So amazing are the rhetorical excesses of some conservative friends that it becomes a task of sweatshop level labor to find a metaphor to do it justice.

Let's try the late William F. Buckley, shall we? He once laughingly criticized some of the teachers of his youth, quoting George Tyrell.

The Jesuits score off the exaggeration of their critics. Accuse them of killing three men and a dog, they will triumphantly produce the dog alive.

I sometimes wish Bill Buckley had stretched the parallel just a little. Perhaps having the object of ridicule attack the victim for hypocrisy would do it. "He criticizes me for murdering a stranger, when he himself killed a rabid dog!"

No, that wouldn't quite do it either. That the stranger was murdered and that the dog was rabid would have to be omitted for the metaphor to be perfected, but that omission would make the analogy into a riddle, now wouldn't it? Nope, it just wouldn't do.

Fox News carried a segment showing Democrats carrying on about the debt ceiling negotiations. Some referred to the conservative activists as hostage takers. Others went further, calling them economic terrorists. A Democratic strategist was called upon to give his analysis. He was pitted against a Republican bulldog of sorts.

The Republican proclaimed that Democrats were guilty of name calling, and name calling was the last refuge of those who had lost the debate. The Democrat asked if it mattered at all whether the charges were actually true. No, yelled the bulldog, shouting over him, it just meant they had lost the debate. He repeated it several times.

The backdrop was not to be lost on viewers. The host recounted how Democrats had, just a few months back, accused Republicans of being responsible for the killings and injuries in Arizona. One of the severely injured was Representative Gabrielle Giffords. They accused conservatives of being responsible for the shooting because of uncivil rhetoric, and now they were guilty of the same thing.

How hypocritical of those of us on the left!

Conservatives often watch Fox News with a devotion that Biblical literalists reserve for Holy Scripture. They often can quote entire passages from memory. And so pundits and bloggers scored the same points repeatedly.

Our own T. Paine came up with a strikingly similar set of arguments. As someone capable of independent thought, he ruminated, contemplated, and reacted entirely on his own. Any identical vocabulary with anyone else was coincidental. He first recounted the horrible shooting in Arizona. "This heinous act was attributed to the right’s incivility in its political discourse."

We need to stop with the hate speech, especially from the right side of the political spectrum, we were all subsequently lectured. We need to disagree in an agreeable manner. We all need to be civil. Are you hateful Republicans (I realize that 'hateful' and 'Republican' is redundant to the left) and various conservatives listening? They were talking to YOU!

He then contrasted that reckless leftist accusation with the uncivil commentary of liberals today. Hostage takers? Terrorists?

On weekends, during Saturday's respite from work, I relax and review the efforts of other bloggers. Mr. Paine and I each usually compliment the efforts of the other. But we both know that his writing is the side that usually stands out. Imagine my surprise at his fury. I have never seen him so angry.

Okay. Actually I have never seen him at all. He has won my friendship with email correspondence and with his clever oxymoronic gentlemanly antagonism on our own pages here. But I feel as if I know him. I'm convinced I would recognize him instantly if I encountered him on a city sidewalk loudly quoting from memory his own internet site: Saving Common Sense. But I digress.

I offered my own review of his article about liberal rhetoric.

He equates that with pre-Arizona shooting conservative rhetoric using images of, you know, bullets and cross hairs. Both were uncivil so they're pretty much identical.

You can review his article yourself. I believe my summary was fair and unbalanced. And so I offered a further observation.

The problem with some rhetoric back then was not that it wasn't polite, but rather that it was an explicit call to violence. Find a liberal call for a "second amendment remedy," Mr. Paine, and we can both condemn it.

Being the gentle soul that he is, T. Paine waited a couple of days before reacting.

"Impolite"? It is not a matter of whether Miss Manners would be in a huff about what was said, Mr. Deming.

An ideology that I largely agree with thinks it is a bad idea to keep spending money that we do not have and is rather loathe to spend anymore until we decide as a nation to find places to cut some of the less necessary spending.

For taking that stance, our VICE PRESIDENT of ALL of us Americans (in theory) agrees with the reprehensible Rep. Mike Doyle and calls us "terrorists".

He went on to pose an interesting point involving another Vice President: If "Dick Cheney had dared to have said anything even remotely approaching this level of dangerous and disgusting language, the left would have been calling for his resignation, and rightfully so."

