Here's what's really true. Nobody gives a crap about the civility of the [political] conversation. They care about who is dominating the discussion, who is kicking the crap out of the other guy. You think you are in a seminar at Princeton, when you are in a knife fight in the South Bronx. It's endearing, but worrisome, and it's hard for decent folks to watch.

If he calls you a Marxist, tell him that you are thinking of becoming a Marxist, maybe another Eugene V. Debs, but you think they were too tame and mild, you want to see stronger measures taken against the appropriators, maybe a few of them strung up from lamposts with piano wire, like in Banana republics in South America that go down hard.

Tell him that Fidel Castro and Che Guavara were just your type, or maybe Lenin, or Dershinsky, or General Strelnikov. They are going to call you names anyway, may as well be hung for a goat as for a sheep. Tell them that they are toady lick-spittles and abettors of the oppressors, and that you think they need re-education so they can stop being running pig-dogs.

They are goofing on you. So goof back on them. Humor is a weapon of the witty. What would Shakespeare do if somebody called him a Communist, or what would Cyrano de Bergerac do? Or Monty Python? Or Mr. Bean? Or Basil Fawlty? They would come back with far, far more than the name caller could possibly handle. They would clarify the reality which is that Marxism is a very tempting world-view that 3/4's of the world has fallen under, and that the USA could easily fall under, as it almost did during the Great Depression, and if the Insanely Greedy Rich don't straighten out and fly right fairly soon they may be hoist on their own petards, too clever by half, pushed the middle class over into radical Marxist confiscatory fervor, and now walk away with 1% of what they had. Koch = Czar, Middle Class = Kulaks and Proles. Intelligensia = Possible Saviors of Free Market Capitalism or Possible Bolsheviks with pitchforks at the Gates.

You tell the bully boys, "Go ahead: kick me around, see what happens to ya."

But this business about civility in conversation is just weak and pathetic. It's Dweebish. It's what Weenies do.