I have a theory. For all the fawning popularity Barack Obama enjoys in certain circles, he is equally vilified in others. Those who don’t like him truly don’t like him. And there seems to be an element in this country that doesn’t want to accept him as the president. From the kooks hollering about his birth certificate to the paranoids insisting he is a closet Muslim, there are people who just don’t want this guy in that office.

The fact that he is half-black is not wasted on them, either. Let’s be blunt. Nobody can use the N-word in public anymore. But they can use socialist, anarchist, alien.

And somehow it’s now acceptable to deem a guy who has been in office barely eight months unfit and unworthy. It’s acceptable to suggest he’s taking us straight to hell. It’s acceptable to yell “You lie!” at the commander in chief in a place where it has never been yelled before.

Hate breeds hate. Two days ago, I boarded a plane heading for New York City. As we descended over the Manhattan skyline, I realized it was Sept. 11. I thought back to the emotions that followed that day eight years ago, a feeling of unity, a feeling a patriotism, a feeling that no enemy, no matter how evil or determined, could ever tear us apart.

The enemy doesn’t have to. The way we are going, we’ll do it ourselves.