a democracy in peril?

I am usually the first to spout off about the dangers of a partisan divisiveness and hyped political rhetoric. And I have been known to be despondent about the state of politics in America.

But after the tragic shooting of Rep. Giffords this weekend and the fearful calls to pipe down on extreme rhetoric, I had an uncomfortably comforting thought. It occurred to me for the first time that our seemingly unhinged democracy may not be slipping into a hyper-partisan purgatory: it might, rather, be functioning very well.

In spite of the initial fearful reaction of some on the left, Giffords' would-be killer was not a Tea Partier taking Palin's call to "reload" literally. He was just a nut (albeit a fascinating one). But even if he had been fired into action by Sarah Palin's cross-hairs, what occurred to me as remarkable is that there have been no other Tea Party-inspired violent acts, let alone assassination attempts, to date. For all the froth-at-the-mouth appearance of politics in the past decade, even our most rabid extremists have been all bark and no bite.

That's nothing to sniffle at - especially when you look across the Atlantic and see how much more violence can be infused into politics, whether as assassinations in the Netherlands or riots in France. It's true that most of Europe's political violence stems from racial and ethnic tensions, which the US (somewhat) worked out of its system up through the 1991 LA riots.

Even so, when you stop to think that our politically related violence in the past ten years has been limited to attacking abortion clinics and the IRS and the occasional anti-globalization riot - for a nation of 300 million with a reputation for vitriolic politics, that's pretty tame stuff.

You could come up with countless theories to explain our gentler-than-assumed politics, but two come to my mind. For one, we may still be benefiting from the kumbaya effects of 9/11; no matter how much we'd like to destroy the other party, memories of WTC keep us from crossing the line into real destruction. (The cynical view is that having an outside enemy is the best peace-keeper; after all there's almost no such thing as Israeli-on-Israeli violence.)

The other explanation is that, simply, our democracy works. That may sound like a radical idea. But regardless of what one thinks about special interest groups, the Tea Party, radical lefties, Fox TV or Keith Olbermann, Americans have somehow managed to take all their disparate views and political anger and channel them through the political process. We vote, rant on our blogs, sign petitions, post articles (and snarky remarks) on Facebook, show up to protests and sign checks to favorite political groups. We don't, generally, destroy property or physically attack each other.

Not killing each other may seem like a low bar to set "functioning democracy," but we shouldn't forget how recently we fell below that bar in our political life.