We are all worried about the level of discourse, and conservatives must speak out when lunatics talk about things like secession and coups.

But the sudden liberal worry that conservatives in general have gone over the line in legitimate opposition to Obama’s rather radical agenda is not only unfair but amnesiac — given that not long ago any means were deemed tolerable for the noble ends of destroying George Bush — not defeating him — but destroying his character entirely.

We all recall the Nazi/brownshirts outbursts by Gore, Soros, Byrd, etc., the Aflred Knopf novel Checkpoint about killing Bush, or the Toronto Film Festival award-winning docu-drama about killing Bush — but perhaps we forget there was no outrage from the Democratic congress or the New York Times at all that and worse. In addition, we may have forgotten the New York play I’m Gonna Kill the President or the creepy Guardian column by Charles Brooker published on the eve of the 2004 election:

The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?

At about the same time, one Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was tried and convicted, inter alia, for planning to kill George Bush.

I end with the first paragraph of Mr. Chait’s 2004 repulsive New Republic article to remind us of the infantilism (and hatred) of the times (emphasis added):

I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I’m tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism–”I inherited half my father’s friends and all his enemies”–conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than advantage. He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school–the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks–shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks–blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing– a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.

The only explanation I can offer for this syndrome — why there was this intense level of hatred and assassination talk in so many different media and genres, and so much present hysteria about criticism that in comparison is tame — is that many continue to believe it was a noble thing to vilify (and worse) Bush and it is a sin to criticize Obama. In other words, ends justify means, and sophisticated, murderous hatred in novels, films, plays, and op-eds is to be judged differently from Tea Party and town-hall middle-class anger.