I spend a lot of time checking out the opposition at Free Republic and Lucianne.com. Yesterday I wanted to find out what the FR crowd was saying about Elizabeth Edwards, and at first glance the reaction seemed a lot less nasty than you might imagine -- there was very little overt glee, and there were a lot of apparently sincere best wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery.

But there was one other kind of message I found over and over. It was, in part, a sincere best-wishes message, but it was more than that. Over and over again I found messages that could be paraphrased thus: I feel so sorry for that woman and I hope and pray she makes a speedy recovery ... even though she and her husband are awful people and don't deserve my generosity.

A few examples:

That's a shame, even if she did behave abominably. Hopefully, it's early enough that she'll have a good prognosis.

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Could explain her dimentia in talking about the Cheney's daughter. Prayers..

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I don't like her politically, but I wish her a speedy recovery. Hopefully she can find a doctor that is not too upset over the high cost of his malpractice insurance.

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No matter how she acted during the campaign, no one deserves this kind of tragedy.

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That is sad. Prayers to Breck girl and his family.

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Maybe this would explain some of her cattiness of late - waiting on results and tests combined with the fatigue of the campaign trail. My prayers are with her.

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Well, this does explain her irrational behavior on the campaign trail. Cancer will have that effect. I know so many women who have had hormone therapy and end up getting breast cancer. I hope better treatments come down the road.

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I pray for her full recovery.

It's also a shame because, if it wasn't for her bottom-feeding trial lawyer husband, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies probably would have found a cure for breast cancer by now...

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I never knew anything about Mrs. Edwards until she opened her mouth on a few occasions and proved herself to be a vile and hateful woman.

Nevertheless, I'm sorry that this has befallen her and I wish her a full and speedy recovery.

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I wish the best for her. It has been a scourge in my family. That being said, I wish the best for her doctor as well. Can she find one that her husband hasn't sued?

These aren't good Christians. They're old-fashioned scolds -- pinched small-town finger-waggers who think they're good Christians. They can't say a kind word without uttering an unkind -- and judgmental -- word. Maybe they believe they're just "hating the sin while loving the sinner" (the "sin" being membership in the Democratic Party), but what they're really doing is hating the sinner while loving themselves for their own words of kindness. And they have no idea what they're doing -- in their own eyes, these people are the soul of Christian charity.

We're all trying to make sense right now of polls in which Bush voters invoke "moral values"; we're worried that this is something new in America. Well, here it is, in these get-well messages, and it's not new at all. Nor is it moral.