Interplanetary attempts at commmunication

Most of the newspaper columns I write draw some juicy disagreement. That's good. I'm not wild about the name-calling stuff that points out what a moron I am without bothering to look seriously at the issue or topic at hand, but getting challenged on my analysis and perspective is what op-ed journalism is all about.
Occasionally I'm baffled that two people living on the same planet could see things so differently. That happened this past week, and I wrote about it.
(The limited format of this online column, with no italics, makes it a little hard to tell who's saying what where. I don't like that, but maybe it fits the chaos of the public conversation...)

Do we get what free speech means?

I wonder sometimes. And I wonder about the widespread fear that hearing twisted vicious messages will make us, particularly the younger among us, more twisted and vicious. I think the young Neo-Nazis I wrote about recently do a pretty good job disproving that premise. This week's column strongly hints that others see this differently, and some of them work in state government.
What exactly are we afraid of?

A nudge from 'me' to 'we'

Here's one that's starting to percolate in Ashland: one of the reason that power and water rates are going up (the city owns these utilities itself) is that people heeded the call to conserve and use less.
That just doesn't sit well with some folks.
I don't think you have to spend too much time reflecting on this before it's clear that there's no trickery or bad faith a work here. This week's column tries to offer perspective before the serious shouting begins.

Does this one have an answer?

The appearance of some young not-too-sophisticated Neo-Nazis in Southern Oregon, which I wrote about in the previous post, triggered a juicy community conversation. Apparently we're still not jaded enough to ignore or tolerate this kind of ugliness. But the best response to it? I admit here to not having a good clue to the answer to that one.
Do you?