Recently several comments in these pages have stretched the lines of decency and perhaps sanity. The commenters are obviously emboldened by a wide array of extreme-right propagandists.

One example: a letter Jan. 29 slung nonsensical slurs about the president and first lady and, without any consideration of fact, referenced "their Communist comrades" and called for them to "be imprisoned". The letter was so overloaded with paranoia and thinly veiled racism, it collapsed under the weight of its own nuttiness.

Then, in a Sound-off on Feb. 3, we were treated to more hate speech, baiting white middle-class voters and featuring insulting remarks about blacks and Latinos.

Is this what far-right debate in this country has degenerated to: reckless accusations, senseless innuendoes and xenophobic fear-mongering?

This public forum, supposedly a place to exchange ideas and opinions, is being degraded into a sophomoric spectacle of classlessness by zealots apparently trying to one-up each other with their progressively outrageous conspiracy theories.

Words have consequences, and intentional lies manufactured by right-wing hate-peddlers can lead (and have led) to tragedy. It only takes one unhinged and well-armed "true-believer" to spawn the next catastrophe. One only need consider what happened two years ago in Tucson as an example of this potential.

Anyone who thinks there's no connection between the two has his head in the sand. Once again, it's time to dial-down the hate rhetoric.

Kevin J. Gagen

Belleville