I originally wrote this piece in 2004. There’s been no change in the phenomenon, which is no surprise. People still believe that the current political environment is more toxic than ever before. Nah.

RALEIGH – We are presently said to be immersed in a large vial of acidic political vitriol. It stings. We see images of George W. Bush with a Hitlerian mustache, or John Kerry as Che Guevara, or the ample Michael Moore rolling like Rover over the sharply pointed breastbone of Ann Coulter and springing a leak.

Ok, I made up the last one, but it would solve two problems in an instant.

That American politics has reach unprecedented depths of animus and divisiveness is taken as a given by plenty of self-important political analysts and commentators. It shouldn’t be. Our political process has long yielded a variety of different electoral styles, personalities, and issues – some serving to heal and reconcile, others to wound and clarify. I’m not at all convinced that elections and political debates would be best conducted by “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” rules, as edifying as such fare can be. After all, elections award the power to tax, to regulate, to coerce, to use physical force or the threat thereof to compel one’s fellow citizens to take an action, surrender of their earnings, or limit some of their freedoms.

There is no way to accomplish this entirely with smiles, handshakes, and hugs. We can agree to disagree, and avoid pointless name-calling and gutter attacks, but it won’t do to paper over serious ideological differences or to mince words precisely when uncertain voters need clarity from their politicians, not obfuscation.

Consider this early example of American political graffiti:

“Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay!! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!!!”

Written on a wall on Boston, this delicious bit of invective had to do with the 1795 treaty with Great Britain that the famous Federalist John Jay negotiated on behalf of the administration of George Washington. Jay’s treaty did not result in any significant changes in British maritime policy, which had aggrieved American businessmen with mercantilist restrictions and American citizens with the impressment of sailors for the British fleet. It secured some territorial concessions and moved some British off of military posts on American soil, where they had been encouraging Indian tribes to raid frontier settlements. But it was wildly unpopular, helping to fuel the formation of Thomas Jefferson’s new party and his presidential challenge to John Adams the following year.

The Boston graffiti artist wouldn’t really have communicated the depth of his outrage by writing, “I object to several codicils in the document and call the reader’s attention to section 3, paragraph 4. . .” He needed to be blunt. He needed to use a cadence. He needed to make it personal, to specify the person he thought had represented American interests and citizens – that is, represented the writer – poorly. Honestly, would anyone still be quoting his words more than 200 years later if he had not chosen and arranged them as he did?

So let’s honor that venerable American tradition of unvarnished, unconstrained political rhetoric. Give us liberty or give us death. Let us refuse the cross of gold. Allow us to be extreme in the defense of liberty. And let interesting politicians and political commentators talk. We can take it.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of CarolinaJournal.com