A reader writes

Don’t know if you’ve been following the debate over Mark Levin:

I’ve been reading you for more than 5 years, and I don’t recall you ever asking your readers why they hate America, or saying their spouses should off themselves. Maybe I wasn’t reading that week.

Nevertheless, all those who were so concerned about the state of your soul because of the harsh words you have deployed against torture advocates have been largely absent. You’d think that concern for the state of Levin’s soul would cause them to enter, but apparently, only harsh rhetoric against Bush detention policies is soul-threatening.

Funny that.

I’m afraid I’ve not been following this particular one too closely. I’ve never heard Levin, though the excerpts in the link you provide persuade me I haven’t missed much. He apparently subscribes to the Brutal Neanderthal School of Talk Radio pioneered by Michael Savage. Yes, just the thing to win hearts and minds to shrinking ranks of what used to be known as “conservatism”.

Looking in at Crunchy Con, I did gather there was some sort of contretemps between Dreher and Levin, and I did see something quite funny about some guy named Robert Stacy McCain making a fool of himself defending Levin’s beetle-browed “common man” schtick with tropes about how boorishness is an admired virtue of the Regular American Guy, but since I hadn’t followed the thing too carefully, I just chuckled and moved on.

That said, I am also amused at the curious lack of concern for Levin’s immortal soul as he urges suicide upon ideological opponents. It *could* be that Levin’s readeres are all secular right Heather MacDonald types who do not get their undies in a bunch over Levin’s sharp tongue and have fainting spells over the state of his soul when he uses harsh language. But a mean, cruel, heartless person like me (who has been *so* cruel to torture defenders who just *sniff* are expressing an opinion) suspects that the real reason we don’t hear much from Rubber Hose Right types who wring their hands about me is because the people for whom Levin advocates death are the right sort of people.