DEAR JAMES TRAUB

Well into your article in today's New York Times Magazine, you say that

it is conservative culture, the culture permeating the Bush administration, that is shot through with Sixties moralism and self-righteousness, the calls to ideological purity, the insistence that the other is not merely wrong but illegitimate.

You also note that the Bush-bashing community is largely embracing a non-radical candidate for president, John Kerry.

If you really believe this, and if extremism is so abhorrent to you, why is more than half of your article -- the first seven out of twelve paragraphs -- devoted to denunciations of sixties leftists, contemporary leftists, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Molly Ivins, your own son, and your younger (radical) self? Do you harbor so much loathing for the kid you used to be, the one who saw Richard Nixon as a fascist, that even when you see radicalism on the right -- radicalism in the corridors of power -- you feel compelled to bash powerless radical ordinary citizens on the left?