them any less reprehensible.

And unfortunately, they represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

We've also had liberal T-shirts promoting the assassination of President Bush and calling on Tom DeLay to kill himself.

We've had the punk rapper (emphasis on "punk") Eminem record a song that, like Rhodes' skit, featured the sound of gunfire over an anti-Bush rant – in hopes perhaps of reaching the millions of rap fans who, like most of the country, have never heard of Air America.

We've had a columnist in a national publication suggesting that Ann Coulter do the world a favor and kill herself (What was that liberals were saying about Coulter going beyond the pale and crossing the line of decency in her latest book?).

We've had so many Republican speakers assaulted on college campuses across the country that conservatives like Coulter and David Horowitz must now be escorted by armed guards and, on occasion, guard dogs when they accept invitations to speak at these bastions of intellectual inquiry.

And because liberals are so anti-military (anti-U.S.-military, to be more specific), there have also been innumerable attacks not only on the war on terror, but on our troops themselves – Sen. Dick Durbin comparing them to Nazis and other mass-murdering fiends on the Senate floor; Sen. John Kerry, an old hand at this, accusing them of terrorizing the civilian population in Iraq (the very people, by the by, they've been giving their lives and limbs to liberate); a former CNN honcho claiming they were targeting civilians for death; and comedian Bill Maher saying a great many of them have not only engaged in torture but really seem to enjoy it, to name a few.

I could go on and on because the examples of liberal hate are legion, but I'm sure you get the point.

And, remember, these are the voices of tolerance and reason we're talking about here, the ones who have cornered the market on compassion and evolved to some higher realm of humanity than the rest of us peons. Or so they keep telling us – at least when they're not calling for the killing of the president or throwing food at conservative speakers while they're trying to engage in an honest discussion of ideas.

Actually, we shouldn't be too surprised by any of this. Under the traditional definition of tolerance, the true definition, people amicably agreed to disagree with others whose beliefs or lifestyles were different than their own, as long as they weren't breaking any laws. But the problem is liberals changed the meaning of the word. By their definition, tolerance means we must all affirm the beliefs and lifestyles we disagree with and say that they are equal or even better to all other beliefs and lifestyles.

Thus, anyone who refuses to be tolerant – according to the revised definition of the word – is some sort of a hate-monger, some neo-Nazi, some racist/sexist/anti-gay nut who must not only be denounced, but silenced by whatever means necessary, whether it's a pie to the face or a bullet to the head.

Thus, when the late Reggie White, a minister, said homosexuality was against God's law, "gay" activists tarred him as a bigot and an offer he had from CBS Sports to work as a football analyst for the network was rescinded; when Harvard president Larry Summers suggested there may possibly be a biological difference between men and women that explains the disparity between the sexes in math and science aptitudes, he was summarily run out of Harvard on a rail, even though he was a liberal himself and repented in sackcloth and ashes afterward; when –

Well, again, you get the point.

The scary thing is that it may only be a matter of time before someone takes all these threats and intimidations to the next level – which makes me wonder if it isn't about time President Bush beef up his security team.

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Tom Flannery writes a weekly political column called "The Good Fight" and a continuing religious column called "Why Believe the Bible?" for a hometown newspaper in Pennsylvania. His opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and Christian Networks Journal. He is a past recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for Outstanding Opinion Journalism from News Corp/The New York Post, in addition to winning six Amy Awards from the Amy Foundation.