As my son sat reading “The Crucible” for a school assignment this weekend, I thought of some frightening examples of modern day witch hunts, where allegations are tossed as easily as the term “Communist!” from Joe McCarthy's lips.

If you oppose Obama's National Health Care reform proposal, you are a Nazi. Never mind that Hitler had a 25-point National Socialist Program and rose to power during the Great Depression, promising the people everything they wanted to hear and more. Sound familiar? Cars, health care, houses ... you want it, we got it. In the end, it was war, not Nazism, or the New Deal, that ended the Great Depression.

If you opposed the war in Iraq, you were un-American. If you are concerned about the cost of illegal immigration, you are a racist.

According to most historians, however, the Nazi Party platform had components of both the far right and far left. So ... in a sense ... they're all quasi-Nazis.

That doesn't mean they should be burned at the stake, mind you. It does mean that they (the extremists on both sides) ought to be silenced before they destroy this country.

Most people I know are somewhere in the middle. They aren't “right-wingers” or “left-wingers.” They have differing opinions, but they don't shout, or scream, or stamp their feet, or demand, or threaten, or call you names if you don't agree with them.

They work. They raise families. They shop. They take their kids to school. And sometimes they even get together to have civil discussions about health care, the Middle East, the environment, the economy and government without spitting on one another.

Last week I was accused of being a right-winger because we didn't have Ted Kennedy's death splattered all over page one. Never mind that he died after page one went to the press room, or that we posted his death on our Web site even before MSNBC. We did have a story inside the paper, on a page that went to press after the front page.

Believe it or not, I was home sleeping at the time. A woman named Stephanie was working the news desk that night and had to make a decision. As far as I'm concerned, she made the correct one. We are in a deadline business and news doesn't always cooperate. Moreover, we are a local newspaper and, most of the time, our page one has all local news. That's why we are in business today.

Besides ... the Internet is a better tool for breaking news and most anyone who cared knew that Ted Kennedy had died before they went to bed that night. By 6 a.m. the next morning, it was no longer news.

“This is another example of your right-wing attitude!” said one caller the next morning. When someone calls you a right-winger, that probably means they are a left-winger, and vice-versa.

“Would you be calling me this morning if George Bush Sr. had died last night?” I asked.

“That's not the point!” she screamed. I could almost feel her spittle.

Back to Stephanie for a moment. Most of you don't know her. She works nights here putting the pages together. She just purchased her first home and is a newlywed. I can't tell if she is a liberal or conservative, but I'll guess she voted for Obama. So did most journalists I know.

In other words, she is a human being who has an independent mind on most issues and never allows her political views to interfere with her work. In fact, when she builds the Opinion pages, she goes out of her way to make sure we get all the letters in (from the left and the right) and to rotate the columns from Amy Goodman, Arianna Huffington, Jonah Goldberg and Victor Hanson, our mix of liberal and conservative national columnists.

On Saturday Stephanie placed a dozen letters to the editor on the health care issue alone. Those letters seemed evenly split among supporters and opponents of the president's proposal. There was also a fairly long Other Voices column supporting the legalization of marijuana. Certainly not the kind of content a “right-wing” newspaper would dare publish. And ... by the way ... I support the opening of a medical marijuana dispensary.

I also support the death penalty, the marriage of same-sex couples, I'm concerned about the cost of illegal immigration, think water for crops ought to be a priority over an endangered smelt (humans require food), and believe that business, not government, will get us out of this economic storm.

Although I am officially a “Declined To State” so far as the county elections office is concerned, I suspect I'm really a Libertarian (although I support public schools and therefore may not qualify).

It could be that there is no political party for me, or for people like me. That's why I was kind of hoping this Tea Party movement would become something other than a committee of the Republican Party, which is what it seems to have become.

And ... for the record ... liberals do not own the market on protests. Funny how protesters are now protesting other protesters. “Nazi's!” they scream.

I can tell you I'm tired of the screaming and shouting coming from radicals on both sides of the political spectrum. They do not speak for me and I doubt they speak for the vast majority of free-thinking Americans who will not be burned at the stake, nor silenced by those who point and cry “Witch!”

Jeff Ackerman is the editor/publisher of The Union. His column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 477-4299 or jackerman@theunion.com.