No rational person can claim to understand how

No rational person can claim to understand how the Constitution's protections are being applied nowadays. Freedom of association, speech, privacy and assembly are all under attack by our rapidly expanding security apparatus and security-friendly courts. But paradoxically we have never been freer to advocate shooting our neighbors in the head with a 50-caliber weapon. Last week a federal appeals court defended the rights of a right-wing racist, Walter Bagdasarian, who had called for Barak Obama's assassination. In 2008 Bagdasarian, in a Yahoo financial forum, wrote "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon."

This insanity occurs within religious groups that should know better. Any number of Christian churches, including the infamous Westboro church, have hosted Dutch extremist Geert Wilders. Although primarily a Christian fundamentalist assault on secularism and a competing religion, as a Jew it rankles me that even a Stoughton Jewish congregation has hosted Wilders, who has extensive links to European neo-Nazis. A Muslim I know has likened the current climate for Muslims in the U.S. to the Germany of 1935 for Jews. He's absolutely right.

The argument for "tolerance" may well be that democracy cannot afford to legislate civility. But what kind of civil society can survive if even the most violent forms of hate speech are permitted?

So, friends and neighbors, just keep watching the news. Al Qaida is the least of our worries. It's only a matter of time before someone — encouraged by their fundamentalist church, a right-wing synagogue, a Tea Party congressman, or some bizarre court ruling — harvests the fruit of the pervasive hate in this sick society.