Once upon a time there was a Prince of Peace. Thank God, they got rid of him--and luckily it's a long time since he's been heard from

For reasons one can only guess at, AOL has resurrected a New York Times piece datelined Oct. 12, from Topeka, Kansas, under the head "Cheney Feels the Love as He Hits the Heartland." My eye lit on this bit:

Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes--swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly--suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived. Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people.

But then there are people like these, at the Capitol Plaza Hotel Manor Conference Center in Topeka.

"It's just such a big thrill to see and hear this man," says Marvin Smith, a farmer and former teacher.

Mr. Smith says most people he knows feel the same way, "except for a few of those peacemakers." He means protesters, a smattering of whom are picketing down the street.

Say, didn't somebody real famous have something to say once about "the peacemakers"?

This does appear to be the pass we've reached in the year 2006, thanks to the unholy coalition of forces--old-fashioned greed and selfishness, ideological psychosis, and newfangled junk religious preaching--that make up the American Far Right. "Peacemaker" is now understood as a term of contempt and derision?

I wish I could remember who the heck that real famous person was. "Blessed are the peacemakers"--isn't that what he said?

I wonder what he would have made of this spectacle.