Elmer Smith: It's a small leap from 'You lie!' to 'You die!'

I THOUGHT THAT the gun-

toting goobers who waved their misspelled signs outside the president's speeches represented a new low.

Until Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer warned parents to prevent their children from hearing a speech by the president for fear he would "use our children as tools" to spread what Greer calls President Obama's "socialist ideology"

Then it was Wednesday night in the Capitol, where President Obama addressed the nation and a divided House and Senate. A fool named Joe Wilson, who represents the people of South Carolina, demonstrated his acute lack of impulse control and home training.

"You lie!" the fool shouted as the president pointed out that his health-care plan would not cover illegal aliens.

He was not the lone fool in the chamber of our divided house.

Others booed, hissed and laughed derisively as the president spoke. Still others twiddled their thumbs, folded their arms and worked on pocket computers to demonstrate disdain for the president.

I kept hoping that one of these juveniles would hold his breath until he turned blue in the face and spit up his pablum.

So what's next?

You don't even want to think about it.

But if you put the pieces together and view them against the bloody backdrop of a history littered with fallen presidents and public officials, they raise a frightening specter.

I have been reluctant to say this for fear of waking up some homicidal maniac who feels that he has been dispatched by God to silence the object of his hatred. But the greater danger is to ignore this scary trend.

It is not far-fetched. An outburst of violence against the president becomes more likely each day that we ignore this irrational campaign to demonize and even dehumanize him.

How far-fetched is it when pastor Steve Anderson (I refuse to call him Reverend) stands in the pulpit of his Tempe, Ariz., church last week and tells parishioners that he "hates" the president and prays for him to die of brain cancer?

How far-fetched is it when a man stands outside a presidential rally in Portsmouth, N.H., with a gun strapped to his hip holding a sign that says that it's time "to water the tree of liberty."

Look the phrase up. You'll find that it is a paraphrase of a slogan from Thomas Jefferson, who spoke of watering the tree of liberty with blood.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time," Jefferson said, "with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

This particular hatemonger's sphere of influence probably is about as wide as he is deep.

But when elected officials, GOP leaders and preachers use their bully pulpits to spew hatred, we have veered dangerously close to the dark side.

The sanctimonious psychopaths who murder doctors outside abortion clinics get their marching orders from so-called Christians like Steve Anderson.

Wednesday night, the Capitol Police arrested a man named Joshua Bowman, who tried to bring a gun into a secure area near the Capitol during the presidential speech. Was it a harmless mistake on his part? Maybe. But Capitol Police thought it wise to exercise extreme caution.

I agree. We can start with the Secret Service. It should prohibit anyone with a loaded handgun from coming within a mile of a presidential appearance.

When the image of armed presidential critics is broadcast worldwide it presents an uncomfortable truth: This is a dangerous place to hold high office.

Public officials in the Republican Party need to take a cue from Sen. John McCain, who demanded an apology from Wilson.

It's time to enforce Republican caucus rules, which specifically prohibit "language personally offensive to [any] president such as referring to him as a liar or a hypocrite."

Those rules exist for a reason. GOP leaders should enforce them, even though the president has graciously accepted Wilson's lame apology.

This is not about health care. It's not about the economy or any other public-policy issue.

This is about hatred, a visceral, personal and poisonous hatred on a level we haven't seen since Abe Lincoln was president. And we know how that ended.