Poor Gideon Rachman. Yesterday he wrote a typically even-handed, or perhaps very mildly progressivist, piece about the onset of world government. I linked to it below. The article, which had its author’s email address at the bottom, was also picked up by Matt Drudge. Today, Rachman woke up to find more than 200 emails, most of them horribly abusive, from enraged anti-globalists.

Today, Rachman blogs that “the whole experienced has given me an insight into the mindset of the gun-toting, bible-bashing, nationalistic bit of the United States.” True to an extent, but surely most of “gun-toting, bible-bashing, nationalistic bit” (it’s more like a chunk) of the United States do not spend their days reading Matt Drudge-linked articles from the Financial Times. Rachman, understandably wounded, has gone too far. Many respondents, he explains, were “End of Days” enthusiasts. No doubt they were, but a few–200 is not that many–hatemail nuts should not be conflated with the vast cross-section of America’s firearm-fond, flag-waving Christians.

Rather, the lesson here should be that a disturbingly high number of people who comment–the noble example of TAC’s polite and intelligent commenters outstanding–under web articles are mad and nasty and best ignored. Look around the web: it is often astonishing to see the levels of hatred and viciousness that the most harmless words can engender. The Internet places none of society’s constraints upon its users, so webman resorts to his default human setting: outright, depraved hostility. It’s quite scary when you think about it.