The degraded nature of public discussion these days surely owes much to people feeling as if they aren’t being heard when they try to speak up respectfully. Last week, though, I saw one small reason to believe respectful discourse can still be achieved.

Rarely have I received such a vitriolic response to anything I’ve written than I did to my column last week arguing that, legal guilt or innocence aside, Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooter Kyle Rittenhouse bears a large degree of moral responsibility for the deaths of two people he shot. Obscenities came in via almost every venue of social media, along with one direct threat and a challenge to a fight from a hotheaded congressional candidate obviously looking for attention.