The Democrats control Congress, Barack has won the White House, the president's approval ratings are the lowest ever, and the rats are abandoning the sinking battleship "Mission Accomplished."

But the war is far from over. Conservatives have some good points - "big" government is prone to waste and pettiness, and no party is immune to the kind of arrogant greed currently displayed by Gov. Blagojevich. We must be watchful.

However, out there, lurking in our neighborhoods, schools and churches, are right-wingers so filled with venom and rage that they can barely construct a coherent sentence - but they vote, and they blog, and they are vulnerable to the Rovian machinations of the far-right poison factories.

The Internet has fueled out-of-control behavior. Instead of debate about ideas, we get name-calling and crass disgust. I don't consider vomiting on an opponent to be a legitimate discussion strategy, but many right-wingers seem to think that an outpouring of bile passes for discourse. They're anonymous, or on TV, and either way there's no accountability.

I usually disagree with my colleague Dennis Clayson's weekly column. There are times when I don't understand his logic, or observe that he is defining "straw men," the better to knock them down. He likely feels the same about the columns on the other side of the page. But disagreements notwithstanding, I would never call Clayson deluded, idiotic, evil, satanic, a moron or any of the unprintable names I and my colleagues on this side have been called. And, when we meet in the halls at UNI, we have pleasant chats.

The name-calling doesn't begin to equal the racist assassination prayers and furious assertions of imminent Muslim invasions we've been hearing since the election. What is all this pent-up violence about?

I think a lot of it is based on racist, sexist thinking and a certain fury over not having the easier life that might have been if there wasn't so much competition. In the good old days, women knew their place and stayed in it or suffered the consequences. In the good old days, a white man with mediocre performance would not be upstaged - or replaced - by an intelligent, competent black man or (gasp!) a woman of any skin tone. In the good old days, no Americans ever had to worry about their jobs being taken by cheap Chinese laborers.

There's another theme: the sad songs of the so-called Christian right. Some believe that America was founded on "Christian values" that it now abandons, which is just flat-out false, regardless of what the thundering preachers proclaim. Many founding fathers were deist or universalist, and if Christian, of many varieties. The core ideas of liberty and democracy came from the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, not from theology. Anyway, since when has Christianity been a devoted friend of liberty and democracy?

Some are apparently terrified that if gays and lesbians can get married, they themselves will have to get divorced so as not to share a common category with "those perverts." Lighten up, people. How does love threaten marriage? If your son sasses you, do you take him beyond city limits and stone him to death? The Bible tells you to do that, shortly after it talks about homosexual behavior as an abomination.

A more subtle foundation for right-wing rage may be a desire to believe in a fixed path. Learning often leads a person to unexpected understandings and a need to act. It may require moral stands that aren't necessarily in the person's best short-term interests. It often requires that some treasured, comfortable belief be overthrown for a harder, more ambiguous trek. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

I'm thankful for conservative friends and readers who disagree intelligently. I learn from them. But I'm amazed at the poison that bubbles up on the other side. It's building once again. What to do?

Mr. and Mrs. Right Wing, like the rest of us, need meaningful work and a decent income, and these require a robust economy. Right-wing fanatics need to be asked a lot of questions, respectfully, and we need to demand sensible answers from them. Anonymous bloggers need to grow a spine and put their names out there. And everyone - I do mean everyone - deserves to have good, affordable health care, as much education as they can absorb and a better future for their children.

May we all have a blessed Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, vacation or whatever our preferences might be for this season. May we court peace, knowledge, understanding and right action.