In the L.A. Times, where Jonah Goldberg performs somewhat of the same role that David Brooks did at its east coast counterpart before they buried him under the TimesSelect firewall, Jonah writes that "Unity Is Overrated":

It has become a central ritual of our times for Beltway priests like the Washington Post's David S. Broder to lament the coarseness, acidity and all-around ickiness of our polarized political culture. They're not absolutely wrong. All I need to do to appreciate the toxicity of the political culture is check my e-mail each morning.

Indeed, since at least the election of Ronald Reagan, the left and the right have grown ever more snappish with each other. Each feels entitled to take the wheel without suffering any backseat driving. Each side feels the other is illegitimate in some way, which somehow justifies their nastiness. That can be a shame, but really, it's not the end of the world.

We've seen worse. For example, in his 2004 book, "The Two Americas," Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg proclaimed: "Our nation's political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before."

This might strike some — say, anyone who's seen the scene in "Gone with the Wind," in which all those Civil War dead and wounded are laid out like cordwood — as a bit of an exaggeration. Call me crazy, but such bloodshed seems like a deeper sign of division than a bunch of partisan bloggers sweatily pounding their keyboards, or liberals and conservatives watching different cable news networks.