Boy! T. Paine is tough.
Courageous, too.

Not everyone would have the bravery required to cite Dick Cheney as a model of civility (Mr. Paine's word). It brought back cheerful memories. After he, on the floor of the United States Senate, suggested that Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) perform a physical improbability, the one I love joined with me in briefly adopting his name into our vocabulary.

During one mild disagreement or another, you could pretty much count of one of us to break the tension with an emphatic "Wellllll.... CHENEY YOU !!!" The kids thought we were a loony old pair, but what do they know?

Later, our model of civility was interviewed by Dennis Miller on Fox. He recounted the incident with enthusiasm, leaving out the Cheney word, Fox being a channel having an audience that includes religious fundamentalists with notoriously fragile sensibilities. The Vice President enthusiastically described it as "sort of the best thing I ever did."

It may be that someone demanded his resignation. I don't recall it, but then most days I don't recall what I had for breakfast. T. Paine will have to refresh my aging memory by identifying the prominent personalities screaming for the Vice President's head.

Pleasant as nostalgia can be, current controversies sing forth their siren call. They must be obeyed. So let's clarify what the debt ceiling business was about.

The debt ceiling is not a ceiling on debt. This confuses some folks. Sadly, T. Paine is not immune. Even his occasional concessions lack any grasp of the subject matter. Consider this recent comment:

I will indeed acknowledge that raising the debt ceiling does not mean that we have automatically incurred more debt. It certainly does allow for the possibility of that spending to continue, by definition, and the incurrence of more future debt to be accumulated though, depending on how much higher that ceiling is raised.

Well . . . actually the debt ceiling does no such thing. Not even close.

The debt ceiling is simply a decision on whether the United States will pay its bills. It allows the Treasury Department to issue bonds. The proceeds go to pay bills. Period.

It means paying corporations for goods and services rendered. Like helicopters and spy planes already in use, and bullets already issued to those serving in battle. It means paychecks. Funds owed to construction workers maintaining airports, US Marshals, nurses at VA hospitals, members of the United States Marine Corps. It means retired folks surviving on Social Security checks.

You know. Debt already incurred. For widows and orphans and ABMs. Stuff like that.

Let's say it again. The debt ceiling does not put a ceiling on spending. It allows the US to pay what is already spent.

So holding back the debt ceiling simply hurts a lot of people and makes the United States as credit worthy as anyone else who refuses to pay bills when they come due. This can pretty much devastate the economy.

Hurting people and devastating the economy was pretty much the point of the threat. Do it our way or the economy gets it. And those demands went considerably beyond what Mr. Paine describes as his own limited desires. Demands included immediate slashes to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. At one point, a completed deal came unraveled because a miniscule part of the budget, Pell Grants, were considered by extremists to be socialism. End Pell Grants for bright, but economically deprived, kids or we'll destroy the credit of the United States.

So a couple of points about civility.

Economic terrorism is different than planting a bomb. No question.
And holding the economy hostage is different than what Iran did in the 1970s with actual human hostages.

If Mr. Paine thinks anyone was confused or misled by the rhetoric into thinking "Oh gosh. Republicans have seized a bunch of hostages" or that folks watching television thought the bomber in Norway was a GOP official, he really should be outraged. I would be, and I am not easily described as a conservative Republican.

On the other hand, if we stumble across someone who insists that conservatives held the economic well being of the rest of us hostage to extreme demands, we might consider congratulating that person for recognizing economic terrorism when it happens.

Before Gabrielle Giffords was shot and nearly died, before others were killed, a small group of conservatives talked freely of using firearms, drawing cross hairs on maps, urging citizens to adopt "second amendment solutions" if elections went the wrong way.

I suggest that the sort of violence being urged by some went beyond anything Mr. Paine describes as "uncivil."

I suggest that, contrary to the judgment of Fox News commentary, it really does matter whether an accusation carries well the weight of truth.

After a fire, when someone points out a group of arsonists, let's reserve a bit of anger for those who set the fire, even if the cause they hoped to advance went beyond arson itself - even if Mr. Paine agrees with the ultimate cause they were seeking to advance.

Perhaps we can even be a little more reticent about attacking the occasional honest citizen for telling the uncivil truth about the arson and about those who set the fire.