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Dempsey does not refrain even from mocking the Most High, writing of "the fantasy that there is an old man with a white robe and a long beard who lives up high on a cloud and determines what will happen to every person on Earth every minute of every day." A false description of my beliefs. But still, Dempsey says that faith in God is a "delusion" that he compares to believing in Superman, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, or even the Satanic evil that drove David Berkowitz to commit the most notorious murder spree in your city’s recent history.

Such vehement blasphemy is the sort of "civility" that the liberals urge upon us, you see.

Dempsey mocks that which he knows not, attacking a cartoon parody of the Christian faith that in no way resembles what Christians really believe. Understand this: If God exists, He exists independent of human belief. You can scoff all you want and ridicule those who believe in God. It does not harm them. Throw them to the lions, burn them at the stake, ship them to the gulag, whatever. Others have done likewise. But if God exists, your lack of belief and your persecution of believers will have unpleasant consequences, either here or in the hereafter.

This is not about gun control, and Dempsey knows it. Dempsey’s gun-control fantasy is but another manifestation of what Allan Bloom called "The Nietzscheanization of the Left," in yet another book Dempsey has never read, The Closing of the American Mind. (Dempsey’s stubborn refusal to read good books is as impressive, in its own way, as his hatred of God.) What Bloom saw more than 15 years ago, rising up from the ashes of the new left’s failed peace-and-love utopia, was the left’s newfound obsession with power for its own sake. The kids who once sang of caring and brotherhood are now powerful grownups claiming that (their) might makes (them) right. As the Bolshevik utopia gave way to Stalin’s iron hand, so have the hippie-dippie peaceniks given way to the now-Stalinism of Janet Reno and Madeleine Albright, supported by the propaganda ministries of Ted Turner, Dan Rather, Michael Eisner and Larry Flynt.

So Dempsey wishes to disarm the populace entirely, does he? This would make the subject...er, citizen entirely dependent on the government for his safety, right? Just like Social Security makes people dependent on the government for their retirement, and Hillary wants to make us all dependent on government to provide our medical care. To make us all into dependents of the State, in other words, so that we may beg to kiss the hand of those who would enslave us. That a nation founded by free men like Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, James Otis and George Washington should degenerate into such a worthless mob of fawning, servile cowards...

Ah, but I console myself to think how Khrushchev pounded his shoe and shouted that "we will bury you," while his American apologists celebrated the triumph of the "agrarian reformer" in China and advocated the causes of such benefactors of mankind as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.

Yes, Dempsey, your hateful ideology may triumph at the next election or the next or the next. We may yet be ruled by such ruthless despots as Al Gore, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt. But no lie lasts forever and no tyranny is permanent, so long as truth lives in the hearts of men who love liberty.

Go ahead and gloat at your short-term gains, Dempsey. Fill your heart with all the hatred it can hold and puff yourself up with the arrogance of power. Enjoy it. Tell us to make bricks with no straw, command the slaughter of our firstborn, force us to hide in catacombs and communicate by the ikhthus. Nothing new. Quarter your troops among us, levy new taxes upon us, disperse our assemblies, overturn our laws, shoot us down in the streets. Nothing new.

But know this, Dempsey: You reap what you sow. Justice will not sleep forever. There will come a time when your lies and hatred are studied only as an historical curiosity, like the nonsense in those old copies of The Daily Worker gathering dust in some dark library basement. But centuries elapsed between the death of Julius Caesar and the collapse of the Empire, and the barbarians did not overrun the frontiers with pamphlets and capture Rome by deploying debating societies. It was not reason or persuasion that toppled Hitler, but bombs and tanks and artillery.

The reign of so-called liberalism (coercion by judicial fiat is not "liberalism") in America may end sooner or it may end later, and it may end peacefully or otherwise, but it will end. Who knows what horrors liberalism may inspire between now and then, or whether it will last 10 years or 10,000, or whether the current evil may not give way to even worse? It will behoove the devotees of a doomed and dying empire to heap scorn and venom upon their adversaries.

And liberalism is doomed, Dempsey, doomed beyond hope of repair or salvage. The invisible hand has already writ its fateful message: Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

Be nice to those Medes and Persians, my Babylonian friend.

R.S. McCain, Gaithersburg, MD

The Stump ’n’ Muggsy Show MUGGER: Just wanted to take the time to let you know that I and most of my friends think you are just awesome with your handling of editorial subjects. Thanks, and keep up the great work. They call me "Stump" and I ride for those who can’t (POW-MIA). Our slogan is "never forget." Check out http://www.rftw.org. We are a loosely organized group of veterans working for a cause to bring accountability for our missing and unaccounted-for military men and women. Again, thank you for your articulate point of view.

Stump, Gardnerville, NV

Exit Light MUGGER: I completely agree with your assessment of the idiotic Alan Dershowitz (8/25). It says something about the media that he actually gets air time.

However, I do think that you ought to check the ratings of Imus versus Stern among listeners who actually vote. Probably no way to check for sure but I’ll bet that 1/2 to 3/4 of Stern’s audience rarely votes.

Also, take it easy on Mike Barnicle. All he did was fail to give attribution on some George Carlin jokes that weren’t even that funny. Believe or not, there were some of us who are "boomers" who didn’t smoke dope in the 60s, and you know what, it might even have been the majority of us. Hard though it may be to believe, some of us thought that Dylan was a poetic but lousy singer and that Phil Ochs was pretty much like Cobain–a guy a little off the deep end who also killed himself. Granted, I agree that Barnicle’s line about "good sense to kill himself" is totally uncalled for but, MUGGER, you have got to explain how you can possibly label Kurt Cobain "an immensely influential man."

Lastly, I know and to some extent have listened to about 3/4 of the artists on Spin’s list (and the voter poll list), but the only album out of the group I listen to regularly is Metallica (aka the Black Album). "Enter Sandman" is a classic. Name me the albums on this list that you still listen to regularly. I’ll bet it’s a relatively short list and I suspect that Courtney and Hole aren’t on it, right?

Steve Hume, Canton, MI