I'm unhappy with today's article's [A party both united and divided] failure to take to task those overwhelming figures that Republicans self-identify as "conservatives." The terms Conservative and Liberal are empty. Conservative should mean being cautious and careful and traditional. Beck/Palin/Hannity/Limbaugh/Lou Dobbs/Bill O'Reilly are none of those when they toss out pejorative terms like Serena Williams! Restraint in defense of dignity is conservative. Vituperative accusations of "fascism," and "communism," "socialism" are loosely applied to just about everyone and everything anyone disagrees with. Words matter. It matters who speaks. Jim Leach points out, "Recent comments on the House floor have gathered much attention, but vastly more rancorous, socially divisive assertions are being made across the land, and few are thinking through the meaning or consequences of the words being used. "Public officials are being labeled “fascist or “communist.” And more bizarrely, significant public figures have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism—the notion of “secession.” "One might ask what problem is there with a bit of hyperbole. The logic, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the message. If we lost 400,000 soldiers to defeat fascism, spent a fortune and lost thousands to hold communism at bay, and fought a civil war to preserve the union, isn’t it a citizen’s obligation to draw on the humanities to lend perspective to words that contain warring implications? There is, after all, a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health care view and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an “ism” of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps. One framework of thought defines rival ideas; the other, enemies. A conservative ought to be careful, cautious, and traditional about dignity in discourse. Republicans, by and large, have forfeited the appellation. Their public discourse is radical and even outrageous. We'd do well to relegate "conservative" and "liberal" to the dustbin with "hip" and "long-hair."