In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness.

Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right.

Our universities teach non-white, non-Christian, and female students to find offense everywhere. American students get degrees in Finding Offense.

If we weren't born with anti-social passions - narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious - why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?

There's a lot more power in calm than in vituperation.

If anything, we older people yearn for a peaceful world even more than young people do. We are the ones who lost friends or relatives in some war. We are the ones who have lived a lifetime of seeing and reading about human suffering.