Spend a few minutes reading the comments in just about any news article on-line these days, and you will see one of the things that is very wrong with America. Person A makes a comment that Person B doesn’t like, and the fur begins to fly: “You’re a douchebag!” “Up yours!” “Your an idiot!” “How come you never learned to spell, asshole.” And so it goes.

These are mild examples. But when the f-bomb is used by one stranger against another, when the hatred that is deep within so many Americans begins to spill out, I despair of our society’s future. The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that the word “society” comes from the Latin words for fellowship, alliance, union, community, and companion. Our society is doomed if we do not regain a sense of fellowship, of the feeling that fellow Americans are, after all, our companions in life and country, to be treated with respect even if we disagree with them, even if sometimes they have not acted toward us as respectfully as we would like.